We took time out from family get-togethers in NYC to visit with our long-time friends and zoom-demic buddies, Lynne and George. We ended with hours of a delicious meal and conversation near Lincoln Center. We began with the wonder of the Guggenheim Museum and its featured exhibit on Vassily Kandinsky.

Not everyone “gets” the abstract art he pioneered (and we were not always moved by his work). Yet, attention to the span of his paintings proved revealing, especially while circling the Frank Lloyd Wright design which made solid his own abstraction of spiral and pyramid.

Dizzying and calming, the museum is always dramatic in the sweep of its spiral, but also lets you share in the experience of others across the levels, viewing the works one has seen and the ones yet to be seen.

We were supposed to start at the bottom, the last works by Kandinsky, and spiral to the top, the earliest works. We all agreed we were top to bottom folks, though, and were glad we were. The images and ideas that were more evident in the early work helped vivify the artist’s language in the later paintings. And that’s the order of the photos we selected.

Here in “The Blue Mountain,” for example, the Fauvist outburst of color demonstrates his roots in Russian folk art alongside key motifs: the artist who transforms art (the horse and rider), the aspiration to a spiritual renewal represented by the blue mountain, and natural forms morphing into abstract shapes.

The same motifs are less distinctly recognizable in this preliminary version of “Composition II,” but there nonetheless. What was quite surprising to us was the vibrant sense of motion in Kandinsky’s works, often restless, often sweeping across the canvas, as here. The speedy rider heads from a world of matter and cataclysm to a world of spiritual renewal and redemption. White spaces start representing a kind of spiritual calm.

“Painting with White Border”: We’re in a whirlwind of color, the visual correlative of emotion, as Kandinsky just barely keeps touch with representational art. The arched form of the blue rider – both the artist and St George, patron saint of Moscow – thrusts his white lance at the reddish clown-like figure of a dragon to the bottom left. The spiritual masters the material. Elsewhere, geometric shapes and grids of lines become familiar touchstones of Kandinsky’s art.

Lively and playful, with sweeping motion up to the left and down from the right, “Circles on Black” aims for emotional pull through color. Geometric forms like the circle and the grids speak to an orderliness against that upsweep of solid black with its sources, perhaps, in a life force suggested by the amoeba-like forms below and to the right.

“Composition 8” is one of his most representative works, presenting a medley of color that contrasts the intensity of the corners and the muted background, as well as a kind of cubist abstraction with multiple planes intersecting on the flat surface – almost like a clockwork mechanism. His orderly and disorderly grids, full and emerging circles, add to the tension.

A kind of giddiness arises from one of Kandinsky’s last paintings, despite the muted background. “Around the Circle” arranges a variety of figures with magical qualities about an all-seeing red eye, including the human-like clown figure in the bottom right and the soaring one in the upper left. At the bottom, there’s even a Twilight Zone kind of door opening at a staircase into the unknown, or other dimensions.

Two other fascinating exhibitions filled some of the museum’s lower space. A side exhibit includes masters of the late 19th and early 20th century, such as Manet, Monet, van Gogh, and Picasso. This Manet (Before the Mirror) seems quite far from the abstractions of Kandinsky, yet only about 50 years separate it from the latter’s work.

Though representational in a way and lovely in its colors, this piece shows Manet also reaching for different forms of expression, with its intense brushwork and mystery (the blurred shape to the right, the distortions of the mirror, and the intrusion of the painter/viewer).

In the bottom spirals, Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña showed her wide stylistic range, with cartoon-like images and scenes, as well as challenging figurative works that also explored spirituality in a troubled world.

And a last look at the Wright spiral and pyramid at the Guggenheim…

(To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from the USA, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.) The post Vassily Kandinsky: Spiraling through the Work first appeared on Adventurephiles.

We traveled the last leg of our trip by ship out of Punta Arenas through the Beagle Channel and the Straits of Magellan. This was the culmination of nearly a month driving and ferrying three thousand kilometers through the gorgeous mountain landscape and desert pampas of Patagonia, from north at Puerto Montt, Chile, to south at Ushuaia, Argentina.

We had visited Ushuaia about a dozen years earlier after our incomparable trip to Antarctica, South Georgia and the Falklands. The town had grown much larger on tourism, but had lost some of that small town charm we enjoyed back then.

And we reached the end of the world at unusually placid Cape Horn, whose hazardous rounding was the old way to cross between the oceans.

LANDSCAPE

Winds, waves, storms, fog – these are the norm where land reaches its southernmost point in Patagonia. But we fortunately enjoyed some unusual sunlit days. Even our boat crew spent much time on deck to snap pictures.

Here are some of the remarkable glimpses of nature from the Straits of Magellan (the original passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans) and the Beagle Channel, sights viewable only by sailing these waters.

Snow-caps and glacial lake from the summit of an island hike

A sinuous peninsula reaches out from an island we hiked, on a darkening day. The landscape around the island has been altered in such ways by the dams of a burgeoning beaver colony.

In the 19th century, beavers were introduced here so that their valuable fur could be a source of income. The scheme didn’t work. First, with no natural enemies, the population grew uncontrollably and altered the waterways irreparably. Even worse, the beavers adapted to the different environment by evolving a different fur, useless for good quality outerwear.

Looking back at the Pia Glacier and its dramatically hewn mountainside to the right. This was the first of a half-dozen glaciers we passed that comprise Glacier Alley, which was gorgeously sunlit that day.

Another glacier in Glacier Alley, where outflow from the raging waterfall tints the blue fjord waters.

The evening sun within the Beagle Channel, named in honor of Darwin’s passage through here and his work on evolution.

After this, at the end of our last island hike during the trip through the Channel, we reached an impossibly beautiful view. This is a place that Darwin himself had visited some 150 years earlier during his historic voyages.

At our polyglot table of Swiss, Belgians, Dutch and Americans – with Chilean/Argentinian wine to loosen our tongues, and extend our stay during dinner. Buen provecho!

WILDLIFE

Though the landscape is extraordinary, the wildlife is just as good a reason to tour these waters. We did see some dolphins and whales in the distance, but they weren’t nearly as delightful – or close – as these charming critters.

Imperial shags or cormorants, lots of them, atop an island’s mound

Imperial shag with its knobby beak and gleaming chest

A (very large) Magellanic woodpecker. The male, with its bright red head, was near, but too camera-shy.

Flightless steamer duck in its icy realm

Magellanic penguins, lots of them. They were still on shore as the babies (a few of whom you can see in the background) grew to be self-sufficient.

A pair of rock cormorants or shags at the nest, their red eyes watching us with care. Others were tending young ones or just happy to be together. At a distance, people confuse them with the Magellanic penguins.

A pair of kelp geese, who eat only…yup, kelp or sea weed. The male is the all-white one. In the back is their guardian penguin.

