Valparaiso

I think I mentioned that Santiago was relatively clean, modern city that is somewhat unremarkable. Well Valparaiso the port town adjacent to Santiago is just the opposite - a bustling and shabby port town with a lot of character. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there on the last day of my trip.

The town has a flat business section near the ocean (El Plan) and then a hillside section consisting of a jumble of old houses of all shapes and sizes and colors overlooking the bay. The hillsides are quite steep and the roads are narrow and sinuous. To facilitate getting up and down the hills there are some 15 or so funicular railways (ascensores) around the town. These are all very old and dilapidated pieces of equipment indeed and they look like they would never pass any modern safety standards. Nevertheless, they work and they are a lot of fun.

Looking downhill from Ascensor Florida.

One of the things I did in Valparaiso was to visit Pablo Neruda's house there. Mr. Neruda, the Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate, while very much a supporter of the socialist movement and the poor and downtrodden of this world also lived a fairly comfortable life and had three houses in Chile - all of which are now museums. He was a great collector and the house in Valparaiso was full of interesting stuff that he had been given or that he had collected in his travels. I enjoyed it so much that when I got back to Santiago later that afternoon, I went to his house there to see what he had accumulated there. An interesting character indeed.


Neruda's House in Valparaiso - La Sebastiana (he named his houses)

The Astronomy Tour

One of the more interesting things that I did in the Atacama region was to go on an Astronomy Tour. The Atacama Desert is a prime location for star gazing. The climate is dry, there are few clouds, it is relatively high altitude, and the high atmospheric winds are laminar and consistent - all good things for observing the heavens. There are many large scientific telescope installations in the area and the largest radio telescope in the world is currently being built up there (the Atacma Large Millimetre Array).

A French Astronomer and his wife live just outside San Pedro and they run nightly tours of the night sky. It was very educational - the guy was so passionate about astronomy and he certainly had a knack for explaining how we fit into the solar system, our galaxy and the universe. He used a laser pointer to identify different areas of the sky and he had about 6 different telescopes in the back yard of his house that he focused on different areas so that we could "ooh and aah" about the moon, the constellations, star clusters, nebulae and the like. For a couple of hours I was completely enthralled.

Below is my picture of the moon taken through on of his telescopes.

San Pedro de Atacama

The second part of my trip was to the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile. A totally different landscape - one of the driest on the planet. A lot like Death Valley in California but on a much grander scale. I stayed in the little town of San Pedro de Atacama - a town that was discovered first by the hippy/back-packer crowd and, in more recent times, by the more well-healed traveler set (to which I suppose I belong these days). It seems to be totally reliant on the tourism industry these days but, as they say, don't drink the water - since there is so little of it here and as it leaches through all sorts of nasty stuff before it gets to town, the local water has a very high concentration of arsenic.

This part of the trip was not so strenuous as the Patagonia part with just little day trips out to see different things like geysers, salt flats, interesting rock formations, etc. Nothing quite as spectacular as Patagonia, but a nice place to take it easier for a while.


The Iglesia San Pedro - quite a nice church in the town square of San Pedro.



Sunset in the Valle De La Luna, just outside San Pedro. Everyone goes there to watch the sun go down - with the mandatory Pisco Sours of course.



The Geysers at El Tatio. This is up in the altiplano around 13,000 ft so the air is a bit thin. The geysers are more dramatic in the early morning when the air is cold and there is more condensation of the steam, by 9 or 10 there is not much to see anymore. You can boil your eggs and heat your milk for coffee in the geysers and have breakfast among all the hissing and gurgling steam.




Flamingos on the salt flats at Laguna Chaxa in the Salar de Atacama (Atacama Salt Flats) - the one with the black tail feathers is an Andean Flamingo, the one without the black tail feathers is a Chilean Flamingo - just in case you were wondering.

Hiking the "W"

The purpose of my trip was to hike the so-called "W" around the base of the Torres del Paine. The "W" is a trail that takes its name from its outline on the map and it takes about 4 days to complete. The folks with more time and energy hike the entire Paine Circuit which is more like a 10 day trip and it goes all the way around the Torres.

The nice thing about the "W" is that you can stay each night in a Refugio (Hostel) where there is a bunk, food, hot showers and, the other essential component, a plentiful supply of Pisco Sours. On the Paine Circuit you have to resort to tents for accomodation and a more austere lifestyle.

There were lots of great experiences and sights during this part trip -
- the aquamarine blue of the glacial lakes.
- the vibrant red of the firebush which was in blossom everywhere.
- the Andean Condors. Magnificent birds and relatively common in this area.
- the many different shades of blue of the Grey Glacier which we got to see up close on our boat trip.
- the power and noise of the avalanches cascading, at a safe distance, down the opposite side of the French Valley.
- and of course the Torres themselves which were different from each perspective but always impressive even when shrouded in cloud or mist.

In Patgonia

To get down to Patagonia I flew down to Punta Arenas in the south. It is the most southerly outpost in Chile and apparently it is a bit of a windswept and bleak place but I wouldn't know as I was escorted north from the airport to Puerto Natales - the gateway to the Torres Del Paine National Park - my destination.

This province of Chile has been given the name Ultima Esperanza - Last Hope - I wonder what they were thinking when they named it that.

The countryside here is sparsely populated but there were few interesting things to see on the way into the park. We stopped to visit the Milodon Cave - a Milodon is a, now extinct, prehistoric sloth which used to inhabit the cave. A useless piece of trivia about the Milodon Cave is that it was a piece of skin from a mummified Milodon found in the cave that inspired Bruce Chatwin to go to Patagonia and write his classic travel book - In Patagonia. I have always liked Bruce Chatwin's writing and it was that book that inspired me to go to Patagonia - except it took me a long time to get there - I read it when I was in my 20's.

