This Year's Eclipse (and Next Year's?)

Chilean eclipse-chasers filled the beach at Caleta Los Hornos (photo by Marializ Maldonado)

I couldn’t attend last week’s solar eclipse in Chile but, indirectly at least, I had a sort of presence. When my longtime friend Marializ Maldonado, at whose house I often stay when in Santiago, asked to borrow my car to drive north to the Coquimbo region, I immediately said yes, and she was able to view the event at the beachside locale of Caleta Los Hornos, north of the city of La Serena.

In the minutes before totality, at Caleta Los Hornos (photo by Marializ Maldonado)

Partly, this was a favor to a friend, but it was also a favor to me, as it’s best not to leave a car unused for months, as I do by necessity in the outskirts of Santiago. Marializ also often does me the favor of paying my highway tolls as, for some incomprehensible reason, Chile’s online payment system does not want to accept my US credit cards (though I use them regularly when I visit Chile).

The Coquimbo region is home to major international observatories such as Cerro Tololo (CTIO), part of the US National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

Marializ arrived just five minutes before totality, which she described as “two intense and beautiful minutes” on the Pacific shoreline. The most vivid account I’ve read, though, came from the New York Times, whose “52 Places” columnist Sebastian Modak saw the event from the European Southern Observatory at La Silla—also pointing out that this was only the third eclipse to pass over a major international observatory in the last 50 years.

The eclipse turned out to be an economic bonanza for the region. According to the local daily El Observatodo, the event attracted more than 300,000 people over five days, and those visitors spent more than US$82 million. Many if not most arrived by private car, presumably from Santiago as Marializ did, but there were also numerous foreign eclipse-chasers. Plenty of people also witnessed it from the Argentine side of the border, though cloud cover obscured things in Buenos Aires.

Path of next year's eclipse

There's no guarantee of clear weather as next year's eclipse passes over Volcán Villarrica.

For Chileans and others who missed this year’s eclipse, there’ll be another chance soon enough. On December 14th of 2020, the moon will once again block the sun in the southern lakes resort district around Lago Villarrica and the town of Pucón, but that area’s marine West Coast climate—resembling Seattle’s—mean that clear skies are no sure thing. A few years ago, some friends and I planned to do a small plane flyover of Volcán Villarrica’s steaming crater but, after several days of fine clear weather, the clouds moved in the next morning and made the flight impossible. Across the Andes, where Argentina’s Patagonian steppe usually has clear skies, could be a better option.

Next year, the rain-shadow steppes of Argentina's Neuquén province might be a better place to observe totality.

Chasing Chile's Eclipses...Across the Andes, Perhaps?

Many times I’ve visited north-central Chile’s desert regions—Coquimbo, Atacama and Antofagasta—which are home to some of the world’s most important astronomical observatories. There is also a constellation of smaller community observatories that offer visitors a chance to see the austral night skies through what, not that long ago, would have been professional telescopes.

The clear skies around Cerro Tololo Observatory (upper left here) an ideal for astronomy.

Combarbalá is one of many town and cities eagerly anticipating July's eclipse.

That said, I’ve never seen a solar eclipse there or elsewhere in South America, even though Chile (and Argentina) experienced major events in 1994 and again in 2010. There’ll be another opportunity soon, though, in the best of all possible areas—on July 2nd, the path of totality will pass directly over the city of La Serena and the Coquimbo region, home to Cerro Tololo and several other observatories. Even area beyond totality expect to take advantage of the event, as I learned last month when I visited the town of Combarbalá, which lies just south of the path.

The July eclipse's path takes it over the Coquimbo region and into Argentina's San Juan Province.

On the Argentine side, totality will pass over the Humid Pampas and just south of Buenos Aires, but winter weather could obscure the event.

