Earthquake and Chilean Tourist Destinations

Reflections on Chile; broad-stroke news of current conditions

I created this blog in Santiago, Chile, during the 1996 Society of American Travel Writers convention there. The earliest posts are about the Santiago-Valparaiso area more or less in the center of this long skinny country, Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia in the far south and fascinating Easter Island (Isla de Pascua in Spanish) 2,300 miles out in the Pacific Ocean. Natural disasters (and man-made ones too) are heart-wrenching to begin with, but learning of tragendies in places I have visited adds a special poignancy.

It was with a mixture of sadness and relief that I read the following Chile Turismo summary sent to me by Gina Morgan who handles public relations and marketing for the Remota Lodges in the country.

Desert – The north of Chile was not affected by the quake and has not reported any damage.

Easter Island – Easter Island, which lies 2,300 miles off the cost of mainland Chile, a 5.5 hour flight from Santiago, was not affected by the quake. Initial tsunami warnings have been lifted and all operations are normal.

Santiago and Central Region - Santiago’s airport suffered structural damage to the passenger terminal, however no damage was reported to the runways and the airport is expected to reopen later this week. Electricity and phone lines have been restored in Santiago and the city’s public transportation including its metro is fully operational. Valparaiso and Viña del Mar have also reported damage. The annual Viña del Mar International Music festival which was underway has been suspended.

Lakes and Volcanoes – The northern part of the Lakes and Volcanoes region, around the city of Concepcion and the Bio Bio River, was most affected by the quake. Authorities are still working on assessing the full damage. Basic essential services including water, electricity and telecommunications are gradually being restored. The southern part of the Lakes and Volcanoes region was not affected by the quake. Operations in popular tourist towns including Pucon, Puerto Varas and Puerto Montt are normal.

Patagonia – The far south of the country was not affected by the quake and has not reported any damage.

Chile is a country with a history of seismic activity. The country’s preparedness, including its strict anti-seismic building codes, the rapid emergency response from the government as well as the help from a number of organizations can be credited for managing the situation and help minimize the damage. The country’s tourism infrastructure has, overall, fared well, reporting little damage.

Author Wayne Bernhardson, who has written Moon Guidebooks about Chile and Argentina and therefore has good contacts down there, has posted some more detailed news here and here on his blog, Southern Cone Travel.

When I visited briefly in 2006, Valparaiso, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, still showed evidence of a catastrophic earthquake a century earlier. The quake that struck in August 1906 killed nearly 3,000 people, and many buildings still bore cracks and scars. The fatalities appear to be far fewer, but I cannot imagine how an even more powerful quake might have affected the colorful buildings of this beauitfully located and very historic harbor city. I also wonder about the vineyards and whether the vines will be adequately watered and the wineries whose cellars are stacked with barrels and bottles of wine. I wonder whether the ski lifts at Portillo and Valle Nevado were affected. And of course, I am concerned about the Chileans who lost their homes and their livelihoods, for whom the effect on tourism is of relatively minot concern. The world reached out to Haiti with aid. The casualty toll was higher, CNN was there 24/7 for weeks and the country far more impoverished to begin with. I wonder what the world has in its reserves for Chile.

Give the Chileans a bit of time to take care of basic infrastructure needs and get aire service back to normal, and then put this beautiful country on your to-visit list. It's late summer in the Southern Hemisphere now. Harvest season is coming. And ski season will follow. Donate to relief efforts if you can, plan on visiting -- or at least buy some Chilean produce and order some Chilean wine to help the economy.

Patagonian Luxury Resort Offers February Value Packages

Remota's 4-for-3 and 7-for-4 packages offered during the Southern Hemisphere summer

I am in the Lake Tahoe area right now, reveling in abundant snow. But if I wanted to go to South America, now would be the time. Remota, a specatular luxury resort lodge on the outskirts of Porta Natales near Chile's even more spectacular Torres del Paine National Park, is offering February specials at hard-to-beat prices -- especially considering that this is during the summer season. En route to the national park in 2006, I visited Remota just for a look at this breathtaking place with a philosophy of luxury and comfort against a design backfrop of Zen-like simplicity and some of the best scenery on the planet.

I don't know whether it is a slowdown in the world economy that instigated such a generous, last-minute offer, but guests can get four nights at Remota for the price of three (US $1,548, regularly $1,980 per person, double occupancy) or seven for the price of four ($1,980, regularly $2,988) for lodging, meals and daily excursions. Hurry up, because this value deal is valid for travel during February 2010. The fine print: "subject to availability upon booking" and "some restrictions may apply."

If you've got a lot of frequent flyer miles, now might be the time to try to use them up. LAN Chile Airlines is a partner on American Airlines' OneWorld frequent flyer program. Current roundtip air fares to Punta Arenas start at $1,363 from Los Angeles, $1,468 from New York and $1,486 fom Miami.lus taxes. It's counter-intuitive that fares would be higher from New York than from Miami, but in this age of yield management, LAN probably has more passengers from Florida. If you're traveling that far, check about a stopover in Santiago, Chile's fascinating capital.

In the unlikely event that you want to write to Remota, the address is Ruta 9 Norte, km. 1.5, Huerto 279 / Puerto Natales, Patagonia, Chile. You are more likely to contact them or book online or even more likely, to call their tollfree number, 866-431-0519.

