Join me in Chile, where mountains, street art and star-filled deserts teach me the difference between looking and really seeing.
"Beautiful view, isn't it?"
I turned to see Katie, a British girl who’d been on the same flight as me, from New Zealand to Chile. Standing on our hostel's roof terrace, we could see the Andes mountains stretched across the horizon, their snow-capped peaks glowing orange and indigo in the evening light. They’d seen a lot in their 25 million years.
"Fancy exploring the city together tomorrow?" she said with a smile.
Relief flooded through me. After saying goodbye to friends and colleagues in Auckland, I'd been nervous about backpacking alone again, somewhere I didn’t know or speak the local language. I’d never even been to South America before. All I knew is I needed to trust my intuition. Now, as we watched the sunset over Santiago, I felt that familiar travel magic - how the right person can appear at the right moment.
As the first stars appeared above these famous peaks, I wondered what Chile would show me.
