Tales from the Sharp End: A Portrait of Chile

Tales from the Sharp End: A Portrait of Chile is based on fifteen years of Natascha Scott-Stokes living and exploring the country of Chile. The book offers a vivid tapestry of stories ranging from history and culture to flora and fauna, woven into the author’s own tales of adventure and heartbreak.

Chile is 4,300 kilometers long but a mere 350 kilometers at its widest, lined by the Andes to the east and the Pacific to the west. Traveling along the Pan-American Highway takes you to both the driest desert on earth and impenetrable cloud forests barring the way to Patagonian ice fields. Here is the true magnet of this jagged knife-edge of a country: the unique landscape born of its geography and the gorgeous plant and animal life there. Few things are more thrilling than climbing the coastal mountains to see both the Andes and the ocean at the same time, or to set eyes on the mighty River Baker churning through southern Patagonia.

Natascha Scott-Stokes offers both a love letter to Chile and a heartfelt lament for a country living at the sharp end of human folly and climate change.

In 1989 pioneering traveler Natascha Scott-Stokes became the first woman to travel the length of the Amazon River alone. She recounted that journey in her book An Amazon and a Donkey. She lives in Chile.