From Coquimbo the path then trends southeast, crossing the Andes to the Argentine province of San Juan—another ideal viewing location for its clear desert skies—and continuing toward Buenos Aires. The eclipse will not be total in the Argentine capital, though it will be—theoretically at least—in parts of Buenos Aires province. Theoretically, I say, because that part of the Humid Pampas has a good chance of heavy cloud cover and rain in mid-winter. The skies will darken, certainly, but there’s no guarantee of seeing the moon cover the sun.

Either way, I won’t see this year’s eclipse because I’ll be in California and, in the days leading up to it, we’ll be hosting our Argentine nephew Manuel, his wife Ivana, and their son Simón. They’re flying back to Buenos Aires on July 1st, and I’m not sure whether they’ll arrive in time for the big event. I suspect that a lot of Porteños will leave the city, if just for the day, to spend some time in totality, especially if the weather seems likely to cooperate.

The map here indicates the 2019 eclipse coverage at various locations throughout Chile.

The map here indicates coverage during the 2020 eclipse. 

Even if you (or I) won’t see this one, there’s another upcoming opportunity. On December 14, 2020, Chile will experience another total eclipse in the southern mainland region of La Araucanía, passing over the prime tourist towns of Pucón and Villarrica. The downside is that, like the Pacific Northwest, this area enjoys a marine west coast climate that can bring cloud cover and drizzle at any time of year. It might be better seen in Argentine Patagonia, as the rain shadow of the Andes usually means clear skies on the sprawling steppes. It can get windy there, though, so the beach resort of Las Grutas might be the comfiest option.

For the 2020 eclipse, it won't quite be high season at Las Grutas.

Floods & Mud: Summer Storms Hit the Andes

In the early 1980s, I hitched a lift on a flatbed truck from the Chilean mining town of Calama to San Pedro de Atacama and, about halfway there, we found ourselves in near whiteout conditions – in the arid Atacama desert, not just rain, but snow. Fortunately, I arrived safely but now, whenever I think of the world’s driest climate, that still comes to mind.

Last April, while spending several days in San Pedro, I did not experience any rainfall, but storms in the Andes caused flash floods that washed away segments of roads in the Quebrada de Quitor, briefly closing access to my accommodations at the Hotel Alto Atacama. Today, though, it’s much worse, as the online Santiago Times reports that heavy rains have left nearly 5,000 people in San Pedro without running water and electricity. Highway damage has also closed the Paso de Jama border crossing (pictured above) to the Argentine provinces of Jujuy and Salta.

Some similar has happened in Argentina, where mudslides caused by heavy rains in the upper drainage of the Río Mendoza (as seen in the video above) have closed the international highway to Chile – according to the Buenos Aires daily Clarín, the road has been cut in more than 20 places. This is the most important border crossing between the two countries, as international trade relies on the route; its timing is particularly unfortunate for the tourism industry, as cross-border traffic is abundant at this season. Mendoza’s annual wine harvest party, the Fiesta Naiconal de la Vendimia, begins the first week of March.

To make things even tougher for border-crossers, repairs of the international highway on the Chilean side presently require one-way traffic: westbound vehicles from Argentina may travel during daylight hours (8 a.m. to 7 p.m.), while eastbound vehicles from Chile must travel at night (8 p.m. to 7 a.m.). Until the Argentines manage to clear the road on their side, though, this is a moot question, and it remains to be seen how it affects the summer season.

Meanwhile, any Argentines vacationing in Viña del Mar who need to be back to work on Monday will have find an alternate route, and the road over the Agua Negra pass (pictured above), east of La Serena and Vicuña, has also been closed. The next closest crossing is the Paso Vergara (pictured below), east of the city of Curicó, but that involves a detour of more than 200 km south of Santiago and, once across the border, several hundred km more north to Mendoza.

What with all the currency controls, it was already difficult for Argentines to travel outside their own borders, but this is making it difficult for those who could to return. The rest of the summer could be a real challenge.