"Confessions of a Travel Writer"

Travel Channel premiere of a program that's a bit about my life

Many of my travel writer colleagues are totally fabulous: smart, curious, adaptable, genuinely nice. But some are less so: demanding, complaining, self-centered, condescending. And a few are particularly unpleasant to travel with. "Confessions of a Travel Writer," which was shown on the Travel Channel on August 10 but which I just watched, alluded to both. Fortunately, the show didn't feature the worst of the travel writer species or I'd be embarrassed by association.

Cameras followed five travel writers hosted by the Chilean Tourist Office on a one-week press trip last February (I think) to Santiago, San Antonio Valley wine country, Valparaiso and Patagonia (including the totally spectacular Torres del Paine National Park). And I finally watched, thanks to the magic of DVR. Charles Runnette hosted the show, with Shira Lazar, Chantal Martineau, Jimmy Im and Andrew Evans comprising the rest of the guests. Some of them represented publications that I thought did not accept "sponsored trips" -- but that's a topic unto itself. I could totally identify with it: a packed-full itinerary, private van transportation (and flights to/from Patagonia) between stops and lavish hosted meals that everyone seems to be hungry for.

On camera, Runnette sported the been-everywhere-seen-everything shaggy traveler look. He complained on camera about trivial inconveniences such getting the worst room in a Valparaiso hotel, about sitting in the last row on the flight to Punta Arenas, about penguin poop at the Isla Magdalena penguin rookery and about mosquitoes elsewhere in Patagonia. I can testify that press trips rarely give guests much of a chance to spend much time in their rooms other than take stuff out of their bag(s) and put it back in, shower and sleep. Runnette was enthusastic about a couple of big soaking tubs, but I've rarely had time to fill, let alone soak, in one of them on a press trip.

What the TV show failed to convey is the real work involved in gaining some insights and getting an interesting story despite the grueling schedule and the fact that even a group as small as five has different interests. Plus the host's desire to show off very specific things. The Society of American Travel Writers' 2006 convention was in Santiago. About half of us stayed at the same hotel that this press group did and the rest in a different high-rise hotel distant from the historic town center. Many of us ate at one of the Bellavista restaurants that this group did upon arrival. Many of us went to Valparaiso fof a day. And a few of us lucky ones selected a post-convention trip to Patagonia, including Torres del Paine National Park. Unlike a press trip, however, which is hosted, members pay to attend SATW conventions -- and in some cases, pay more than other groups but often get more for our meeting money. That said, we had slightly different versions of many of the experiences that this group did.

Like most reality shows, "Confessions of a Travel Writer" was not really real. All five of the guests were rather young, trim and telegenic. In truth, many travel writers have many decades on their odometers and aren't nearly as telegenic as this quintet. The women clearly were not members of the Patagonia/North Face/REI tribe. They wore the New York version of active outdoorwear, city-style makeup and glowing smiles. But even five people can be a microcosm of the travel writer experience. Charles and Shira hung together a lot. Jimmy misplaced his notebook in Valparaiso. Andrew was interested in photographing things that did not necessarily captivate the others -- especially Charles. But on balance, they seemed to get along. And that, on any press trip, is sometimes an accomplishment.

In an interview with WorldHum.com, which is owned by or affiliated with The Travel Channel, Runnette described the tightrope that we travel writers walk. He told interviewer Michael Yessis, "Any job is difficult to summarize in 43 minutes on TV, and, frankly, this show only scratches the surface of what it takes to be a travel writer. The funny thing about this job is that when you tell anyone you’re a travel writer, nine times out of 10 the first thing out of their mouth is: 'That’s my dream job.' I would say this show lays waste to that popular myth. Yes, it’s better than many jobs, but after watching this show viewers will understand the down side of travel writing. Dealing with morons, bad pay, long days and nights. And, frankly, it can be lonely at times."

The program was promoted as a "premiere," but according to a Facebook entry, it is a pilot -- so there may be others. If there are, I'll be watching.

2008 is the Year of the Volcano in Chile

Two major volcanoes eruptions since January impact national parks and resort towns

In January, the central Chilean volcano called Llaima began breathing fire, sporadically emitting lava flows that turned the snow that covered upper slopes into steam and sending an ash column more than 10,000 feet into the sky, as was dramatically captured in filmed reports from National Geographic and CNN. The 10,252-foot volcano is reportedly one of the country's most active, having erupted as recently as 1994. It is some 422 miles south of the capital of Santiago. The nearest town, Melipueco, was evacuated, as were visitors and rangers in Conguillio National Park.

Chaiten, some 400 miles farther south near the Chile-Argentina border has been erupting since May 2, forcing evacuations first from the nearby eponymous town of Chaiten, then the larger and then more distant community of Futaleufo and even moving out military personnel. This was far more surprising. "The long dormant 3,280-foot (1,000-meter) Chaiten volcano began erupting on Friday for the first time in thousands of years, and the huge plume of volcanic ash is clearly visible on satellite images cutting a swathe across South America's southern tip," according to a Reuters report. Airlines have canceled flights to southern Patagonia, because of the potential danger of volcanic ash being sucked into jet engines.

Chaiten's eruption is still going strong (NASA satellite, photo right). It is located in what vulcanologists refer to as the Andean Arc that stretches from Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. "It is home to 2,000 volcanoes, 500 of which experts say are potentially active. Around 60 have erupted over the past 450 years," Reuters noted. While Argentina is not usually listed as part of the arc, ash has been reported in the Argentine resort of Bariloche in Nahuel Huapi National Park and even as far away as the capital of Buenos Aires. The region is famous not only for skiing at Bariloche but also for Tahoe-blue mountain lakes. As ash, which soared into the stratosphere, continues to fall over a wide region, it could impact the ski season that begins in June, and the lakes might no longer be so pristine.