Since I was a child, I had wanted to visit Coyhaique. Having spotted this isolated city on my globe during early adolescence, I concocted many short stories set in ‘mysterious’ Coyhaique, without having any real knowledge of the place.

So, naturally, when I planned my first (solo) trip to Chile in 2001, Coyhaique had to be my first stop.

From the international airport in Santiago, I flew directly to Balmaceda – a tiny airport a short distance from town. I was astonished by the beautiful scenery we flew over…lakes of every imaginable color, and frigid-looking mountains and hills tumbling down into the ocean. No sign of civilization could be seen south of Puerto Montt.

Coyhaique surprised me. It was quite a small town, set into the bowl of the Rio Simpson Valley, and its culture was similar to that of most other small southern South American towns. I stayed at the diminutive “Hotel El Reloj ( http://www.elrelojhotel.cl/hotel.php ) ” for a few days, covered the town on foot, conversed in Spanglish with some shopkeepers, and found it difficult to believe that this town was so remote. And then I rented a car.

Within minutes Coyhaique was out of sight, and the Chilean Patagonian countryside seemed to spread limitlessly in all directions. At the time I went, many hillsides had been stripped of native trees, to provide adequate land for new farmer-settlers. I saw mostly small farms, with geese and ducks wandering about.

This region is also quite famous for its fishing, and I passed several lovely lakes embedded in rolling hills. As I drove along the coast of one such lake, a ‘sunshower’ passed over, lending an ethereal beauty to the landscape.

I think that the taxi driver who brought me from Balmaceda to Coyhaique summed up the town the best: “Coyhaique es muy tranquilo.”