For Whom the Toll Beeps (Or, Playing TAG in Santiago)

In California, where I spend most of the year, toll roads are anathema. We do have plenty of bridges that collect tolls, but there’s a reason that many of our highways are, for better or worse, misleadingly called “freeways” (we pay for them but, except for the bridges, we don’t usually pay directly out of pocket to use them).

It’s different in Chile, where the Panamericana from La Serena south to Puerto Montt – a distance of roughly 1,500 km – has 15 toll plazas that exact a total of nearly 35,000 pesos (about US$70) from anybody who drives the distance. That’s not counting the cost of driving through Santiago, which is a little more complicated.

That’s because Santiago has its own electronic toll system that requires anyone who drives those roads to pay a distance-based rate that varies according to the time of day, with the morning and evening rush hours the costliest. Santiago drivers have gotten accustomed to the so-called TAG or Televía system and most, like me, have an electronic transponder that registers the tolls automatically. It can be confusing, though, to drivers from other parts of the country and especially those from outside the country, such as Argentines who frequently travel to Chile.

The TAG is not obligatory, but paying the toll is, even if you don’t have a transponder. Relatively few people outside Santiago do, and some of them go out of their way, when visiting the capital, to use surface streets rather than the limited access highways. A friend of mine from La Serena tried this when picking up someone at the international airport but, eventually, had to pay a fine when he found the alternative route too complicated and couldn’t avoid the toll road. Cameras record the license plates of every vehicle, so enforcement is simple if sometimes slow.

For those who need to drive in the capital, there is an alternative: approaching the city limits, they can purchase a pase diario (daily pass) for 4800 pesos (a little less than US$10) at any roadside Copec Pronto convenience store. Those who fail to do so draw a fine but, even then, it’s possible to purchase the pass retroactively up to 20 days later; after three days, the cost increases to 6900 pesos (about US$14). For overseas visitors, it’s worth adding that cars rented in the capital will have a transponder to record the tolls automatically (to be incorporated in the rental cost). Those rented elsewhere may not have one, though, and you will be directly responsible for the toll.

While Chilean vehicles may not be able to escape the Santiago tolls, foreign vehicles might. It wouldn’t surprise me if many Argentine drivers, either unaware or evasive, use the city’s highways without paying. If they get stopped by the Carabineros police, though, they could be in trouble.

The Panamericana is not Chile’s only toll road. There are others from Santiago to the port cities of Valparaiso and San Antonio, and between Chillán and Concepción. There’s also a new four-lane divided segment connecting the Atacama desert cities of Vallenar, Copiapó, and Caldera.

Let’s Choose (Moon) Patagonia! (Update)

To date, I’ve had only one correct answer on my geography quiz from the previous post, asking readers to name the Chilean volcano that affected travel to Argentine Patagonia prior to the 2011 eruption of Puyehue. Because of that, I’ll add a couple clues – the eruption in question took place in 2008, and required the evacuation of its namesake village.

If nobody else comes up with a correct answer by the weekend, I’ll postpone giving away the second copy of Moon Patagonia. Please send your answer to southerncone (at) mac.com, and not to the comment box.

Casa Museo Frei: The Political & The Personal

When I met Víctor Maldonado, on my first visit to Chile in 1979, he was a young sociology student who had just been expelled from the Universidad de Chile for his political activity. Víctor was a member of Democracia Cristiana (DC), the Christian Democrat party that formed part of the traditional institutional opposition to General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship – as opposed to the militant but largely ineffective underground of the Chilean left. At that time, participation in any political party activity was illegal.

What a difference a few decades make. On Friday, when I went with Víctor to visit Santiago’s Museo Caso Frei (pictured above) – the former residence of President Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970) – he did so as the DC’s General Secretary, in charge of organizing its activities throughout the country (shortly after our visit to the museum, he flew to Antofagasta for the day).

