Author: rr_admin

Ok, that’s a really slick piece of marketing. Robinson Crusoe, as most people know, is not a real person. He’s a fictional character made up by Daniel Defoe. That character was based on a composite of tales of survival popular at the time, one of which was that of Alexander Selkirk, who was indeed marooned on this island from 1704 to 1709.

The island is 757 KMs distant from Santiago. There are no scheduled flights. You have to leave from the private aircraft terminal with its hangarful of Learjets and Citations.

The departure area is suitably luxurious.

Our craft, however, is not a jet. It’s a 70’s-era Piper Cheyenne.

After a couple of hours, the island is sighted among all that empty blueness.

We are met at the airstrip for the transport to town.

This trip to the island is by special request – a gift for Maria’s upcoming birthday.

Then it’s a 40-minute ride in an open boat to the town of San Juan Bautista.

Along the way, we pass a rock formation known as ‘the gorilla’ to those with an active imagination.

We catch our first sight of San Juan Bautista, population 800.

We stay for a week at this hotel, La Robinson Oceanic, overlooking the water.

This is Rita, our very friendly host, with Chulita, one of two dogs on the property.

She gets a lot of attention while we’re here. (The dog, that is.)

Most people come here to fish or dive. We’re here to relax and do a bit of hiking. Parts of the trail are covered in gigantic Pangue plants.

There is a very rare red hummingbird, only found here. We’re lucky enough to see half a dozen of them flying from branch to branch nearby.

(It took many, many photos to catch this one sitting still.)

For the locals, fishing for lobster is a common occupation.

San Juan Bautista has suffered several tsunamis in the past, the most recent in 2010.

A ship arrives from the mainland every fifteen days or so, bringing essential supplies.

The inhabitants are very friendly. Of course, everybody knows everyone else. Islanders are very civic-minded: there’s virtually no trash or graffiti. The town plaza still has an unvandalized Christmas tree made up of crochet squares.

We hike up to the Selkirk Lookout, the highest spot on the island. It’s also where I took the photo mentioning Maria’s birthday.

It’s a stiff climb, but worth it for the different landscapes we go through.

Daniel Defoe took a lot of liberties with the Selkirk story. In the book, Crusoe’s island is in the Caribbean. And Crusoe is marooned for 28 years, versus four years and four months. And there were no cannibals and no Friday.

Still, the Robinson Crusoe story is one that virtually everyone on the planet is familiar with.

Besides the original, there was the Swiss Family Robinson, published inn 1812 and subsequently made into a Disney movie.

And then there was the Space Family Robinson – several TV versions and a comic.

There is a craft brewery on the island.

We visit for a tasting and dinner. There’s a great view from the patio..

Dinner is seafood ceviche, seafood empanadas, and beer.

One morning, Maria goes snorkeling while I nurse yet another cold at home.

Maria fetches some of these photos from the excursion company’s Instagram page.

There are seals everywhere here. They’re very playful and curious.

The seals hang out with the humans of their own free will – no bribery involved.

Another chapter of island history is the sinking of the German warship Dresden here in 1915.

It was fatally shelled by several British warships. One shell penetrated the cliff face near town but didn’t explode. Maybe someday.

There is a trail to the next bay over.

This is in fact the bay that Maria went to on her snorkeling expedition.

Our last day arrives. It’s another lengthy boat ride over choppy waters.

On our way to the airstrip, we are shown the only sandy beach on the island. It’s covered in seals.

The airstrip is on the only flat surface. There were plans to build a road to town, but I think that’s been abandoned.

So we say goodbye to our second Chilean island destination.

Sight or Insight of the Day

We didn’t mention our companions on the island: Roberto, Carlos, and Steven.

This is a trio of life-long friends, Colombian-Americans, all very successful business owners. All kind of eccentric.

They’re keen sports fisherman, and regularly meet up in the world’s more exotic locations to yank unbelievably huge fish out of the ocean and to rib each other mercilessly in English and Spanish.

(The island is probably most visited by fishermen and scuba divers.)

They accompany us on the flight to the island and back, and stay in the same accommodation.

Very interesting guys, generous and kind, but kind of high maintenance, like many people with lots of money.

Back from Easter Island. We have to wait until January 07 for the flight to our next destination, so we cool our heels in Santiago for the third or fourth time this trip.

Speaking of dates, in Real Time, today is January 10 – Maria’s birthday!