CAPE HORN

“We might not be able to land,” the captain of the fjord ship told us about our planned visit to the island known as Cape Horn. “The weather can be too rough.” That was some understatement. This is the place where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet, part of the infamous Drake Passage. Cape Horn had been the quickest, but the most dangerous, method of crossing between the seas until the Panama Canal opened in 1914.

Shadowy selfie at the end of the world, looking at the meeting point of the Oceans – and unusually calm waters.

Before the Panama Canal, innumerable sailors had died in the turbulent and wind-whipped waters. But the sea was tranquil the day we arrived.

Alongside tributes from several countries, we paid homage to those who died rounding the horn.

We stood silent in the tiny, rough-hewn log chapel – Stella Maris, Star of the Sea – that honored the tempestuous history of this bit of land. The Bible was open to Psalm 89, with its apt line: “Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them.”

We climbed the lighthouse that still protects the adventurous who cross these seas, a beacon overseen by a lone naval officer.

And we meditated at the famous, though now a bit weather-beaten, memorial to the sailors who lost their lives rounding the Horn.

The open space is in the form of an albatross, a bird of fortune for seamen. The bird connects the two metal sides, representing the two wavy oceans.

A poem on a marble slab below it completes the thought, with a tribute in words to the people who faced these dangerous waters.

Soy el albatros que te espera
En el final del mundo.
Soy el alma olvidada de los marinos muertos
Que cruzaron el Cabo de Hornos
Desde todos los mares de la tierra.
Pero ellos no murieron
En las furiosas olas,
Hoy vuelan en mis alas,
Hacia la eternidad,
En la última grieta
De los vientos antárticos.
– Sara Vial, 1992

I am the albatross who awaits you
At the end of the world.
I am the forgotten spirit of the dead seamen
Who crossed Cape Horn
From all earth’s seas.
But they did not die
In the wild waves,
Today they fly on my wings,
Towards eternity,
In the last crack
Of the Antarctic winds.

The whole island of Cape Horn looking past the albatross memorial towards the Drake Passage and Antarctica.

(To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Argentina, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.) The post Patagonia Road Trip 6: By ship through Tierra del Fuego first appeared on Adventurephiles.

Punta Arenas is the very end of the line for driving through Patagonian Chile, though one can drive across adjacent land into Tierra del Fuego, the land of fire. It’s long been a commercial port and a final stop for weary travelers, even today.

The city rises from the Magellanic strait, one of the passages between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and looks toward the end of the world. We stayed at a charming home up the sloping bluffs of the city with a vista somewhat like this one as seen from the hilltop.

Yet many keep going southward to the end of the world at Ushuaia, Argentina – by road or fjord. Our original intent was to finish our Patagonian trip at Punta Arenas…but the siren song from the Darwin Channel and Straits of Magellan lured us farther, to that world’s end.

Punta Arenas’ heyday was the late 19th and early 20th century before the Panama Canal usurped traffic between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. So its central city is filled with the mansions of those who made fortunes from gold, trading or raising sheep for wool. The French-style dominated then so we felt we were strolling a mini-Paris at times.

The city now occupies this more Italianate mansion, the Palacio Montes, on the main square.

From one kind of wealth to another. A former mansion holds a banking center today, as well as the Chilean Antarctic research institute.

This still gracious Parisian structure faces the main square

The Beaux Arts mansion of Sara Braun is now a working hotel, the Jose Nogueira (her husband’s name).

The turn of the 19th century governor’s residence is a bit more austere, but still elegant.

A few blocks from the center, Art Deco style asserted itself later in the 20th century as sheep raising flourished.

(To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Chile, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.) The post Patagonia Road Trip 5: Punta Arenas first appeared on Adventurephiles.

The overall journey through this gorgeous mountain landscape and desert pampas began at Puerto Montt, Chile, and ended at Ushuaia, Argentina. We spent nearly a month driving and ferrying along three thousand kilometers, from north to south.

EL CHAITEN

El Chalten, Argentina, is a spectacle to visit even if you don’t hike much. The town is tucked into stunning and unusually shaped mountains, with equally splendid valleys and sprawling glacial lakes. After a long day’s drive south through the desert – including our detour to de las Manos rock art site (see post) and a horrific two hour rutted dirt stretch that nearly broke us and the car – the setting seemed like an oasis to us.

Even close to El Chalten, as striated mountains begin to appear, you’re still passing through desert.

We could hardly detect our destination until about an hour before arriving.

At last, as we followed the edge of a huge glacial lake and the mountains grew large before us, a newly paved stretch of road spurred us on.

Hiking is the attraction for the many visitors, though the town tries its best to stay low-key and relatively unaffected. There is virtually no mobile service, for example. Perhaps it will change: some high end hotels and restaurants have already snuck in.

Though the torrential rain washed out one day, we took full advantage of the second on an impossibly beautiful hike to Torres glacial lake, as famous Fitzroy mountain finally emerged from the clouds.

The open valley halfway to Laguna Torre, the lake named for the mountain on the right.

On the trail, Solo Mountain – with its odd S-curve peak – sends rushing water down valley.

After 11 kilometers (about 7 miles), as the sun and clouds played along its surface, we reached the glacial lake, Laguna Torre. We had our lunch here before our return, pausing a while so we could admire the whole vista of jagged peaks above and glacial ice chunks floating below.

A caracara at the lake watches out for picnic treats from the hikers.

When the clouds clear, Fitzroy mountain literally towers above the town. This is the most famous of the peaks nearby, for obvious reasons.

EL CALAFATE

We saw the icy column (about the height of a 20-story building) start to lean, ever so slowly widening a cleft of blue. Thread-like cracks began to appear near its base. So, during our extended visit to Perito Moreno glacier, we checked the column repeatedly. And, instead of leaving by mid-afternoon, we waited, and waited, until…well, watch the video. The wall came tumbling down.

This was our last stop in Patagonian Argentina, in the vicinity of El Calafate, a surprisingly large town on the huge Lago Argentino, with a relaxed, resort feel. At the foothills of the Andes, the town stretches across a valley hollowed out long ago by such glacial lakes. At the outskirts of town, a waterlogged wetland area offers a huge array of birds to look at.

A visitor can find nearly 50 glaciers here, large and small, which constitute the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the third largest storehouse of fresh water in the world.

Of these, Perito Moreno presents the most spectacular wall of gleaming ice (if not the largest) because of its accessibility. Walkways and paths follow most of its 5 kilometers (3 miles) in length, so we could cozy up to its face – as much as we wanted to given how frequently chunks – like the one we witnessed – fall off it.

In this panorama of the glacier, you can see some of the walkways in the lower left, close but not too close to the glacial wall. The far distant origin of the glacier is 30 kilometers away (nearly 20 miles). The surface area is about 250 km2 (or nearly 100 square miles). It’s hard to imagine, but there are larger ones in the area.