I was visiting the museum, which opened a couple years ago in the city’s newly fashionable Barrio Italia neighborhood, in the borough of Providencia, for the first time. It was also Víctor’s first visit to the museum, but not to the house – he lives just around the corner and, as a youthful political activist, he had met the former president there a couple years before Frei’s unexpected death in 1982.

Frei, who had opposed Salvador Allende in the Chilean Congress and initially supported the military coup against him, turned against the dictatorship; according to Víctor, there is consensus that Frei’s death, following admission to the hospital for a minor surgery, was in fact murder. The details, which are still unclear, may well need novelist Roberto Ampuero’s fictional detective Cayetano Brulé to explain them.

That controversy aside, I found the home (pictured above) and museum interesting because of its very unpretentiousness. To be sure, the former Frei residence is a handsome construction dating from the 1940s but, for a president, it is far from extravagant. Frei’s father was a Swiss-born baker who immigrated to Chile via Argentina and later served as a winery accountant.

The future president’s home was soon a crowded one – for a family with seven children, it had only four bedrooms, and the three boys all slept in the same one despite an age difference of ten years between the eldest and youngest. It’s impossible to imagine the four children of current president Sebastián Piñera, a billionaire businessman, without their own rooms.

Despite the home’s modesty, Frei received prestigious visitors here (Chile has no official presidential residence). Among them was Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II for dinner in 1968 – in fact, the dining room preserves the place setting for that event. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of it, as museum policy prohibits interior photographs.

Another surprise was to learn about Frei Montalva’s commuting habits. Admittedly, those were different times, but during his presidency he eschewed a chauffeur – rather, he would walk from his home to his office at the Palacio de la Moneda (pictured above), a distance of roughly 4.5 km (2.8 miles). Security concerns alone make it impossible to imagine any president, of any country, doing so nowadays.

To the best of my knowledge, this is only the second museum devoted to a Chilean president. The only other bears the name of Gabriel González Videla, in his hometown of La Serena.

Political postscript: Víctor (pictured above) predicts that former President Michelle Bachelet will win Chile’s next presidential election, at the end of next year, with a possible runoff in early 2014 if no candidate gets a majority in the first round. Her Partido Socialista (PS) is a member, along with the DC, in the coalition known as the Concertación para la Democracia (Consensus for Democracy). Chile's constitution prohibits consecutive presidential terms.

Seismic & Tsunami Update

As a longtime Californian, I’ve lived through many earthquakes, including the 1989 event that disrupted baseball’s World Series, the so-called “Bay Bridge Series” in which my hometown Oakland Athletics obliterated the San Francisco Giants in four one-sided games. In retrospect, that name was something of a misnomer, as the quake knocked down part of the cantilever bridge between Oakland and San Francisco, forcing Athletics’ fans to find alternative routes from the East Bay.

Never, though, had I experience a quake in a tall building as I did last Tuesday’s, on the ninth floor of the Hotel del Valle outside Santiago. Though there was no damage, the movement of the quake and especially its duration - at least two minutes - unnerved me briefly.

I was not nearly so unnerved as Owen Betts, a young Falkland Islander who had never experienced a quake before. Owen, who is doing me the favor of carrying a copy of the new third edition of my Moon Patagonia guidebook to the Falkland Islands Tourist Board this weekend, sent me a text message around 2:30 a.m. from the beach town of Guanaqueros, near La Serena (pictured above), where he was enjoying a beach holiday.

Immediately after the quake, he was having a hard time getting back to sleep and, after about an hour and half, he sent me a text message that I didn’t retrieve until the next morning, when I phoned him back. He figured as long as he could hear the surf crashing, he was OK, but that a prolonged silence would suggest the long wavelength of a tsunami had emptied the bay and was about to strike. On La Serena’s long, sandy beaches, there are no obstacles to stop a tsunami from coming ashore, where it would shatter beachside businesses into toothpicks.