A brief roundup of our activities: we visit the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art. It is superb.

Even better, there are no self-loathing, groveling messages of apology and abject kowtowing to the Culture Wars that make many Western museums such repulsive places these days. Looking for examples of this peculiar self-flagellating folderol, I come across this article. Sheesh, just crawl into an alley and blow your brains out, already.

We stay in several different places. In one place, we meet a Belgian man and his teenage son. The evening is spent singing golden oldies on the son’s El-cheapo Bolivian guitar.

One day, we take another wine tour, this time to the headquarters of Concha y Toro.

Another day we ascend the Gran Torre Costanera. It’s the tallest building in South America (for now). According Wikipedia, it also ‘includes the largest shopping mall in Latin America‘. I don’t know, we’ve seen some pretty big malls in our travels.

The view from the top is, um, panoramic.

The Museum of Memory and Human Rights is about the history of the Pinochet regime.

It’s well designed for random wandering. If you want an idea of the kind of things that were going on at the time, the film ‘Missing‘ (1982) may be worth re-watching.

We like the way the building makes extensive use of copper – a material that Chile has a lot of.

La Chascona is the poet Pablo Neruda’s house in Santiago. (He also had one in Valparaiso, which we visited earlier, and another one on the coast, where he’s buried.)

It has, among other things, a painting by Diego Rivera. Considering the minimal security, I fantasize about stealing it.

Santiago has many lovely buildings and tree-lined neighbourhoods. Too bad it suffers from two serious problems: garbage and graffiti. At seemingly random street corners, small mountains of garbage appear overnight and begin to grow. The graffiti, I believe, is the result of an extended period of social unrest (that is, ‘riots’) that took place between 2019 and 2022. Which normalized the destruction and defacement of public property. Which is pretty ironic, considering Chile probably enjoys one of the most equal and financially healthy governments in Latin America.

Something we haven’t seen before: the Santiago Metro has 21 lending libraries in its system.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Speaking of the Metro…as we are taking the subway one day, we come across this travel poster.

It’s for the Juan Fernandez Archipelago – AKA ‘Robinson Crusoe Island’ – which happens to be our next destination.

We love Easter Island! It might be our favourite place on the trip so far.

Arrived here after one of the most comfortable flights ever (Emergency Exit row seats!) The aircraft is so new, it looks as if it’s just been unwrapped from the cellophane.

Mataveri International Airport has a quaint grass-hut terminal. We are greeted with floral leis on arrival.

Interesting airport fact: Easter Island had no useable airport beyond a dirt field until the Americans built a base here (1965-1970) and constructed one. In 1985, they came back and extended the runway to serve as a possible emergency landing strip for the space shuttle.

It feels like we’re on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific. Nobody here is in much of a hurry. Hanga Roa, the main (and only) town, has a population of around 7,000 people.

There is no deep harbour. There’s a small beach in the centre of town that regularly has sea turtles swimming leisurely a few metres from shore.

Needless to say, there are lots of friendly dogs.

Easter Island has an interesting and controversial history. In reality, much about the original Rapa Nui people is unknown, or guessed at wildly. A handful of proven facts:

• humans did not arrive on the island before the year 1200 AD
• Rapa Nui people are Polynesian people, as proved by DNA and linguistic evidence (sorry Thor Heyerdahl, they did NOT come from the South American mainland)
• Rapa Nui people underwent a lot of self-inflicted troubles even before the arrival of satanic Europeans – of course, it was no picnic after Whitey arrived, either

The main draw are the moai, the giant statues that you associate with Easter Island.

It also seemed like a good place to spend Christmas. It turns out there’s a song by an ’80s-’90s English band, Sad Lovers & Giants, titled ‘Christmas on Easter Island‘. The lyrics don’t seem to have much to do with Christmas OR Easter Island, but what the heck.

There are reported to be over 900 moai on the island. Some come in groups.

Some used to have eyes made of coral and obsidian. In this case, they have been restored.

Almost all have long ears, big noses, and beetling brows.

People may remember the comic strip ‘Sherman’s Lagoon‘. Sherman is a shark. He has a friend and preceptor, Kahuna, who is obviously patterned on the moai.

A specialty of the island that we have for lunch almost every day (in different locations): tuna empanadas. These are large empanadas stuffed with thick chunks of fresh tuna and melted cheese.