A close-up of the rugged face of Perito Moreno, streaked with cracks of blue ice. Below, float some of the sheets of ice that have broken off.

Unlike most of the world’s glaciers, Perito Moreno is not receding. Every four or five years, moreover, the wedge at its forward edge forms a dam between the two sections of Lago Argentino. When the dam ruptures, a thunderous wall of water surges from one section to the other. Maybe we’ll see that another time, perhaps…

Ice chunks flow up to the shoreline, seemingly small compared to the huge glacier face. When it hits the water, a calved column like the one we filmed can propel an ice-fringed wave up to several kilometers away.

As if the glacier was not enough of an attraction, this Andean condor circled amiably above us.

TORRES DEL PAINE

Perhaps the most famous park in Patagonia, on the Chilean side, Torres del Paine National Park features a famous hiking circuit amid its deep valleys, glacial lakes and volcanic mountains, with glampy refuges along the way. These trails buzz with foot traffic during the summer, especially the hike for which the park is named.

Here the triple slabs of the Torres del Paine, the namesake feature of the park, peek from their eponymous hiking trail.

Valley and river trailing down from the Torres mountains.

The most spectacular mountains, the Cuernos del Paine (or Horns of Paine) across from which we stayed, was even more remarkable to us – displaying its charms in any kind of weather.

From another viewpoint, the Cuernos better shows off its multi-colored peaks, alternating lighter layers of exposed granite and darker layers of sedimentary rock.

Any perspective will do to savor the charms of the layer cake of the Cuernos, like this one at Lake Nordenskjöld.

Unquestionably, even the casual visitor can delight in the park’s spectacular scenery, especially when the weather cooperates. The roads that wind through the park bring busloads to some of the best features. To our minds, however, other less known and less busy parks to the north rival the sights here.

A rainbow heralds the end of some bad weather on the outskirts of Torres del Paine park.

An Austral parakeet visits us at one of the small villages within the park.

A turquoise river wiggles away from its feeder lake through desert-like grasslands in the heart of the park.

This little fox – with its split ear – watches us carefully.

Even an hour’s drive away, in the small town of Puerto Natales, the region looks resplendent.

(To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Argentina & Chile, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.) The post Patagonia Road Trip 4: The Argentinean Mountains & Torres del Paine first appeared on Adventurephiles.

The third leg of our trip took us across the border to Argentina. Our first stop in this desert landscape transported us thousands of years back in time to the Caves of Hands, Cuevas de las Manos.

The overall journey through this gorgeous mountain landscape and desert pampas began at Puerto Montt, Chile and ended at Ushuaia, Argentina. We spent nearly a month driving and ferrying along three thousand kilometers, from north to south.

THE ROUTE

You can continue south along the Carretera Austral of Chile through the fjords and snow-capped mountains, but you dead end at O’Higgins and normally must double back to the city of Coyhaique. Instead, we crossed over to Argentina after Rio Tranquilo’s Marble Caves so we could visit El Chalten and El Calafate, then cut back to Chile for Torres del Paine National Park.

The contrast with the western slope of the mountains is startling. Departing from the richly watered and mountainous terrain of Chile, we switched to flat, scrubby desert occasionally interrupted by low desert plateaus or canyons. And, unlike the highly variable roads of the Carretera, Route 40 and connecting roads are mostly asphalt so you can speed along at over 100 kph.

Top tip 1: Fill up the car’s tank wherever you can. There are many hundreds of kilometers between petrol stations.

Just beware of those many sections, untouched by road crews, where the gouges (or baches in Spanish) have hollowed the road or rifts have made knife-like edges. They tend to ruin tires and suspensions.

Top tip 2: Look out for dark skid marks made by those who decelerated rapidly to 30kph to avoid serious damage. Use whatever part of the road seems less pitted – left side, right side, margin…

CUEVAS DE LAS MANOS

Put your hands together, we exhort these days, in celebration.

For about 10000 years, the people of one fertile canyon on Argentina’s Patagonian pampas put their hands together in a manner we can still view.

The canyon looked a bit different 13000 to 1200 years ago when the cave people still lived here, but you have an idea of the splendor. The bright green comes from an introduced non-native tree that pushed out native ones.

In communal rituals within their cave shelters, the tribal people spray-painted around their hands while they touched the rock surface (technically, a negative image).

Every hand print is done the same way, and the process also left a kind of color aura around each hand. In a myriad of colors, the young (babies too) and old, normal and deformed, imprinted their hands – along with rhea or puma paws – on all available surfaces of the soft colorful rock.

Their paintings also celebrated the good things of life, especially the wild llama-like guanaco, their principal food source. They depicted hunting scenes with lessons on how best to catch their prey with bolas, a trio of rocks attached to rope – until, as they sadly also recorded, their food source stopped flourishing. They tracked the birth cycle of the animals and the seasons.

Notice the guanaco images and other animals adorning the area above the hands in this wall.

A primer on how to hunt guanaco. On the right, you see little human figures herding the guanaco and, on the left, the black thread-like lines of the bola (ropes and stones) to be tossed around the legs of the animal.

One of the most remarkable images at Cuevas de las manos – after the hands. The small human figures are driving the guanaco into one canyon – not painted, but just using the natural vertical cleft in the rock surface. Across the horizontal canyon below, other guanaco seem to be looking on.

If you turn away from this image at the site, you can see this exact terrain across the canyon valley. That’s shown in the next photo. Everyone on the site tour emits a cry of surprise and delight when they turn to compare the rock image with the real valley.

Pregnant guanaco, familial figures and a set of counting circles to keep track of the birth cycle. The tribes were quite scientific about their livelihood.

Here we found a display of a hunting scene with a guanaco herd including a young guanaco among them.

The tiny human figures carry a cross-like thing that represents the bola. Many images on the rocks portray pregnant animals.

Near the caves, we also saw a small herd of living guanaco. This one is making sure we don’t have a bola.

In the middle of these hands, you can just barely find a black lizard-like creature…a bit lost, we thought in the whole panel of imprints.

Beyond tracking their livelihood, the people playfully propelled paint-dipped rocks up to the ceiling to make dots. And in later years they added mythical creatures and symbolic geometric figures.

Toward the end of the period when the tribe thrived, images of dead guanaco appear, an indication perhaps of why the people needed to move elsewhere. We couldn’t help but see on this wall a kind of ghostly, struggling even desperate collage of images, whether intended or not.

We have seen many examples of rock art over the years, but we were astonished at these exuberant displays so deserving of UNESCO World Heritage status. And so pleased that we diverted to this remarkable site, even though that made for a very long day’s drive south down Route 40 after crossing from Chile to Argentina.

