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.