Northern Chile – visited May 2014 – Elqui Valley On my way north, I stop at the beautiful Elqui valley with its vineyards producing some of the best pisco in Chile. Pisco is a specialized form of brandy produced in Chile and Peru. Mixed with juices it is pretty tasty and can be bought widely […]
Easter Island (Rapa Nui) – visited May 2014 – Easter Island is small. Shaped like a triangle it is about 25 kilometres long and 13 kilometres wide at a maximum. At 163,6 square kilometres it is about the same size as the country of Liechtenstein. But unlike Liechtenstein, which sits right in the middle of […]
Chile – visited May 2014 – I have to start with a confession: Despite calling this post Central Chile I am still, at least at the beginning, in Patagonia. My next stops, the island of Chiloé, Puerto Montt, Puerto Varas and Pucón are all south of the Bio Bio River which marks the end of […]
Patagonia Punta Arenas (Chile) Punta Arenas is the world’s southernmost city with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Established in 1848 as a tiny penal colony, it was a modest harbour that served ships crossing between the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean. Before the opening of the Panama Canal (1914) the Strait of Magellan, along which Punta […]
Tierra del Fuego Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire) is a region that many people have heard of but far less would be able to pinpoint exactly on a map. Somewhere in the south of South America. In fact, it is an archipelago separated from the South American continent by the Strait of Magellan. On […]