(To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Argentina & Chile, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.) The post Patagonia Road Trip 3: On to Argentina & Cuevas de las manos first appeared on Adventurephiles.

The overall journey through this gorgeous mountain landscape and desert pampas began at Puerto Montt, Chile, and ended at Ushuaia, Argentina. We spent nearly a month driving and ferrying along three thousand kilometers, from north to south.

COYHAIQUE

Coyhaique is the largest town in the heart of Chilean Patagonia, a principal stop for most travelers along the Carretera Austral. It’s also a place with several deep canyons cut long ago by the local rivers and with access to the countless fjords nearby.

A scraped and bulbous peak looms over Coyahaique, along its principal river canyon.

The beauty of the area is a good reason to stay a while here, since you must pass through the town anyway. Many Carretera travelers end here also since it is the best place to return your rental car and fly out of Chile, or ferry north up the fjords, after doubling back from the road’s end at tiny O’Higgins to the south.

We hiked in the local Reserve along a trail that connected a half dozen lakes through rich forests, with splendid vistas, such as this view of Coyhaique’s mountain range.

Typical forested section of the Reserve, an incredibly peaceful and relaxed hike away from the snowy mountain peaks of Patagonia

Wild firecracker fuchsia (or chilco) along the Reserve trail, some of the many flowers we passed along our hike.

We can appreciate the beauty and diversity of trees in woods like these even if we may not be able to identify them. Unexpectedly, we often came upon several bundles of bamboo crowding the trail, groves that added an extra flair to the hike.

Near the end, we came upon one of the prettiest of the interconnected lakes of the Reserve trails, Laguna Los Sapos, with Coyhaique’s mountain range rising impressively in the backdrop. At another marshy lake, we sat on a small, rickety tower watching ducks and picnicking al fresco.

LOOKING BACK ON THE ROAD

Since you must pass through Coyhaique on the Carretera, you wouldn’t think it would be so difficult to reach the town. For us, though, it was a case of bad timing…we had to drive a challenging country road to bypass a blockade by striking miners about 40 kilometers north. Then we had to wait 2.5 hours for dynamiting on the last 15 kilometers, as non-striking road workers were replacing the old dirt road. We spent 9 hours in the car for a 4.5 hour trip. At least, we shared the wait with half a dozen people we had met before on the long journey south from Puerto Montt.

More generally, Chile’s asphalted roads in this northern section are a pleasure. But, as we saw at Puyuhuapi, the dirt roads can be trying. Often, we found, they entice you to think they are smoothing out just to find that they turn into a squooshy carpet of small stones, or strut-punishing ruts, or teeth-rattling washboards or slippery soft dirt up hill and dale…every variation of dirt one could imagine. You need very good tires to make it through. Ours were not, we had two flats before Coyhaique, one of which the local tire guy could repair and the other requiring a slightly off-size used substitute tire. In Coyhaique, our rental company replaced all four of them!

LAGUNA SAN RAFAEL

Also, about an hour away from Coyhaique, we boated for a full day on the fjords to the remote Laguna San Rafael with its huge glacier.

We reached the glacier in Laguna San Rafael at the farthest point in our fjord voyage. The glacier is about a mile wide (1.5 kilometers). When we arrived, it was windy and rainy, but we nonetheless plunked ourselves in a zodiac raft with other passengers to see the glacier and ice floes from the water.

With icy rain whipped into our faces and wind-driven waves that made the boat bounce violently at times, all of us felt this was quite an adventure in glacier watching – even if not the most pleasant weather.

Ice floes in Laguna San Rafael, at the furthest point in our fjord voyage

What’s left of some ice chunks that had calved from the glacier, Laguna San Rafael

One of the fjords on the return from Laguna San Rafael. Unfortunately, that day, the fjords were mostly shrouded in dense rain clouds throughout the 12 hour trip, so the white-peaked mountains of the Patagonia volcanoes were invisible. That dampened everyone’s spirits until the bar opened for free drinks chilled with glacial ice after the Laguna, and spirited Chilean karaoke began in the lounge. We joined the party, of course singing and dancing to old-time Chilean songs that most knew, though we did not.

The day also happened to be Barry’s birthday, so everyone sang the birthday song in English and Spanish (all together now: Cumpleanos feliz, cumpleanos feliz…). Then they made him sing an Elvis Presley tune as our contribution to the karaoke. Despite that, the party continued raucously for hours.

At last, toward the end of the day, the skies cleared to reveal some of what we had missed.

CERRO CASTILLO

We didn’t plan to stop for long in the area of Cerro Castillo, a striking range of mountains south of Coyhaique. Yet we spent nearly a half day slowly traveling first along its dry side, and then turning back to it along its snowy face – marveling throughout at its extraordinary beauty.

Backpacking hitchhikers – who use the term “autostop” or “hacer dedo” (literally “do the finger”) for hitchhiking – are plentiful on the roadsides, but around here we picked up a local man who was trying to reach his village, Villa Cerro Castillo.

Conversation with him was limited as he was nearly deaf and his accent was so different that we only understood a few words he spoke in Spanish. Yet he gleefully pointed out the highlights of his town, it seemed, and its best vistas. Despite some vicious winds, we did halt several times to enjoy his recommendations.

RIO TRANQUILO & MARBLE CAVES

Bumping along the rutted dirt road to Rio Tranquilo, our last stop in Chile before crossing to the pampas of Argentinean Patagonia, the weather turned cloudy and rainy. That was particularly unfortunate since our main reason for stopping here for a night was to make a boat trip to the picturesque marble caves on the edge of the vast General Carrera lake that is fed by that “tranquil” river. Bright morning sunlight, we had been told, was the best time to view the striated caverns.

We were also concerned that the strong winds we had experienced along the way would make a trip to the caves impossible. We knew that Doug Tompkins, the apparel mogul who created Parque Pumalin to the north, had died on this lake when winds overturned his kayak (see the post about Pumalin).

So, arriving tired and grumpy in the rainy evening, we headed to a well known spot along the two block main street for a hand-crafted beer. Along with the beer, we were cheered by conversations there with backpackers and hikers, as well as the manager.

He promised a better forecast for the next morning and helped us locate a reliable company for visiting the marble caves. OK, we figured, why not try the pizza recommended by others at the bar? The pizza proved to be a very tasty, very thin crust dinner – and the forecast was accurate.

But the morning began with at least a hazy light. Winds moderated enough so that the bays with the marble caves remained as tranquil as the town’s name. We did plow wildly across the open lake’s bumpy waves to reach the bay and return, but what a sight once we stopped!

The caves were true, young marble, not just mineral colorations – formed from carbon deposits still ageing toward stuff strong enough for use in buildings or sculptures. Years of wild winds had joined with the water to erode this softer, pliable marble into intricate caverns, vortices, swirls, bizarre formations and sweeps of color – a delight in any weather.

