Chile's Maipo canyon: A rough and tumble playground

Southern California has its wild Santa Ana; northern Africa has its dust-laden Sirocco. In central Chile's Maipo canyon, we have the Raco. A freight train of a wind that pushes off your hat, messes up your hair, and completely befuddles you.

As my local guide Leo and I drive into the rocky canyon, stretching more than 70 kilometres along the foothills of the Chilean Andes, Leo tells me the Raco helped shape this eerily beautiful depression and the surrounding mountains since they emerged from the sea millennia ago. And it's despite this wind, he says, that Maipo canyon has become a weekend playground for Santiaguinos, who travel two hours from the Chilean capital Santiago to camp, hike, climb, cycle, raft and ski in this natural playground that is also home to exotic wildlife, including the Andean condor, foxes and pumas.

We continue driving past cactus-studded stony ridges and glacial springs gushing from fissures in the rock. Soon, we pull over at a roadside cafe in a quiet town called San Alfonso. As our snack of sweet tea and cheese empanadas arrives, we get chatting to two huasos, or cowboys, who proudly show us photos of the horse arena they're building nearby. Like the gauchos of Chile, the huasos in their round-brimmed black hats, knee-high leather boots and striped ponchos are a symbol of the country, and it's quite a kick to see them in the flesh. I would be content to sit and chat to them for hours, but a power cut signals it's time to hit the road again.

Deeper into the valley we go, fields of wild yellow poppies and glossy black horses flashing by the windows, alongside camp grounds, rustic cabins and hot springs. Our next stop is a town called El Volcan, nestled beneath the San Jose volcano near the chocolate milk-coloured river. It's like the set of a western film, complete with dusty tumbleweeds turning down the rammed-earth main street.

"This was a ghost town in the '70s and today there are still only about 10 people living here," Leo says. We make our way past towering poplars and charmingly eroded buildings with rusty iron roofs, to a copper mine that Leo says was abandoned in the early 1900s. The crumbling rocket-shaped building points up into the blue dome of the sky, adding to the town's slightly apocalyptic feeling.

The further into the valley we go, the more apocalyptic it feels. Especially when we stop to take pictures of the El Morado glacier, rising between the cleavage of two mountains, and discover a cowboy's grave. We stand beside the wooden cross decorated with rusty horseshoes, and let the serenity of this strangely seductive place wash over us.

Perhaps the strangest thing about Maipo canyon though, which strikes me as we drive past yet another mine, is that while Chileans consider it a bucolic nook in which to escape Santiago's madness, it is essentially a huge quarry. Here, they are pumping water from the river for a hydro-electric plant; over there the road is lined with mining trucks. And yet when paired with the wild west towns, the small farms scattered along the dusty roads, and the hiking and skiing trails weaving high into the mountains all around, it just seems to work.