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Riding Travel Chile
How world traveller Clark Stede settled down - by Lilo Solcher
(From the famous German newspaper Allgemeine)
Travel to Chile, Riding a dream of my life
Some people just can’t sit still. Clark Stede is one of them. The world sailor who has been working as a photographer for this newspaper for years had to leave many times to discover new things. But then he came to Chile and now he’s stuck. At the Hacienda Los Andes the former inhabitant of Augsburg found a new home. Because he is so fascinated by the Chilean landscape and because he just cannot sit still, Stede loves to guide the guests of his lodge through the mountains on horse and trek kings. In 1993 already, when he got stuck in Chile during his sail around the world, the globetrotter “kind of fell in love with the country”. In the “wonderful mixture” of nature extremes, friendly people and pleasant climate. “The Chileans say that Chile is an island” says Stede in Ausgburg looking in the distance as if he could see the country of his dreams there, “the desert in the north, the Antarctic in the south, the Andes in the east, the pacific in the west”. And the remoteness, deserted. “There are places where you can drive for hours and not see a single person”! The 53 year old does not hide his enthusiasm since he wants to get tourists to come to Chile which he praises the “warm-up country for South America”. The stretched country be absolutely safe: no poisonous animals, no malignant diseases, no serious criminality. For these reasons it is ideal for individual tourists who can travel alone with the help of internet and travel - guide. “People don’t want to be rushed”, explains Stede the trend to more individualism in tourism.
The ex-globetrotter and ex-world sailor thinks little of mass tourism and therefore specialised in detailed counselling of the individual traveller over e-mail and internet. This brought him a lot of praise from travel experts, just like his opinion that tourists shouldn’t be seen as milk cows. “The people should get top adventure for their hard saved money”, is his motto. It also took him quite a while to become what he is today. Formerly he ran a horseback riding company in Patagonia which was a huge success. But for the man who can’t sit still it all became too much of commerce. That’s why he and his girlfriend from Vienna, Manuela, went to the Chilean desert. There they realised that they had one more dream in their lives to make a reality, the dream of their own Hacienda. On the way back they happened to see “this old, run-down hacienda with a huge palm tree in front of it”. He bought the wreck right away and sold his company over the net. Of course he had to invest a lot. The rebuilding of the 1856 constructed hacienda took 15 months until everything was “just how it used to be, even the wall paintings”. Only the garden turned out “a little nicer”. The plot is huge, including an old goldmine.
Following the motto “share the cake” he buys fresh products from his neighbours for the kitchen. The Chilean chef likes meditarrean food. That’s why the boss has to go to the 80 kilometres distant fish market once a week. But the hacienda also offers quite a few of its own products: wine, juices, jam, honey. “I do feel like I’m living in a paradise” says Stede with a little bit of yearning in his voice. Even though the Berlin born man always liked Augsburg. “I honestly find Augsburg a beautiful place” he praises his former base. But now for him and Manuela home is the hacienda in Chile where they both can live out their love for horses. They are proud of their Criollos, thoroughbred descendants of the conquistador horses. Also, horse trekking is one of the main attractions at the Hacienda. But of course they also have guests that “don’t want to get close to horses”. Therefore a booklet with portraits on the environment’s plants opens the trekker’s eyes to a different world. And the photographer Clark Stede also still exists. He still takes pictures “once in a while”, in black and white, at the moment for a picture story on gauchos. He just can’t sit still, not even in paradise.
Home of Clark Stede is today Corral los Andes – the green 41 ha Natural Horsemanship farm and Horseback Outfitter in Chile in the background - in the Valley Rio Hurtado in the Chilean Andes.