On the drive north there was some new and interesting wildlife (for me anyway). Below are the Guanaco and the Rhea.




And then finally as we approached the park the first glimpses of the Torres - very dramatic indeed. The Torres Del Paine - (The Towers of Blue from the name of the granite spires that dominate the area and the blue glacial lakes that are around them) are the classic mountains of Patagonia - they are the granite spires you see on the classic images of the area and they are spectacular.


On arriving in the park I met up with my fellow travelers. We were a group of 10 Australians, 1 Dutchman, myself and our two Chilean guides. By the end of the trip we were all the best of friends.

Chile

Well I am back in the USA after a great trip to Chile. I got to see quite a lot of the country and was very impressed - being so long and thin Chile has a lot of different climate zones and has quite a lot to offer as a tourist destination. I got to see the bit at the bottom (Torres Del Paine in Patagonia) and the bit at the top (the Atacama Desert) with a quick look around Santiago and Valparaiso in the middle.


I arrived in Santiago after a tiring trip (via Los Angeles and Atlanta) and had a quick look around the city on the afternoon of my arrival. It is a clean and modern city but in many ways unremarkable. On a clear smog free day, the view would be spectacular as the high Andes are quite close to the city but as you can see below, it was not really that clear. Surprisingly there does not seem to be a lot of historical sites or many colonial buildings - perhaps as a result of it being the recipient of some serious earthquakes (in 1960 Chile had the largest earthquake ever instrumentally recorded - 9.5 on the Richter Scale).

For me the most interesting place was the Palacio De La Moneda, where Salvador Allende allegedly committed suicide under siege by the army back in 1973. The palace suffered aerial bombardment during the coup but there were no signs of that now. Since that time and the restitution of democracy they have erected a statue to Senor Allende and there were many fresh flowers around laid at the statue's base. It is still an issue that is contentious in the country after all these years.


Of course as I write this, the main perpetrator of the coup (not counting the US government that is) General Augusto Pinochet has suffered a heart attack.

So after an afternoon in Santiago, it was on to Patagonia - a lot more interesting area which I will write about later in the week.

Off to Patagonia...

Tomorrow I am off on a hastily arranged trip to Patagonia. I have always been in awe of the granite spires of the Torres Del Paine so, if all goes well, next week I will be hiking around the base of them. Nothing technical, just gentle hiking (I hope). Then after 9 days in Southern Chile I am heading off into the Northern part and the Atacama Desert. I am not sure what I will find in that area, nothing quite as dramatic as the Torres Del Paine I am sure, but there’s something about the name that has had some allure for me since my grammar school geography lessons. We will find out if there was anything to be allured about in a couple of weeks time.

If I get near a computer in the next couple of weeks I will try and post something - if not I will catch up when I return.

Things are looking a bit brighter...

After 7 years of voting in the US elections, finally last night's election was one where I could feel pleased about the outcome. Of course my first US election was the Bush v Gore debacle of 2000 so that took a little bit of getting over, but last night it looks like the tide has started to swing the other way. Hopefully it will be a slow progressive swing that doesn't turn around too soon.

I read a post somewhere from a Brit commenting on the aftermath of yesterday's election stating that "the average American has no idea how hated the US has become since President Bush came to power". I agree entirely - as a nation there is not much love lost for us these days. All those sympathies and good will generated towards us after 9/11 have been squandered by Mr Bush's actions in these last few years. Hopefully we may be able to move towards repairing the damage done, but that will be a long slow road.

By the way, any of you fellow Brits who want to know how a real democracy works (or doesn't) check out the California Voter Information Guide - some 192 pages of information. Voting in this country is hard work and we get to vote on just about everything especially here in California.

Janis Ian

I went to see Janis Ian perform the other night. I hadn’t kept up with her music since the 70’s when I bought her classic Between the Lines LP. Now some 30 or more years later, there she was still singing many of those old songs (I wonder how many times in her career she has performed “At Seventeen”). Her voice was great – it has hardly changed in all these years, but I wasn’t prepared for how she looked. Her hair is completely white now and she is no longer the waif like folk singer from my youth. Probably what irks me more is that I also am not the same as I was in the 70’s and at least Janis has hair even if it is white.

Anyway, she did a wonderful show, highly recommended. And she's been working all these years - there's like 25 albums out there.

What a strange world this is...

I have been reading Richard Dawkin's book – The God Delusion lately. I must admit I wasn’t familiar with Professor Dawkins but I am finding the book reassures me about a lot of things with respect to religion and atheism. Professor Dawkins by the way holds the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University – all software developers who use the Hungarian notation are indebted to Mr Simonyi.

Anyway digging around on the web for Richard Dawkins leads you to a lot of videos on You Tube, in particular the ones from his program on Channel 4 TV – “The Root of All Evil”. There is one clip where he interviews Ted Haggard from the New Life Church in Colorado and the leader of tje National Association of Evangelicals in the USA.

So anyway, just as I am reading the chapter about whether Religion is necessary for us to be “moral” individuals (it’s not by the way), it comes out that Reverend Ted has been accused of all sorts un-evangelical things by a male prostitute and, at least for now, is stepping away from his leadership role in the church.

The scary thing is that Reverend Ted has, or at least had until this week, a close relationship to President Bush with weekly conference calls to the White House!

I find it quite inexplicable that the America and the UK are so far apart when it comes to religion. I could not imagine a television program about religion called “The Root of All Evil” getting any sponsorship in the USA – there would be protests, boycotts and all manner of things going on. Then, I couldn’t imagine the USA putting Charles Darwin on its bank notes either, but in the UK the 10 Pound Note has Charles Darwin on one side and the Queen, “the Defender of the Faith” on the other side.