Saturday, December 8, 2007
Chile – Rebellious State
To many people Chile sounds like quite an exotic place – and in a number of ways this is true! It is situated in the very west of South America and unlike any other country in the world it is more or less a mere strip of land; it reaches about 4,300 km from north to south but is less than 200 km wide on average. It is bordered by the Pacific in the west and the Andes in the east. The logical conclusion is that Chile must comprise all types of climate and landscape, from coastal to high mountain regions.
In Northern Chile you will find summits with over 6000 m, many of them of volcanic origin. If you move towards the coast you'll end up in the mighty and quite famous Atacama Desert. It is one of the driest regions of the earth with rainfalls only once every couple of years. For a long time in the past it was famous for its resources of saltpeter ("Chile saltpeter"!), a chemical needed for the production of black powder, explosives and fertilizer. Today it is its vast and easily accessible resources of copper that people are after. And the dryness has another advantage: The air is very clear and clam thus making this area a perfect place for oberservatories – in fact, some of the largest telescopes of the world are to be found in the Chilean mountains.
Okay, let's move further down to the south, what do we have here? The climate is more or less Mediterranean, agriculture works out nicely and therefore it is no surprise most of the 16 million Chilean people live here. Don't forget Chile isn't wide! So all cities and settlements that are not situated directly at the coast are likely to be surrounded by mountains – the capital Santiago with over 5 million inhabitants is no exception.
There aren't many people living in the harsh South – lots of rain, storms, etc. and many islands at the coast. The southernmost point of the continent is the notorious, infamous Cape Horn. Prior to the opening of the Panama Canal all ships had to sail through these Arctic waters. By the way, Chile claims a good portion of Antarctica!
The political history of the country is very diverse; the most recent and hopefully last cruel chapter ended just 1990 with the retirement of long-term dictator Augusto Pinochet. Right now the country's economy grows at fast pace, partly due to the high copper price on the world market. Let's hope things continue this way!
For all those of you who have followed this blog regularly it is clear that Chile, too, must have been one of the many Spanish colonies, although for a number of reasons – like the difficult terrain especially in the country's South – there were countless wars over time. Official language is Spanish, but the pronunciation is so different from regular Spanish that some claim it's an own language.
Interesting! But what's there suitable for the World Scenic Flights? Well, the most obvious and stunning place certainly is the Easter Island (Rapa Nui) – its history is a thriller and features more than one collapse of its civilization. Known around the world are the mighty stone statues called moai. We'd certainly have liked to go there and come back with most incredible reports for you, but unfortunately the flight to this place was definitely not within our budget – it is a real killer.
Okay, then what's the next best solution? Given the short amount of time at our disposal we had to look for a good spot in the vicinity of Santiago. The capital is situated in a bowl of 50 km diameter surrounded by high mountains; this just adds to the usual smog problem of big cities since the wind cannot blow away part of the air pollution. Compared to other cities of the same size Santiago doesn't offer much. The skyline is humble, there are no real sights – most tours would take you to wine-growing or skiing areas in the Andes. No good for us, so what else do we have?
There are two hills in Santiago; the bigger one has been transformed into sort of a recreation area. A cable car of the Francisco/USA type takes you to a platform on top. Like at the Great Wall in China it was a nightmare to queue up with a 90-size helicopter and all our baggage. Even more so because police and our taxi driver had warned us there were many thieves who would just snatch your cameras or other luggage.
Once on top you have a good view over the city – but with lots of trees in the foreground and security guys all over the place. In lack of any better ideas we took a gondola from one part of the hill to the next one; before descending to the station we saw a serpentine road on the back side of the hill – there seemed to be a lot less trees, probably because it was the northern side on which the sun burns down all day long. Was it hot? Yep, something around 30 °C. Certainly better than freezing, but not comfortable either.
After a while we actually found the winding road and walked till we'd discovered a place with a good view over the town. It wasn't as good as downtown with at least a few skyscrapers in the financial district, but certainly there was something to it. Have a look at the picture! Quite cool and it reminds you of the Mojave Desert in California/USA, just much more populated.
The people were really nice. During the flight cars stopped, everybody got out and wanted to have a look at the helicopter. Some guys were so enthusiastic they wanted to have a go with it themselves; well, as everybody knows that'd have ended in a disaster so we just did another flight for them because we hadn't taken any still shots yet anyway.
The AFD panorama didn't work out well this time; too strong contrasts leaving you with a black picture in the shadow areas or with clearly overexposed shots in sunlit spots (remember you must not change any properties while shooting the complete panoramic scene including sky and ground!). We tried the whole range of possible camera settings, but no way; it was worse than at the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
But anyway, Chile was a great stop and the last one in South America. Next is Canada – Niagara Falls, what else!
Labels: Chile, city panorama, desert, gondola, heat, Santiago
# posted by hg/tuw @ 22:20 
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