Published by Random House, 1999, 336 pages.

I spent three of my happiest years in Chile as a child, and it was the beginning of a long affection for Latin America. My parents and I travelled in the country, going south to the icecaps and Tierra del Fuego on one journey, and north to the Atacama desert on another. I learned Spanish, and my mother named our home in India La Serena after a Chilean town. We left just before Salvador Allende was elected president, and missed his turbulent overthrow in 1973.

Sara Wheeler visited Chile in the 1990s and decided to travel the country methodically, starting from Arica in the north and ending in the south, even managing to visit Antartica.

Wheeler is an observant, funny writer. I loved her vivid descriptions, both of the country’s natural beauty and the people she meets. On Christmas day, near the Atacama desert, she watches as a flock of flamingoes takes to the air: “great sprays of pink foam”. The people she meets come alive on the page: German Arturo, a “quixotic aristocrat” who she calls Mr. Fixit for his talent in opening doors for her; Pepe who looks like “a young Dali” and who comes to her aid when her car breaks down; and Gloria, the curator of a Mapuche museum with a face of “a Forces sweetheart”—a single, independent woman, not the kind often seen in the rural heartland. What I also loved in the book was the way Wheeler weaves a tapestry of the past and the present, making a clear connection between the two.

My one quibble is that she sometimes leaves out details: for example, she mentions staying at the grottiest hotel ever but doesn’t say what made it so terrible, or says she stopped for the best hot sandwich but doesn’t say what she ate (a terrible omission for a foodie like me!). But her journey through the country brought back some wonderful memories and made me want to return.

This review first appeared on Women on the Road.