The European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Antofagasta, a port city in northern Chile.
ESA video after the break »
Tag: Chile
Deutsche Welle (DW) Documentary via YouTube »
A trip along Chile’s National Route 7, the Carretera Austral, takes us into the stunning wilderness of Patagonia – a place that many German emigrants chose as their new home almost a century ago.
The Carretera Austral is straddled by mountain ranges, primeval forests, fjords, volcanoes and a huge ice field. It has taken decades to carve its way through the almost impassable terrain – even now a lot of traffic is forced to take a detour across the border into Argentina. The military dictator Augusto Pinochet made the construction of the road a national priority in the 1970s, sending thousands of soldiers to the region to work under the most adverse conditions. One of the last surviving members of Pinochet’s junta, former military police chief Rodolfo Stange, talks about the road’s strategic importance for the regime.
German marine biologist Vreni Häussermann tells us about a catastrophe in one of the Patagonian fjords – an event that underlines how economic expansion along the route has adversely affected the natural environment in southern Chile. On our journey we meet descendants of German emigrants who found a new home in Patagonia’s remote vastness after the First World War. An insight into the past and present of this unique region.
150 travellers who completed epic cross-continental cycling journeys were surveyed.
Alee Denham at CyclingAbout.com writes »
Each of the 150 cyclists got three votes to cast, and I simply tallied up the results. In the end, 80 different countries were favourited, which is pretty cool because that means most corners of the world have something, for somebody.
These are their top picks for the best countries for long-distance cycling »
10. 🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan
9. 🇨🇱 Chile
8. 🇲🇽 Mexico
7. 🇦🇺 Australian
6. 🇮🇷 Iran
5. 🇮🇳 India
4. 🇨🇳 China
3. 🇹🇯 Tajikistan
2. 🇺🇸 USA
1. 🇹🇷 Turkey
A beautiful time-lapse video of many South American landscapes by Morten Rustad.
Morten Rustad via Vimeo says »
One year of travel, nine countries, countless hours on busses, motorbikes, and cars. Hundreds of thousands of images taken. 30TB of data used, 5 months of editing. The time-lapse film features South America like it has never been before with images from Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.
More about this project, including BTS videos, at Morten’s website.
Martin Heck | Timestorm Films:
My second visit to the southern tip of South America. My first trip in 2015 was incredible and resulted in some of my most successful videos. Even though this was a work-trip and I just had 4 days to spend in the amazing Torres del Paine Nationpark in Chile is was sight to behold. Early in spring snow, wind and stormy winds were always part of the game. Weather completely flipped from warm and calm into a snow-storm within minutes. But that’s what we expect and makes Patagonia such a special and wild place.
https://vimeo.com/255801746
Osprey Packs:
Lorraine Blancher: “Every new trail you travel on or off the beaten path brings uncertainty. Riding bikes in a place like this forces you to pay attention to the terrain, listen closely to suggestions on how to move through it. Instead of success and failure you became to think in terms of adaptation and forward motion.”
Kristine McDivitt Tompkins donated 1 million acres of private land as part of a 10 million acre addition to Chile’s national park system. This will add five new parks and expand three more and safeguard Patagonia’s wilderness, provide a boon to economic development in southern Chile, and continue to welcome Chileans and international tourists alike.
This conservation effort has been in the making for more than 25 years.
Jonathan Franklin, The Guardian
Chile has created five sprawling national parks to preserve vast tracts of Patagonia – the culmination of more than two decades of land acquisition by the US philanthropists Doug Tompkins and Kristine McDivitt Tompkins and the largest donation of private land to government in South America.
The five parks, spanning 10.3m acres, were signed into law on Monday by Chile’s president Michelle Bachelet, launching a new 17-park route that stretches down the southern spine of Chile to Cape Horn.
McDivitt Tompkins, the former chief executive of the outdoors company Patagonia, handed over 1m acres to help create the new parks. The Chilean government provided the rest in federally controlled land.