The hardy fishing boats that transport visitors to the caves can fit into many of the caverns, when the water levels are right

By mid-day, more sunlight lit up the Lake General Carrera. Along with nearly every other vehicle departing Rio Tranquilo, we couldn’t help but stop several times to admire the grandeur of the lake’s mountain setting. We could understand why many hikers linger in the area for days after viewing the marble caves.

And then we crossed over to Argentina to proceed south.

(To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Chile, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.) The post Patagonia Road Trip 2: The Chilean midst first appeared on Adventurephiles.

The overall journey through this gorgeous mountain landscape and desert pampas began at Puerto Montt, Chile, and ended at Ushuaia, Argentina. We spent nearly a month driving and ferrying along three thousand kilometers, from north to south.

CHILOE

There are two options heading south: one is a well-used eight hour ferry ride to Parque Pumalin followed by a bumpy ride south to Chaiten. The other is a drive down Chiloe Island to the west, and then a much shorter ferry to Chaiten and Pumalin. The second was our choice.

Relatively unvisited by tourists, Chiloe’s Grand Island is a gentler landscape of farmland, forested rolling hills and coastal bays. We were pleasantly surprised at this charming start to our Patagonia trip as we found it distinctive in several ways…

In its wild Pacific coastal beaches, especially the sections on the long coast in the National Park of Chiloe.

There the turbulent waves make the beach unusable for water sports, but the dark sand, the dunes and headlands scalloped into odd shapes, and the marshlands are a delight to explore.

Brisk breezes make the foam deposited by the waves wriggle like white wreaths. And it sends balls of foam skittering along the flat beach, each quickly shrinking to nothing from friction.

And Chiloe is distinctive in the stilt-supported housing along the bays, proudly lifted above the ebb and flow of tides.

Palofitos, or stilt houses, are perfectly suited to the tidal ebb and flow of the Grand Island’s eastern bays. After a devastating earthquake and tsunami in 1960, most of these collapsed.

The few groupings that remain, like these in Castro, are visually striking, colorfully reflected in bay waters at high tide, or even stuck in the mud at low tide.

And distinctive in the flamboyant, but pragmatic Chiloe style of wood construction, most notable in the 100 or so UNESCO wooden churches.

Chiloean style on the main street of Castro

The eclectic and oh so brightly colored San Francisco church in the main plaza of Castro.

One of the prettiest of the 100 or so Jesuit-inspired wooden churches that are UNESCO World Heritage designated.

Many have been restored to revive the look and feel of their 18th century origins. Others have been given a more modern look inside.

The most spectacular wooden church on the island, San Carlos de Chanchi, exquisitely restored inside and out to its early glories – a fine example of the Chiloe style. The interior features a barrel-shaped blue roof glistening with pointy stars.

CHAITEN AND PARQUE PUMALIN

Parque Pumalin, to which the northern ferries connect, is one of the country’s great national parks, a star attraction for hikers, campers and idlers.

Kris McDivitt and Douglas Tompkins – who became wealthy from leading the Northface, Esprit and Patagonia clothing lines – bought the land for conservation, rather than development, and convinced the government to turn the property into a national park, with free use for all.

Well-maintained trails rise from the gravel road that snakes through the park, an adjunct to the famous Carretera Austral to its south. Campsites are as well integrated into the landscape and inviting as any we have seen.

We traipsed for days amid Pumalin’s volcanoes and lakes, so grateful to the generous and forward-thinking couple for making it all possible.

The longest was the hike up Volcan Chaiten – 600 meters (2000 feet) in altitude to climb.

Here we are starting on the Volcan Chaiten hike with the goal in the background

At the steep, slippery finish to the Volcan Chaiten hike with the fjord at the town of Chaiten below us

At the finish of the Volcan Chaiten hike, where the outer crater encircles the still percolating cone of the volcano. In 2008, the volcano erupted after thousands of years of quiet, and destroyed the town of Chaiten as well as a huge section of the park.

Looking up at tall alerce trees, the largest trees in South America and only native to the Andes. These started growing 3000 years ago – but nearly died out as a species until preservation efforts in Pumalin and elsewhere in Chile rescued them.

Volcan Michinmahuida, the other huge volcano here, stands out because of its irregular sky-scraping crater

Sadly, the co-founder of the park, Doug Tompkins, died on a Patagonian lake farther south by the town of Rio Tranquilo. The name belies the frequently turbulent and wind-swept waters. His kayak was overturned by the vicious winds common to this spot.

FUTALEUFU

The renowned Carretera Austral through Chilean Patagonia continually offers splendid scenery, but the side roads can be even more amazing.

We detoured from the main road to reach the tongue-twisting town of Futaleufu. Many consider this the best place in the world to run rapids via raft or kayak. So did we after doing it!

The rough road to Futaleufu, which we had to drive for several hours each way, tried its best to rival the challenge of the river; yet it presented other grand vistas that made the effort worthwhile.

Halfway along the Futaleufu river, one tranquil spot offers a cliff to jump into the river. The break from the action was a welcome one. Several people on our raft took advantage of the drop…while others admired the scenery.

Finishing the Futaleufu rapids – no question, but this is a roller coaster ride of non-stop class 4 and 5 rapids amid a glorious landscape.

Back on the main road, this DC-3 was crash-landed by the Chilean Air Force in 1974. Its fuselage was later hauled near the Carretera by a private citizen who converted it into a three room home.

Later the rusting hull of the plane was traded it to a police officer for a 4×4 jeep. On the gate to the property, a for sale sign seeks the next owner…one with vision apparently…or another jeep that they can spare.

PUYUHUAPI

As we drove farther south on Chile’s Patagonian highway, the slow, rutted sections of hard-packed dirt seemed to show up as a kind of obstacle to handle before reaching a destination. Puyuhuapi was one of these. Fortunately, every other building in that small town offers cabanas for weary visitors like us to stay.

The reason to make the effort is the town’s proximity to hikes within the National Park of Queulat, whose hills are filled with thundering rivers, rich forests – and its biggest spectacle: a hanging glacier.

Most glaciers terminate in a lake, but the glacier in Queulat ends abruptly high up on a cliff-face. Waterfalls spill from it down the cliff and frequently huge ice chunks tumble noisily off it as well.

Visitors to the Hanging Glacier usually just amble over to the lake which the ice melt replenishes after spilling water and ice down its cliff-face.

The more strenuous option is to climb to the lookout over the hanging glacier. This demanding trail is steep, muddy, filled with roots and obstacles, but beautiful in its own way when you stop to admire it during the four hours you’re on it.

Forget the glacier…even the fungus is interesting here.