As it happened, there was no tsunami, and Owen (whom I have never met in person, though I know his father George pretty well from the time I lived in the Falklands in 1986-7) was able to resume his vacation. Incidentally, according to the Santiago daily La Tercera, the US Geological Survey downgraded the quake’s magnitude from 6.7 to 6.5; meanwhile, the Universidad de Chile’s Servicio Sismológico upgraded their estimate from 6.3 to 6.5, so everyone would seem to be in agreement. Those changes, though, are not reflected on the respective websites.

Speaking of tsunamis, I’m presently in one of the most vulnerable tsunami sites in the world, the village of Hanga Roa (pictured above) on Chile’s remote Polynesian possession of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). I’ve spent two nights at the utterly transformed Hanga Roa Ecovillage & Spa, but will spend the next two at the Puku Vai Hotel before returning to the Santiago and, next week, to California. I will have more to say about my sixth lifetime visit to Easter Island in the near future.

The Rapa Nui Journal

For most people, visiting Easter Island (better known as Rapa Nui to its indigenous Polynesian residents) is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. In the course of creating and updating guidebooks for Moon and another publisher best left unnamed, I have had the good fortune to visit the legendary land of the moai five times. This November, in the process of updating Moon Chile, I will do so again.

Though it’s usually three years between visits, I’ve always had the benefit of the biannual Rapa Nui Journal, whose latest issue arrived in my mailbox yesterday, to keep current with the latest information on the island. It’s a publication of the Easter Island Foundation, based in Los Osos, California, which also publishes a series of historical reprints and academic studies about the island and the greater South Seas region, including French Polynesia and Hawaii. It’s the legacy of rock art specialist Georgia Lee, a UCLA-trained archaeologist whom I had the good fortune to meet for lunch at her house in Los Osos (near San Luis Obispo) last year.The sea turtle petroglyph below, photographed at Ahu Tongariki, is an example of her research interests.

Georgia used to lead trips to Rapa Nui but, in her retirement, is no longer doing so. The California-based Far Horizons Archaeological and Cultural Trips, however, continues to organize such trips, under the leadership of first-rate archaeologists such as Sidsel Millerström and Steven Fischer, who deciphered the enigmatic rongorongo tablets. If you can afford one of their tours, which spend about a week visiting the sites and enjoying the islanders’ annual Tapati festival, which takes place in January.

The Rapa Nui Journal, though, is not just for academic Rapanuiphiles. To be sure, there are data-driven, peer-reviewed articles such as that of César Caviedes and Peter Waylen (University of Florida) on the island’s climatic constraints, and a paleographic analysis of the Santiago Staff (a rongorongo tablet in Santiago’s Museo Nacional de Historia Natural) by Paul Hornley (Yuri Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, Ukraine).

At the same time, the Journal provides popular history notes such as David Maddock’s account of Roberto Parragué Singer’s 1950 flight from La Serena to Rapa Nui - the first pilot ever to cover the 2,300 miles from the Chilean mainland. There are also book reviews (including coverage of the Tahiti and Fiji titles written by my Moon colleague David Stanley), and local news items such as a land dispute over the Hotel Hanga Roa and reintroduction of the toromiro tree (long extinct on the island, it has survived in the national botanical garden at Viña del Mar). There is even a regular photographic feature on “moai sightings” - this time including an ice moai featured in winter sculpture exhibit in Anchorage, Alaska.

Subscriptions to the Rapa Nui Journal cost US$40 per year, US$30 for students, libraries and institutions in the United States and Canada; for those resident elsewhere, rates are US$50 and US$40. All proceeds go to the Easter Island Foundation which, among other things, provides scholarships to Rapanui students for advanced academic studies.

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Streets and Roads: Southern Cone Oddities

Today's digest consists of observations on streets and roads in Argentina and Chile.

Welcome to Danger!

Is it dangerous to travel in the Southern Cone countries? Well, in the process of updating the current edition of Moon Handbooks Patagonia, I’ve driven about 1,700 kilometers since leaving Santiago on December 8th. In the course of doing so, I occasionally encounter delays for road works that, almost invariably, warn drivers of the hazards ahead: “Peligro a 100 M” (Danger 100 Meters) is the common phrase.