There are things to see besides big statues. One day we visit a couple of caves.

We visit Orongo, a Rapa Nui ceremonial centre.

These have been partially restored.

Orango is perched on the rim of Rano Kau crater. On one side is the wetlands on the crater’s bottom.

On the other side is the ocean, with the small island of Motu Nui, the site of the ‘Birdman‘ contest. This bizarre egg-hunt was extremely important to the Rapa Nui people.

How remote IS Easter Island?

• Its closest inhabited neighbour is Pitcairn Island, 1,931 km to the west
• Its closest point to mainland Chile is 3,512 km to the east
• Its closest point to Point Nemo – the furthest point in the ocean from any land – is 2,688 km

I’ve never even heard of Point Nemo. Apparently that’s where space-exploring countries try to dump their superannuated space stations.

Back to the moai: often, images show the figures standing on a grassy hillside.

These photos are often taken at this location, Rano Raraku. This is the quarry from which almost every moai on the island comes.

The many that so picturesquely cover the hillside are ones that hadn’t been delivered yet when moai production was suddenly shut down entirely.

An interesting note: moai are often shown facing the ocean like vigilant sentinels. But when put in place, they almost always faced inland, to protect ‘their’ community.

You can see several that were abandoned in mid-carving.

We go to the beach three times while here. There’s only one, Anakena. It’s clean and uncrowded.

A week is over all too soon. It’s back to Mataveri Airport for flight LA844 to Santiago.

Our flight back is even better than our flight here. For some inexplicable reason, we get to fly back business class! Five and a half hours of sheer luxury. We could get used to this.

A final comment…sad to hear that former President of the United States Jimmy Carter just passed away at age 100. He was a decent man. See you in another life, Jimmy.

I think Jimmy deserves another tip o’ the hat.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Another Easter Island mystery.

We rent a car for three days. While looking at Google Maps for interesting places to visit, We come across this intriguing feature.

Hmmm, an ‘Old NASA site’? It’s on the road to Anakena Beach, so we stop on the way.

What remains looks like something out of the TV series ‘Lost‘. (Which I’m rewatching at the moment.)

The facility opened in 1983. I manage to find some brief footage of its inauguration here (https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/223943/). We can’t find a closing date, but the site is clearly abandoned.

It’s interesting that in the film clip, the area is totally bare. Today, it’s surrounded by ranches and trees.

From Puerto Madryn, we fly to Iguaçu Falls. These are Victoria Falls/Niagara Falls-comparable wonders of the natural world.

We hear that the experience of the falls is different between Argentina on one hand and Brazil on the other. We resolve to visit the falls from both sides. First we visit the Argentinian side, since we’re in Argentina.

From the gate, you travel a few kilometres on a miniature train to get to the pathway that leads to the ‘Garganta del Diablo‘, or ‘Devils’s Throat’.

The water plunges over 80 metres down to the bottom.

Cinephiles may remember these falls in one visually spectacular scene from the 1986 film ‘The Mission’. A Jesuit missionary, lashed to a cross by the Guarani people, is then sent over the falls, cross and all, to meet his maker.

 It’s a pleasure being so close to the cataracts – other places would probably not have the access points so open and uncaged, in order to prevent suicides and deaths from unattended hyperactive children.

The flow is exceptionally heavy because it’s been raining a lot in this area.

There are scores of birds, Great Dusky Swifts, that live in nests protected by the rushing waters.

On the Argentinian side, you can walk several paths that lead you past tributary falls.

All this moisture means a lot of greenery in the scenery.

Learned something new: Cabeza de Vaca, the Spaniard famous for his Odysseus-like wanderings around what is now the American Southwest for nearly 10 years, was in 1541 the first European known to have seen these falls.

On our way out of the park, we spot an Agouti, a large, rat-like creature, solemnly enjoying some fallen nuts.

The next day, arrangements are made to taxi across the border into Brazil and be picked up again later in the afternoon.

The Brazilian side features a single path that most people walk along, being treated to amazing views along the way.

There are coatis everywhere on the path, ready to scoop up anything dropped by the human element.

We’re glad we took the trouble to visit this side. It’s like seeing a new set of falls.

According to Wikipedia (referring to the combined falls), ‘Together, they make up the largest waterfall system in the world.‘

The name Iguazú comes from the Tupi-Guarani words “y”, meaning “water”, and “ûasú”, meaning “big”. Of course, there’s a fairy-tale attached to its origins involving a beautiful woman and an outraged deity.

