independent.co.uk By the end of my riding holiday in Chile’s northern Patagonia, I’d grown rather fond of La Chica, my six-year-old chestnut-coloured mare. She and I had bonded after I had been separated – a tad humiliatingly – from my first steed, Volantino, whose penchant for ponderous diagonal descents had regressed into blunt refusals to advance.

In a five-day ride – during which I progressed from an apprehensive ingénue to a moderate rider with sore buttock muscles – I covered 50 miles of mountain horse trails, dirt tracks, roads, rivers and wooden bridges in and around the remote southern town of Futaleufú, in the province of Palena, 700 miles south of the capital, Santiago. I’d reached Futaleufu from the UK after 21 hours on five flights – the last, a 10-seater biplane from the port city of Puerto Montt to the coastal town of Chaitén – followed by a rainswept, bumpy, three-hour drive south-east, passing Lago Yelcho and mountain streams, in a misty, precipitous landscape. [ read more ]