Don’t let its size deceive you. A thin strip that stretches a meagre 175 km across, Chile manages to enclose within its narrow boundaries lush valleys, volcanoes, sun baked dunes, crackling glaciers, majestic fjords and even the odd giant mo’ai head or two at Easter Island.

Kick start your trip in the capital Santiago, where historic buildings rub shoulders with modern skyscrapers and people of all colours, religions and cultures come together. Travel to Valparaiso, land of steep funiculars and colourful houses, the Colchagua Valley and the Casablanca Wine Valley to sample some of the best reds, whites and rosés around. Salud!

From there it’s on to the Atacama Desert to visit the ancient sites of Tulor and Quitor, the Atacama Salt Flat, the Altiplanic Lagoons and the Tatio Geysers, before retiring for the night in a desert oasis.

Pick up the pace in Pucon, an idyllic town that’s the place for an authentic Chilean adventure. Go kayaking, whitewater or snowboarding on the slopes of a volcano. But perhaps the highlight in Chilean Patagonia is the Torres del Paine National Park, packed with every imaginable natural wonder (and the odd guanaco llama) from snow-capped mountains and glaciers to crashing waterfalls and the iconic granite towers. When they said good things come in small packages, looks like they had Chile in mind!