The climax of the trip is walking out to the end of a boardwalk that is surrounded by a thundering maelstrom of water in all directions.

It must’ve been a death-defying experience to actually construct these boardwalks.

We can’t stop laughing with exhilaration as we are deafened by the roar, drenched in mist, and pummeled by the wind created from many, many tons of falling water.

Also on the Brazilian side is a bird park, which we visit before returning to the Argentinian side.

The Tancredo Neves Bridge connects the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguaçu with the Argentine town Puerto Iguazú. The green and yellow represents the Brazilian flag, the blue and white represents the Argentinian flag.

Sight or Insight of the Day

We wind up our trip with Pete and Judith in Buenos Aires.

We only spend a couple of days here, but I’m impressed how Buenos Aires – indeed, other parts of Argentina – cope under the disadvantage of being in an eternal state of near-total economic collapse.

There may be hope for it yet. More photos to follow.

I know we aren’t quite up to date on the blog. Just wanted to let people know where we are in Real Time this December 24th.

After seeing off our friends Pete and Judith at the airport in Buenos Aires for their return flight to Canada, we catch a flight back to Santiago. We spend a few days there before flying here, 3,500 KMs across the Pacific from the Chilean mainland.

Easter Island’s claim to fame are its giant statues known as moai.

We are here for a week before returning – again – to Santiago.

Happy holidays, everyone! Stay safe.

From Mendoza, we fly south to Puerto Madryn. It’s evident that we are now much further south. Long pants are required.

(Historical note: who knew that the Welsh once had colonial aspirations in the area? And ‘Madryn’ itself was the name of a castle in Wales.)

Even though the climate is cooler, the beach is still inviting on a sunny day.

Maria and Pete brave the frigid waters of the Atlantic.

The major draw here is the Valdes Peninsula, a UNESCO-designated heritage site.

You don’t have to go far out of town before you feel the isolation.

The landscape is largely flat and unpopulated.

On the pebbly beach, we are visited by a very bold loica. He’s obviously used to mooching off of humans. But we don’t give in.

Our accommodation has a parrilla-style grill. Pete builds up the fire as we prepare for a home-made churrasco.

The main attraction of the Valdes Peninsula is whale-watching, but this is not the season. It also boasts an enormous colony of elephant seals, but we don’t see any. So it goes.

We do, however, see a mara. I’ve never heard of these creatures. They look like a cross between a deer and a hare.

We also see a rhea and its young. ‘Ostriches live in Africa. Emus live in Africa. Rheas live in South America.’ This is one of the many arcane facts we used to learn in the third grade that seem to have been dropped from the modern curriculum.

We think there may be some elephant seals around, but they are beyond the range of our binoculars.

We stop in the quaint village of Puerto Piramides, where the inhabitants seem to be outnumbered by whale-watching companies.

(Interesting note – a bit of research reveals that this was the site of mysterious submarine activity in 1958 and 1960.)

Next day, we take a long drive in the opposite direction to the Punta Tombo penguin reserve. Everybody loves penguins.

It’s quite astounding. Thousands of penguins build their nesting burrows here.

There is a well-built boardwalk 1.5 kilometres long that lets us see the penguins close up.

Many of the burrows are far from the sea. It’s strange to see penguins waddling a kilometre or more from the water.

Of course, the seaside is the most popular gathering spot.

These are Magellanic penguins. According to Wikipedia, they are named after Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who spotted the birds in 1520. (We also learned about Ferdinand Magellan in the third grade.)

These look a lot like the penguins we saw in South Africa.

It’s encouraging to see the efforts Argentina is making to keep these little guys safe.

There are other animals around as well. Guanacos graze calmly among the penguins on the move.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Back in town, we splurge on a meal at the Matilde restaurant. In the front window, entire lamb carcasses are slow-roasted over a wood fire.

We walk home, in an effort to work off our surfeit of roast meat. Judith still has room for some ice cream.

A brief entry about our stay in one of the world’s great wine regions.

We change countries, from Chile to Argentina. Our first stop is Mendoza. Mendoza lies at the foot of the hills that become the Andes. It’s a desert, so the extensive agricultural activity depends on a system of canals.

Mendoza is a pleasant city of tree-lined streets and squares.