So pervasive are these signs, in fact, that there’s a joke about them. As a driver proceeds down the road, he spots a series of them: “Peligro a 500 M,” “Peligro a 200 M,” “Peligro a 100 M” and, finally, “¡Bienvenidos a Peligro!” (“Welcome to Danger!).

WiFi v. Toilets
From La Serena in the north to Puerto Montt in the south, Copec gas stations along Ruta 5, Chile’s segment of the Panamerican Highway, are not only places to stop for fuel but also to use the facilities and check email. With no password protection, Entel’s Internet services are free but, at the same time, Copec charges its clients 250 pesos (about US$0.50) to use the toilets. What this says about Chilean priorities, I’m not quite sure.

The Politics of Names
Nearly thirty years ago, when I first lived in Buenos Aires, it was in the central Congreso district where my in-laws had a small apartment on a street named Cangallo, after a Peruvian locality that played a key role in the South American wars of independence. Until 2002, when we bought an apartment in Palermo, we continued to stay there whenever we were in Buenos Aires.

In 1984, though, we found that we no longer lived on Cangallo, which had borne that name for more than a century. After the return to democracy in 1983, the street name miraculously became “Teniente General Juan Domingo Perón” (the caudillo’s diehard admirers almost always refer to him by his military rank rather than as president, despite the fact that he was elected to the office three times). During the military dictatorship of 1976-83, of course, Perón’s name was anathema but, under the civilian government of Raúl Alfonsín (a Radical rather than a Peronist), the city was free to honor the memory of the man who, for better or worse, transformed Argentina’s political culture (for what it’s worth, despite their misleading name, Argentina’s Radicals are a middle-of-the-road party).

In reality, changes in street names are commonplace with almost every change of government in Argentina, and often at other times - if there’s a political point to be made. The most recent example is the renaming of the main avenue of the Patagonian city of Río Gallegos - on Saturday, the Avenida General Roca, originally named for the 19th-century military commander who defeated (some would say slaughtered) the Patagonian Mapuche, became “Avenida Dr. Néstor C. Kirchner,” after the former president who died of a massive heart attack in October.

Kirchner, a former Gallegos resident and governor of Santa Cruz province before defeating two-term president Carlos Menem to win a long-shot race in 2003, is certainly the highest-profile public figure ever to emerge onto the national scene from Argentine Patagonia, so the honor is not undeserved. At the same time, as a guidebook writer, these changes present me a challenge - as I and my friend Nicolás Kugler update the current edition of Moon Handbooks Patagonia, we’ll have to change every address on the main drag in our coverage of the city, and on the map that accompanies it.

Quake-Stricken Chile Begins to Bounce Back

After Saturday's historic earthquake, Chile is returning to functionality, if not yet normality. The death toll has risen to more than 700, tens of thousands are homeless, and President Michelle Bachelet has declared a state of catastrophe in the regions of Maule and Bío Bío, south of Santiago. Yet the capital’s Metro has resumed service, and ATMs and credit card systems are up again after a brief shutdown - yesterday in Buenos Aires, I had lunch with a Chilean friend who was able to pay with his bankcard from across the Andes.

Assessing the Damage
From La Serena (about 500 km north of Santiago) to Puerto Varas (about 1,000 km south of the capital), friends have written with mostly encouraging information. According to Ted Stevens, who lives just south of town, “We are fine…woke to pretty good shaking but no damage.”

On the other hand, according to Martin and Lissette Turner of the Valparaíso B&B The Yellow House, “We are fine and after a dreadful shaking The Yellow House survived without problems. The situation here in Valparaiso (pictured above in a pre-quake photo) is difficult, however, as many of the older buildings have structural damage and almost everything is closed. We have no water and no electricity and no internet at the moment, nor do many other parts of the city. It is particularly difficult for the dwindling number of tourists in the city as they cannot leave as there are no flights…” In neighboring Viña del Mar, authorities called off the annual Festival de la Canción (song festival) before its climactic concluding night.

