Chile: Mirror Image Of Our West Coast

What would the western United States be like if the Spanish had not retreated from their showdown with Britain at Vancouver Island's Nootka Sound? Or if Mexico had won the Mexican war and the Spanish empire and its culture had prevailed on our geography and climate?

No need to imagine such a scenario. Simply go to Chile.

That Latin American country is a geographic and cultural mirror, friendly and fascinating now that the long dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet has given way to democracy.

A sampling of its variety:

-- Children play soccer alongside the cannon of the last Spanish fortress in South America, in the fishing port of Ancud on tranquil Chiloe Island.

-- Penguins poke their heads up from earthen burrows near Punta Arenas to waddle toward a cobbled beach, as ostrich-like emu peck at the pampas nearby.

-- Costumed dancers pirouette at a celebratory Mass in the shadow of a gigantic statue of the Virgin Mary, in a park high above the urban bowl of Santiago.

-- Tourists hike from a timbered German-style lodge on an Andean Lake up the pumice flank of a young, snow-capped volcano spookily emerging from the clouds like a memory of the pre-1980 Mount St. Helens, at Petrohue.

-- Fashionable urban couples choose a spiced seafood while sitting sitting in the shadow of Santiago's modern skyscrapers.

Hot sun. Frozen glaciers. Ancient rain forests. Lush vineyards. All this is Chile . . . and more.

This ribbon-like country has the most unique longer than the United States is wide. But with an average width of just 250 miles, Chile has only the land area of Texas.

Its population is just 15 million, a third packed into the sprawling capital city of Santiago. Some regions are as empty as Montana.

In geology, it is a mirror of the forces that shaped the U.S. West Coast. Chile has a coast range, central valley, and high interior range - the Andes - similar to the pattern that extends from our Pacific Coast to the crest of the Cascades or Sierra Nevada. The difference is that the Andes are much higher.

In climate, Chile is like western North America stood on its head. Its northern border is at a latitude in the southern hemisphere comparable to Mexico City in the northern. Cape Horn at its southern tip would fall between Ketchikan and Juneau.

Chile's northern Atacama Desert is the driest in the world. Its rain forests of alerce trees are older than the redwoods or sequoias. In the far south its scenery rivals Alaska.

And Chile is not . . .

There are a number of things Chile is not.

It is not Mexico, and American familiarity with that country should not be extended to South America.

While Chile's fierce Mapuche Indians kept Spanish settlers at bay for 300 years south of the Bio Bio River, a large indigenous population did not survive to dominate the country today.

The result is a more European-feeling country. The average standard of living is higher, a higher proportion of the population is white, and immigrants came not just from Spain but from Germany, Yugoslavia, France, Britain and other countries. Their drive prompts some to call the Chileans the Germans of South America.

It is not necessarily cheap. Much of rural Chile remains poor and there are many restaurants and hotels that cater to natives and budget travelers, but a nice meal or hotel room comparable to American standards costs about the same as in the U.S.

It is not quaint. Chile is trying to catch up to an American standard of living. It still has traditional markets, but in most cities of any size they are within a block or two of a glittering supermarket and a copy of Westlake Mall. Chile has one of the strongest economies in Latin America and its capital has smog to rival Los Angeles.

Pinochet and after

Chile is fascinating, however: a prime example of the breakneck modernization going on all around the Pacific Rim, for better and worse. Long a poor stepchild to Peru as a Spanish colony (it had little gold) Chile came into its own with independence, finding a market for its minerals and trees brought on by the industrial revolution.

The country has had four civil wars and 10 coups since independence; today it's considered one of the most stable in Latin America.

Chile became infamous among American liberals in 1973 when Pinochet overthrew the Marxist regime of Salvador Allende and started a dictatorship that lasted until 1989. Today Chileans remain passionate about politics and surprisingly divided over Pinochet.

One Chilean I met had his brother imprisoned and then exiled to Denmark, a trauma that eventually broke the man's mental health. My acquaintance loathed the dictator. Yet another woman kept Pinochet's picture by her bed. She said he had forcibly modernized Chile while saving it from becoming another Cuba.

The country today is a vibrant democracy, anxious to shed the Pinochet image even though the aging former dictator remains the nation's defense chief.

Long, tall Chile

Because Chile is so long, travelers with limited time will probably have to pick sections of it to concentrate on.

Unless a tourist is willing to pay an exorbitant fee, rental cars must usually be returned to the city they were hired in, making a one-way drive down the Pan American Highway that stitches the country together difficult.

Generally, the north has beach resorts and high, arid, altiplano desert: an exotic, empty landscape where a four-wheel-drive vehicle is useful.

The populated center includes Santiago, where virtually all North American visitors first enter, and surrounding resorts which range from swank Andean ski resorts to the luxury hotels of Vina del Mar on the Pacific coast. Santiago has a climate, scenery and smog all very reminiscent of Los Angeles It does not have the rich history, ruins, or museums of, say, a Mexico City.

To the south

Several hundred miles to the south, between Concepcion and Puerto Montt, is the lovely lake district: Chile's version of the Pacific Northwest. Green, forested, mountainous and dotted with national parks, it is a popular draw for foreign and domestic travelers alike.

South of Puerto Montt are the rugged and remote mountains, forests and glaciers of Patagonia, much of the area newly opened through a gravel road constructed by Pinochet that matches in ambition the Alaskan Highway. Here you can have wilderness to yourself, but it's a long way between gas stations and groceries.

The climax of Chilean scenery comes at Torres del Pine National Park in the far south. Reached by bus or car from Punta Arenas, a city of 100,000 on the Straits of Magellan, Torres takes its name from tower-like rock spires so improbable they look like fantasy drawings.

Across the Strait of Magellan is the huge and little-visited island of Tierra del Fuego, and Chile ends at the rock promontory of Cape Horn. ----------------------------------------------------------------- If you go The best maps and guide to the country is a publication produced for the Seville World's Fair in 1992 called "Chile, A Remote Corner of Earth." Not easy to find - check bookstores in Chile - but invaluable if you can get it.