Our first wine visit is the bodega of Tierras Altas.

It’s all about the malbecs.

We get to serve ourselves from the oak casks. Well, one cask anyway.

The next day, we go on a tour of three bodegas, The first is the Cecchin winery. They make organic wine.

Our guide spent a lot of time in Austin, Texas, so his English is fluent.

It’s always a novelty to see Christmas decorations large and small in a climate of no snow.

We also stop off at an olive oil producer, PasRai.

Of course, there are many types of olive oil.

Maria examines the biggest rosemary bush we’ve ever seen in the herb garden.

Our last stop is the Casa Corbel winery. We begin by sampling some whites in the olive orchard.

Then we move on to sampling reds in the cellar proper.

Casa Corbel has several resident dogs, all very friendly. One is named Rambo. This must be ironic, because he’s the gentlest creature imaginable.

On our last evening in Mendoza, we go on an Argentinian beef blow-out with a dinner at the Don Mario restaurant. It doesn’t disappoint.

Sight or Insight of the Day

How did we get to Mendoza? We fly from Calama in the north of Chile, spend overnight in Santiago, then next day take a bus over to Andes to Mendoza.

So the ‘sight’ of the day is easily the spectacular journey through the mountains. We are torn between admiring the scenery and watching ‘Cruella’ on the onboard entertainment screen.

The ‘insight’ is the discovery that Argentine government inefficiency is still a thing.

We spend four hours(!) at Argentine customs as they leisurely process a dozen busloads of travelers.

Many decades ago, I did this trip in reverse (east to west). I’m sure the stop at customs didn’t take more than an hour. So much for progress.

This part of our Chile/Argentina journey is all about the desert. I’ve mentioned before that there are few things we enjoy more than a good road and a desert. From Iquique, we drive to San Pedro de Atacama, almost 500 kilometres away.

We were hoping to visit the Chuquicamata mine, which was at one time the world’s largest open-pit copper mine. There used to be tours available, but these have been discontinued.

It’s hard to decide which of our many desert photos to use. Also difficult to come up with catchy descriptions. So we’re just going to provide generic labels for our many desert shots.

San Pedro de Atacama is essentially an oasis. In these parts, towns are only found where water is available.

San Pedro is the base for most desert activities. Its adobe-bedecked walls give it the look of a frontier town.

We stay a few kilometres out of town. Very difficult to find, for the uninitiated. (In fact, we still have trouble finding it after several excursions into San Pedro.)

It’s a self-contained unit on somebody’s rural property, with cooking facilities.

Our first stop is the Valle de la Muerte. (Or Valle de Marte – it’s complicated.)

One thing we like about hikes in the surrounding desert – they can be accomplished in an hour or two.

There’s no need to gear up for a multi-day ordeal, like hiking the Grand Canyon, say.

The Atacama Desert is the ‘driest nonpolar desert in the world’, according to Wikipedia.

It’s easy to see why the area has been used as a good site to test Mars rovers.

On the same day, we visit the Valle de la Luna.

This is even more spectacular than this morning’s hike.

Maria, as usual, sets the pace.

There’s a world of difference between the solitude here and the hubbub we experience in Santiago.

You can depend on having blue skies every day.

The walks are easily doable, even for those of le troisième âge. 

For some reason, I can’t get the song ‘Horse with No Name‘ and its inane lyrics – ‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain‘<cringe> – out of my head.

On another day, we visit the Laguna Cejar, a colourful mineral lake with two claims to fame. One is presence of many flamingos.

The other is the extreme salinity of the water. This provides a Dead Sea-like ability to bob like a cork without effort.

In the afternoon, we take the two-hour drive to the Laguna Chaxa flamingo sanctuary.

Because of the clearness of its skies, the Atacama Desert is a hotbed of astronomical activity. (If such a thing exists.) We pass by the site of the ALMA astronomical observatory. I’d like to visit, but according to their website, tours are for schools and fellow-boffins only.

There are indeed many flamingos in the flamingo sanctuary.

They are quite far away, though. They’re hard to photograph in this flat landscape.

The lake itself is scenic and isolated.

The flamingos thrive on the abundant brine shrimp in these salty waters, which adds to their pinkish hue. 

If you are an ancient person who read comic books as a kid, you may remember brine shrimp in a former incarnation as ‘sea-monkeys’.