Yerko Ivelic of Santiago’s Cascada Expediciones, which runs adventure travel excursions throughout the country, had similar concerns. In the Andean Maipo river canyon town of San Alfonso where he lives, “There was a lot of movement but no damage. We have no electricity, telephone, cell phone or Internet. This morning I drove down to my office in Santiago to see how to solve the problem of clients who are in Santiago and other cities waiting for planes. We hope the airport opens soon, as that’s the only logistical problem we have.” According to Brian Pearson of Santiago Adventures, however, the airport is due to reopen Wednesday.

Some Santiago neighborhoods have done better than others. In Providencia, writes my longtime friend Hernán Torres, “Our apartment withstood the quake and everything is working (water, power, Internet, etc). Some of our books fell down, and a few kitchen items, but nothing major. The neighborhood did well also, as we have a supermarket with basic supplies.” Likewise, in nearby Ñuñoa, Becca Lee writes that “My friends and I were in my oldish Ñuñoa house that didn't even bat an eyelash. In fact, three of my friends are still here because their apartments are trashed!”

Enzo Paci, of the Pachamama by Bus tour company based in Barrio Brasil’s Casa Roja, says their place is their fine with only a few cracks in the walls, but the nearby Happy House Hostel “lost a wall on the third floor…thank God the wall fell outwards into an adjacent empty plot of land. One Pachamama by Bus group was down in Pucón and we could only get in touch with them a couple of hours ago…We had to cancel a couple of trips until things go back to normal.” Manager Pablo Fernández, of the barrio’s purpose-built Hostelling International facility, says it suffered no damage whatsoever.

In Valdivia, nearly destroyed in the epochal 1960 quake, Lionel Brossi of the Airesbuenos Hostel wrote me that “We felt the quake and it really frightened us, but the hotel is fine and city suffered just a little damage along the riverfront.” That’s not true, though, of the cities of Talca and Concepción, closest to the epicenter, where numbers are still sketchy, and I’ve had no answers from friends to whom I’ve written. Concepción, where most foreigners are exchange students at the highly regarded local university, has seen some deplorable looting, not by people in search of food and water, but rather plasma TVs and similar electronics; there is now a dusk-to-dawn curfew. This, though, is the exception rather than the rule.

Contradicting previous reports, as well, there has been tsunami damage in a few places, such as Talcahuano (the port of Concepción), the village of Dichato (40 km north of Concepción, where one small fishing boat was carried 400 meters inland), and the town of Constitución. That said, the damage has been nowhere remotely close to that wrought by the great Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, which killed more than 200,000 people.

The Immediate Future, and Travel to Chile
In the short run, Chile’s challenge is to get basic services running again. In the medium run, it’s to find housing for those displaced by the quake and, in this at least, the weather should cooperate. In central Chile’s Mediterranean climate, this is the dry season, and significant rain is unlikely for the next two months at least.

Fortunately, Chile is a well-governed country and, unlike Haiti, has experience dealing with earthquakes, most recently a 7.8 that hit Santiago in 1985. While it’s an oversimplification to say that this is more an economic than a humanitarian disaster, at least some Chileans would agree with that. According to Becca Lee, “A Chilean friend of mine who was with me during the quake, as he imagined talking to world about it, said ‘Keep sending your money to Haiti, we'll be fine!’"

For those wondering whether or not they should travel to Chile, I personally would suggest postponing it, but not for too long - the prime destinations of Torres del Paine and San Pedro de Atacama, for instance, are well beyond the damage zone, and even Santiago is likely to be up and running pretty soon. As a guidebook author, I’d rather see Chile make headlines because of its geographical beauty and gracious people than for natural disasters, and staying away will not help its recovery.