The bridge along the trail up toward the glacier is also a hanging one, traversing some pretty turbulent waters that tumble from the glacial lake.

Whether you view it from the lake it creates far below or from the end of the muddy steep hike that faces it on high – the hanging glacier is an impressive site worth the effort of getting there.

Muddy but unbowed, we reached the viewing platform after hours of hiking along the very slippery and twisting climb. There we joined several groups of younger hikers and some colorful birds.

Though the tough trek back down was calling to us, we stopped for a while to celebrate reaching Ventisquero Colgante (hanging glacier) and its incomparable vista.

(To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Chile, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.) The post Patagonia Road Trip 1: The North first appeared on Adventurephiles.

THE WELSH

As for historical, in the mid-19th century Argentina welcomed immigrants to populate and ranch the northern Patagonian coast.

So it was that several boatloads of Welsh, eager to escape difficult conditions in Wales as well as England’s efforts to squash its culture, sailed to Peninsula Valdes. They found a desert, quite unlike Wales. But the early settlers resolutely built up towns like Gaiman and the port of Puerto Madryn that thrived from diverting much of the Chubut River into channels to nurture sheep and crops.

Other Welsh followed and maintained new world Welsh towns into the 20th century. We were charmed by the many old brick buildings that remain and the quaint tea rooms, but found the towns more Argentinean than Welsh now.

Old town Gaiman, with most of its late 19th century houses preserved.

Two typical homes of Gaiman. Brick buildings like these were oh so Welsh in design.

The rough cut stone structure that was the first settler home of Gaiman from the 1860s.

The dining room of the Welshman who came to Gaiman to manage the milling operations, with the backdrop of that wonderful photo of his family at table. Many of his household belongings remain in this house, which is now a museum.

The building is called the Casa del Poeta, for a later owner, Evan Thomas, the newspaper editor and poet who worked hard to preserve Welsh language and culture here. Here are some examples from the house of the Welsh (and Spanish) newspapers edited by Evan Thomas.

The hundred year old Bethel Church, a typical brick structure where the Welsh worshiped.

For about 70 years, the Central Chubut Railway moved goods and passengers from outlying towns to the harbor of Puerto Madryn. From the film we saw about the train line, old timers still remember it fondly though it stopped running in the 1950s. This was the Gaiman rail station.

A ridge of hills around Gaiman made a short tunnel necessary. It’s now a kind of history lesson in itself. As we walked through it, reading in its arched niches about the railway’s history.

The old rail station at Puerto Madryn, located next to the new bus terminal.

PRE-HISTORICAL

And then there was the prehistorical around Puerto Madryn, Argentina. The region is noted for its wealth of fossils, from the age of dinosaurs through somewhat more recent times. Unearthed here was the largest dinosaur ever found (Titanosaur) – the weight of 15 elephants. A life-size replica at Trelew, another town settled by Welsh, demands a selfie. The full skeleton still waits in a backroom of the Trelew museum for a space to display it, currently just a hole in the ground. But the rest of the museum includes a thrilling display of other prehistoric creatures. Sadly, we had hoped to wander among rich fossil remains at the nearby Paleontological park, but recent flooding of its desert terrain had closed it and perhaps, we heard, even destroyed the park.

The Trelew Titanosaur peaceably lets Barry stand with him. We tried a dozen times to do a selfie. Titanosaur was cooperative, but our photos failed to fit all of him in.

The lower leg bone of the largest dinosaur ever found, the Titanosaur, at Trelew’s Paleontological Museum.

Trelew’s Paleontological Museum. The dinosaur at the bottom is a large carnivore like T-rex.

Trelew’s Paleontological Museum includes so many fossil remains of the large creatures of the distant past.

Trelew’s Paleontological Museum. A display of underwater creatures

VALDES PENINSULA: WHALES AND MORE

Lastly, the true highlight of a visit to the area around Puerto Madryn is the natural splendor of Peninsula Valdes. Jutting about 70 kilometers (45 miles) out into the Atlantic, its bays entice wildlife of all sorts to its gorgeous shoreline, including whales and other sea mammals as well as numerous sea birds. We arrived in the rain at its main village, Puerto Pyramides, but otherwise enjoyed several sunlit days and star-studded nights. We knew it was not the season to see the right whales that collect here, but we had hoped to see orcas, which often prowl near the shore. The natural beauty and wildlife that we did see made Valdes worth the stay.

The shoreline of Punta Norte at Peninsula Valdes. All these people are here to look for orca whales, which surf onto shore around high tide to snatch and lunch on the sea lions.

As often happens with nature, we spent two afternoons here but failed to see any orcas, though they had been around the previous day. While waiting, at least, we observed plenty of birds. And were at least pleased that the sea lions families were uneaten.

Mother and baby sea lions

A colony of Magellanic penguins spread down the eastern shore of Valdes, apparently playing at whack-a-mole. About an hour or so south of here, at Punta Tombo, tens of thousands of Magellanic penguins filled the shoreline, up to a kilometer inland as well.

One pair of Magellanic penguins preening to put oils on their feathers during the last stages of molting

A troupe of elephant seals flopped and cavorted on the eastern shore of the peninsula too.

A cui, protected here, but often a roasted meal on a stick in other parts of South America.

Elegant crested tinamou, one of dozens of birds we saw on the peninsula, a kind of substitute for orcas.

A rocky resting place for sea lions and birds near Puerto Pyramides

A peludo, the hairier of the two species of armadillo here. They showed up instead of the orcas.

Inland waterway along the eastern shore of Peninsula Valdes.

(Also, for more pictures from Argentina, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the Argentina and Chile itinerary page.) The post Welsh, Whales and Titanosaurs in Argentina first appeared on Adventurephiles.

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, or Isla de Pascua, is a dot of land in the middle of the Pacific, five hours by air from anywhere else. It exists in two very distinct, but mutually involved, time frames.

There is, of course, the present as a pleasant Pacific island though one with somewhat colder waters around it than most. And the past, with its remarkable statuary and archeological record speaking from an ancestral epoch.

For our article the moai and the past, A Point in Time – Easter Island, the Past, click here.

The Present

As to the present, most visitors do come to see the things of the past. If they’re smart, they leave enough time to discover its current pleasures, the plentiful physical charms as well as the workaday life of its residents.

Easter Island was formed into a triangle by lava flows from three large volcanos that erupted over a long span of years. The land in between is mostly flat, though a few stray cones pop up here and there.

The most interesting volcano, Rano Kau, dominates the southwest knob of the island, with a deep crater that became a unique biodiverse wetlands naturally protected from human harm. On Rano Kau’s far right edge, we could also visit a landmark of the past. On a narrow band of land between the crater and the steep cliffs of the sea, archeologists have re-created a culturally important priestly village from centuries ago.