On December first, we celebrate Judith’s birthday with wine, coca-leaf tea, and passion-fruit cake.

Before dawn, we make our way into town for an organized tour to the El Tatio geysers.

The altitude here is a dizzying 4,200 metres above sea level.

It is extremely cold here before the sun rises. That’s my opinion, anyway.

I think the idea of being here for dawn is that the steam is more impressive in the early morning.

All of this impressive fumarole activity is produced by the high temperatures deep underground.

At last the sun comes up and brings some relief.

On the way back to San Pedro, we see more flamingos.

Some of these can be seen quite close up.

We even manage to catch some in flight.

On the way back to Calama for our flight to Santiago, we come across some vicuñas grazing by the road.

Sight or Insight of the Day

In Chile, it’s common to see roadside shrines dedicated to, presumably, the victims of traffic accidents. They range in size from dollhouse size, to doghouse size, to this full-blown dedicatory extravaganza.

We wonder: is the young man in question entombed in the car itself?

At least that’s what the name means, according to Wikipedia.

From Valparaiso, we bus back to Santiago and fly 1,800 kilometres up the arid coast of Chile to Iquique.

We pick up our rental car and drive the 40 kilometers or so along the coast into town.

Iquique occupies a narrow strip of land between the desert and the sea. Our accommodation is an Airbnb located on the 28th floor of an apartment building facing the Pacific.

Our first excursion here is to the fascination ghost town of Humberstone. Saltpeter was mined here from 1872 to 1960.

In the developed world, people would not be allowed to roam at will among tons of jagged rusty metal and collapsing buildings, thus reducing the fun factor of visiting a ghost town.

We have a thing about ghost towns . We last visited one in Namibia. Later, we saw it used as a location for the popular post-apocalyptic TV series Fallout.

The next day, we remain around town. First stop is the Esmeralda Museum. This is a full-size replica of the ship Esmeralda, sunk in an engagement during the War of the Pacific.

Iquique has a pleasant square and walking street.

The fish market is always a big draw. We enjoy a lunch of fresh grilled tuna steaks.

A pack of sea lions huddle at the base of the market, waiting to feast on dumped-out buckets of fish entrails.

They’re huge.

Our rental car, which we eventually drive for 1,500 KMs, is surprisingly roomy for 4 people and their luggage.

There’s something soothing about driving in a desert, especially if the road is good and the traffic is sparse.

Our goal is to see the Atacama Giant. It’s the most famous of the many geoglyphs in the area.

Pete searches for a t-shirt with this iconic figure on it. We don’t find one. Pete hopes to be able to order a t-shirt with the Giant printed on as a special graphic.

Here’s a graphic you can use. Merry Christmas, Pete!

It takes us an hour or so to walk around the Cerro Unitas.

We pass a ziggurat-like mountain. A bit of research reveals that it’s a recently-abandoned BHP copper mine.

After driving through empty desert on Ruta A-65 for an hour or so, we come to the remote village of Mamiña. It has a hot spring in the middle of town.

It has a pleasant little square to wander in.

On the return to Iquique, the last few kilometres are steep. Looming over the city is a gigantic sand dune.

Sight or Insight of the Day

We enjoy beautiful Pacific Ocean sunsets from our balcony.

One morning, we are enjoying our coffee on the balcony when we see something in the sea far below.

About 30 metres offshore is a whale, diving and surfacing. It’s an orca!

It’s unusual to be 28 storeys high and watch a whale dive and surface. Luckily, we all have good binoculars.

The next stop in our Chile journey is the port city of Valparaiso.

Our accommodation is in the historic Old City.

This part of town is built on steep hills. It’s known for its colourful murals.

It’s a treat to walk these streets.

Many houses perch precariously at a cliff’s edge.

Just under the house you can see two disused ascensores. These were used to travel between neighbourhoods separated by steep cobblestone streets. There aren’t many left in working order.

Valparaiso is the home of the Chilean Navy.

We are fortunate to see a submarine – the Chilean Navy has four – out in the harbour.

One day, we take the train up the coast to Viña del Mar. Viña was once a playground for rich and famous South Americans. It’s looking a bit more seedy these days. But still a good place to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon.

Sight or Insight of the Day

We visit ‘La Sebastiana‘, the Valparaiso house of Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda.

Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He had three homes that are now museums.

This one is at the top of a hill overlooking the harbour. You get a great view of Valparaiso.