Steve and Steffi's Chile Vacation, 2008-9 - Introduction

Steve and Steffi's Chile Vacation, 2008-9

Introduction

We had a lot of reasons for wanting to visit Chile. Steve was anxious to see more of the Andes after our trip to Ecuador in 2002, to see the great national park of Torres del Paine, and also to photograph an Andean Condor, preferably in flight, if possible. Steffi was anxious to repeat the excitement of viewing Penguins, having had this experience with the Yellow-Eyed Penguin and Little Blue Penguin in New Zealand in 2006.

Of course there is much more to Chile than this, and we found that Cornell Adult university (CAU) organizing a trip to Chile over the winter holiday break of 2008-9, so we could take this excursion in the company of similar-minded families, and some Cornell Professors. Steffi is a Cornell graduate, and we had a good experience with CAU for our 2002 trip to the Galapagos, so we are always watching for interesting CAU trips.

The added advantage of traveling to South America during the middle of winter, is that it is allows us to substitute summer for winter, for a couple of weeks, at least.

A few days before our departure, we got hit with a huge winter storm in Ann Arbor, our home town.With more snow predicted, We were certainly worried that our flight to Santiago would be at risk. To save money on the flight tickets, we had chosen to go through Toronto. This flight gets into Santago too late in the day for the beginning of the CAU trip, so we had arranged to fly a day early. Nevertheless, we found ourselves in the Toronto airport watching the snow blowing outside, where the temperature was 18 Fahrenheit, and we had plenty of doubts about the start of the trip.

Copyrights and Other Legal Stuff

The pictures and text are all Copyright © 2009, Steven R. Weiss. All rights are reserved, but I grant the right to look at these pictures and enjoy them. Also, take note that although the web site is copyrighted, the vacation is not. You may certainly feel free to attempt to duplicate this vacation or any part, without even giving us credit if you don't feel like it. To use the pictures, though, please ask.

Comments are always welcome. Please send them to srw@alum.mit.edu

Navigation

This site is organized into five chapters, one for each of the four regions of Chile that we visited, but with an extra one for the Magallanes region, because we took so many pictures there that we decided to split it into two chapters. Links are provided at the bottom of each chapter to all other chapters. If you are planning on viewing the whole site, We recommend following them in order, but feel free to jump around if it pleases you. Valparaíso is first.

[Intro] [Central Region] [The Araucanía] [The Lake Region] [Magallanes] [National Parks]