So, there are volcanoes to climb, reserve territories around them to walk, 40 kilometers or more of plains to cycle, a few sun-soaked sand beaches along the north, and other spots to launch yourself off-shore with a snorkel or surfboard.

And just about all of this largely within sight of the azure sea, and a shore-line featuring rugged bays and volcanic cliffs.

Rains and tropical storms are frequent, often coming and going throughout the day. Despite one torrential day, which brought the surprise of a double rainbow, we mostly experienced sunny skies with wandering puffy clouds.

The island is surrounded by coral reefs, not as colorful as elsewhere or abundant in tropical fish, but full of fantastic shapes – and with one very distinctive, encrusted underwater figure of a moai. It’s not a real one, but it looks good enough, a stand-in for a larger statue that was lost in the deep sea after the cable being used to haul it up onto land failed.

The protected bay just to the north of Hanga Roa, the only town, is the departure point for diving at the reef, just a few minutes off-shore, where you take one of the boats docked alongside those used by the fishermen of the island.

Fishing has been a principal food source for the population ever since the first Polynesian people arrived about 1200 years ago. Fishers still hawk their catch every day on the main street (and presumably in local fisheries).

This street’s three or four blocks offer small groceries and other stores for the locals, as well as car rentals, guide services and handicrafts for the tourists.

Since the 18th century, various European powers have occupied and harmed the island, bringing disease and enslaving the population. The Spaniards eventually controlled the land, with the island becoming part of Chile. None of the old religious practice survived, except perhaps in decorative touches.

And, though other religions may have churches here, twice on Sunday the plain interior of the island’s Catholic church fills with locals – and curious tourists – for a service conducted in Spanish, with music in the native language. Dressed in richly colored robes and a feathered headdress, the priest stands out, even amid visiting groups of Chilean youth. His vestments befit the front of the elaborately decorated façade of the church.

And the deep mid-summer, in the vicinity of the equator, with a temperature of 26 or so degrees C – the low 80s F – under a hot sun, there is still celebration of Christmas, as a school group dresses as little elves demonstrated when they entertained passers-by on main street with carols in the native language.

Outsiders transformed the island botanically as well. When the Europeans arrived, palm trees covered the island. Most are gone except where they have been replanted or protected. Now so much of the plant-life comes from elsewhere. But, wherever they come from, the flowers abound gloriously.

(Also, for more pictures from Chile and Argentian, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.) The post A Point in Time – Easter Island first appeared on Adventurephiles.

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, or Isla de Pascua, is a dot of land in the middle of the Pacific, five hours by air from anywhere else. It exists in two very distinct, but mutually involved, time frames.

There is, of course, the present as a pleasant Pacific island though one with somewhat colder waters around it than most. And the past, with its remarkable statuary and archeological record speaking from an ancestral epoch.

For our article about island life today, see A Point in Time – Easter Island, the Present.

Tracing the Past, the reason most visitors come here

Around 1000 years ago, masterful sailors from Polynesia arrived on Rapa Nui under the leadership of King Hotu Matu’a. They charted direction by the stars and sun, capably detecting signs of land from birdlife, outflows of plant-life and so on.

They maintained their cult of worshiping ancestors, but honored them in a way that made Easter Island unique. They carved huge statues – moai, up to 22 meters (50 feet) tall – out of the softer volcanic rock of the island, or tuff, using only hand-made tools of harder basalt, and erected these on enormous platforms – ahu.

At the ahu, which was often adjacent to a village, they buried their dead in back, and ritually recalled their ancestors on the large front terrace – not as gods, but abiding spirits of their relatives. In doing these ceremonies, they hoped to gain good fortune in farming and fishing, as a kind of blessing from past generations.

For over 500 years, the very hierarchical society devoted extensive manpower to building ahu. Over time, wealthier families secured the prime oceanside plots for their ahu and controlled access to ocean fishing. Eventually over-population and increasingly limited resources (food, wood, etc.) led to civil wars. The ahu were destroyed in vengeful attacks. The remains of the platforms and moai still limn the entire coast of the island.

By the time Europeans discovered this little island on one Easter’s day in the 18th century, they found the remnants of the ahus, and all the giant moai toppled, generally face down, as if to shame them.

At Vaihu (Hanga Te’e), for example, eight fallen moai lie this way, their faces crushed or noses jammed into the ground. Nearby rolled the red cylinders, or top knots, placed on top of the moai like a hat, but actually intended to resemble the traditional male knotting of the hair atop their heads.

One rolled down to a nearby cove about 50 meters away. Each was originally etched with drawing and figures, as several at Vaihu still showed.

Unlike the volcanic tuff used for the moai, the top-knots mostly came from a rich deposit of the red scoria used to make them at Puna Pau volcano. Here the weighty top-knots were hacked from the mountain, carved into those round shapes, inscribed with figures, and somehow moved to sit atop the moai. As they were in effect wheels, they could be rolled…carefully. Work stopped here after the tribal wars – and the unfinished top-knots were just abandoned. The quarry for tuff is a very different kind of place, as we note later.

The moai we found face up – like several heads at Aka Hanga – were to us a more poignant memorial to the past. And these toppled figures and ruined ahu are generally what we see today around the island, much as the Europeans found them originally.

They lie like this all over the island, helpless eroding figures like the one we found about twice human size, against the backdrop of its source, one of the island volcanoes.

Others have been covered up by dirt and vegetation over time, and regularly unearthed. One such face seemed to come up for air near a broken ahu, evoking both amusement and horror in us.

Happily in several sites, however, authentic moai have been restored by dedicated archaeologists to their ahu platforms – once again honoring the ancestors of this island people. You’re not allowed to leave the island without a good selfie in front of one of these restored ahu.

We thought we looked pretty good at the popular ahu at Anakena, one of just a few sand beaches on the island – where the moai discreetly turn their backs on the beach bathers.

This site is also popular for watching the sunrise behind the moai, a contemporary ritual ceremony. But we found it more interesting as a demonstration of the alterations of ahu during the five centuries of their heyday. Many platforms show multiple levels of re-creation. At one broken site, even we could detect three levels from the past. At Anakena, set below the second moai from the left in lieu of a rectangular block, you can see a sideways face from an earlier stage. The moai here also display their back carvings faintly despite erosive forces over the years.

Still present at the site, though standing apart, was a moai we called gordo – Spanish for fat – because he was one of the more squat ancestors we saw, though quite tall in actuality.

No longer here, but rather at the island museum, stands a human-sized female moai with an interesting story. Thor Heyerdahl found the torso in 1956 at Anakena, brought it back to Norway and spread the story of the island’s old civilization. Thirty-two years later the head was discovered in the ground somewhere at the beach. Eventually Norway returned the torso and reunited the female’s top and bottom in her homeland. Oddly, of the nearly 900 moai found on the island so far, only 10 are identifiably female figures, though many petroglyphs around the island depict female genitals. Draw what conclusion you want from that.

There is ongoing debate about all those hollowed eye sockets. As re-created at the shoreline in the town of Hanga Roa, and demonstrated at the island museum, one moai had its eyes completed with white coral cornea and irises of red scoria stone (the material used for the top-knots). But archeologists are not sure whether such eyes were a temporary feature for ceremonies or a more permanent one for all the moai.

While Anakena draws people for sunrise, Ahu Tahai is the spot for sunsets. It’s far outdistanced in quality and quantity by other restored ahus, but its proximity to most visitors at the northern edge of Hanga Roa town makes it very popular at the end of the day.

The very first ahu to be reconstructed by archeologists, in 1960, was Ahu Akivi, located close to the northwestern shore. To us, it was also intriguing for demonstrating what we detected as two basic styles of moai faces, which might have come from different periods. All have pursed lips, arms sculpted along the sides and hands placed along a low slung belt. But some have long pointed noses, elongated and prominent chins. Others have squat noses and blunter chins.

The largest rebuilt ahu is Tongariki, at the opposite end of the island. From afar you can’t really tell how large the platform and the moai are. But you are readily dwarfed when you come closer. This is true even in front though visitors can’t step too near them in order to preserve what’s left of the area where ceremonies were performed. And especially true when walking around the back, where we could gaze up at the statues looming above us and see some of their typical carved tattooing that has not worn away.

Tongariki is truly the most impressive of the restored ahus, with the greatest number of moai and some of the largest (up to 10 meters/33 feet! and 74 metric tons in weight). You can get a sense of the size of this ahu and the statues, if you can find Nancy sitting in front of them.

Though so many of the ahu platforms were destroyed, several, like the one at Vinapu, still show sophisticated architectural design with massive support blocks fitted together snugly for strength. Notice how the second and third blocks from the right are locked together with a smaller rectangle. Inca construction techniques in Peru are just like this, though more elaborate, leading some to speculate on interaction between the islanders and pre-colonial South America.

The restored ahus are wondrous, but the most famous moai are the striking statues found at the main quarry for their carving at Rano Raraku volcano – at the eastern end of the island far from the scoria quarry for top-knots.

Here the moai were cut from plentiful volcanic tuff (hardened ash), raised up into pits for finishing touches and then hauled to their ahus up to 20 kilometers away, in a method that archeologists can only speculate about. The sloping rockface of the volcano was largely untouched over the last 500 plus years, when moai creation ceased due to the tribal wars.

Near the bottom of the slope, peeking at the ocean nearby, many moai that were ready to move had been toppled like those on all the ahu platforms.

Toward the top of Rano Raraku, however, it’s stunning, as hundreds of moai – ranging from gigante (nearly 22 meters/75 feet tall) to diminutive – still stand, never transported to their intended location. Even those which seem just heads actually have complete torsos, buried over time by accumulating soil.

These are the famous ancients of the island, keeping a silent vigil while they wait into eternity for the workers who would have completed them.

The most revealing of all these are the moai we could see “in process.” At one niche, two moai lay together in different stages of cutting from the rockface when the work on them was abandoned.

Nearby, another giant had partially emerged from the rock. To us he appeared ready to rise vertically, hoisted up by the workers so the carving could be completed…but still he has rested in his stony coffin for centuries.

(Also, for more pictures from Chile and Argentian, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.) The post A Point in Time – Easter Island first appeared on Adventurephiles.

Three mountain ranges come together in Chile at the Atacama desert, near the northern border with Argentina and Bolivia (with its Uyuni salt flats). Their meeting has created some extraordinary terrain amid the volcanoes – from salt basins to salty ridges, from the volcanoes themselves to a lunar landscape.

The alteplanico, the high valley landscape of the Andes, opens up at a breath-taking altitude of over 4400 meters (14000 feet plus) – a land of salt flats, colorful mountains, and lagoons attractive to birds like the flamingo.

Laguna at the foot of Miniques Volcano, which rises to 5900 meters, nearly 20,000 feet

A friendly vicuna, a wild resident of the Andes whose nourishment and water (via condensation) come from the scrubby plants of the alteplanico.

A typical street of San Pedro de Atacama, the principal town here and surprisingly full of restaurants, bars, hotels and other tourist resources

Piedras rojas, or red rock mountains along the salt basin

Panorama of one of the Salar de Aguas Calientes, vast salt basins with shallow waters, with the red rock mountains behind.

Old salts at the salt basin, Salar de Aguas Calientes, and Piedras rojas, the red rock mountains

Flamingos thrive on tiny krill, which are abundant in the briny waters of salt basins in the alteplanico, so several species gather here. Their pink color comes from eating the krill…the more intense the color, the older the bird.

Rugged, crystalline, wild, dry, colorful – and endlessly fascinating – is the Cordillera de Sal, the Salt Range of the Atacama desert. It’s the most unusual of the three mountain ranges that developed around San Pedro de Atacama (along with the high Andes volcanos and the Domeyque range giving passage to Argentina). It formed when the sea dried up and then the land heaved up the salty basin that remained.

That process created caverns, dunes, corrugated ridges, valleys splashed with mineral colors and more.

A wide path through the salt caverns. If you stop and listen very quietly, you can hear the ridges cracking in the heat due to expansion and contraction of the different minerals

Then, for about a kilometer, we followed a winding salt cavern – walking, crawling and high-stepping – through drippy crystallized features at the beginning of a lunar landscape called, appropriately, Valley of the Moon.

Climbing up the Great Dune is a slow trip. Yes, it’s steep, but it’s not so high. The soft sand makes the trip a lumbering one. The effort is worth it for the vantage point you gain over the rippling Valley of the Moon.

Overview of the Valley of the Moon from atop the great dune

A late evening selfie at Valley of the Moon, atop the great dune, with the Andes in the background

Sunset overlooking the Valley of the Moon, the vast and aptly named area of caves, dunes, flats and craters.

In the vicinity of the lunar valley is another called Rainbow Valley (or Arco de Iris), which features a painterly palette of minerals (and salts) naturally pushed to the surface and shaped by the upthrust.

The many colors of the Arco de Iris.

People have lived for eons in this seemingly forbidding landscape, raising llamas – and drawing them on rockfaces. This depiction is one of many rock carvings here, and one of he most interesting. It’s a pregnant llama etched in the rock about 10,000 years ago.

NOT a domesticated llama, or wild vicuna…but an equally wild, yet curious, relative known as guanaco, which also lives off the water vapor from deposits of Alpine fog on desert plants.

(Also, for more pictures from Chile, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the Argentina and Chile itinerary page.) The post High and salty at Atacama first appeared on Adventurephiles.