Santiago, Valaparaiso and Valle Nevado, Chile

For family and friends, here are a few reflections and photos on my 21 days in Chile serving as the Deputy Team Leader for the inspection of Embassy Santiago.

This has been my first visit to Chile, and I found Santiago very prosperous and clean.  Because the city sits in a bowl with the Andes just to the east, the air inversion is a problem - one that is likely to worsen as the level of development rises.  Chile already has the hightest GCP/capita ($19000) and is the most internet connected  country in South America.  It has a very open market approach and you can find anything here that you can in the U.S.

I was able to get away for a two day/one night weekend in Valparaiso.  Unfortunately, several of the photos I took at first, including one with a statue of Pablo Neruda and me did not come out well.

This is the outside the human rights museum in the center of Santiago.  The museum's focus is on the events of September 11, 1973, which occured shortly after I started studies at U. Maine. It provides no context to the situation in the country at the time of the coup, and nothing about any foreign role in the coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende.  It was build in 2007 and is very factual.  Chile had a truth and reconciliation commission, but since the first one the authorities (center-left and center-right) have several times increased the estimates of those who were murdered, or "disappeared," and now totals more than 28,000 persons.

These two photos are of the presidencial palace, where Salvador Allenda took his own life after the air force had bombed it and he had sent his staff to surrender; the statue is of Salvador Allende and stands in the square outside the presidential palace.  He gave a moving speechbroadcast by a radio station the military had not taken over, in which he said he would never surrender and that he knew Chile would return one day to democracy.  

Another view of the square inside the human rights museum in Santiago.  The photos on the wall record events from the military dictatorship (1973-89).

Here are some photos from my trip to Valle Nevado, about 90 mins from Santiago.  The elevation is 9-10,000 ft.  While we were there, snow started to fall. It is supposedly the largest ski area in South America and has 29 lifts. The ski season ended more than one month ago, but it was right at freezing while we were there.  Above is another member of our inspection team, Robin.

Robin and our guide, as we wait for some members of our team to return to the bus.

I walked about 1/2 a km up the slopes.  At times there were 50 mph winds and in some spots it was dead quiet and there was no wind or sound.  The ski area is above the tree line, as much from the winds and dry weather as altitude. The melting snow in the spring (Southern Hemisphere) creates odds shapes. 

The dog above is a large version of Kenneth III's dog Lia, very friendly and liked to jump up on me.  She got a several pieces of my baguette. 

On the other side of this sign, the slope drops straight off about 500 fit.-- no ropes and no fence! 

Nairobi National Park

This is my first post on the blog I used while in Iraq. I have returned to using Hillas' Histories to record some of my experiences traveling around the world while inspecting U.S. Embassies.  

Our team has been in Nairobi for a few days and I and seven colleagues decided to do a one-half day drive through Nairobi National Park, which is located just outside the capital.  The large, green plain north of Nairobi near the hills, where Out of Africa was filmed, was filled with lots of wildlife, which were sometimes visible with the Nairobi city skyline providing a contrasting backdrop.

We were fortunate to view the following wildlife:  gazelles (both Thomspson and Grant), cape buffalo, impala, a lion, hardebeast (which we saw more of than any other animal), elan (with huge straight horns), ostrich, giraffes, warthogs, vultures, guinea fowl, maribu storks, black heron, egrets, ox-peckers, yellow-throated spur fowl, hammerkopf (a hammerhead bird), long-taliled shrikes, kites, martins, black faced marvet (a monkey) and baboons.  

Below are some of the photos from our outing:

Our group upon exiting the Nairobi National Park.

Zebras grazing alongside the track we were on.  Note the mud on the top of his back.  We watched him roll in a mud hole.

These are Masai giraffe, which have darker mottling.

Giraffes enjoying a stroll down the track -- and not too interested in moving to the side.

Not sure of the implied connection between the road sign and the skull of a cape buffalo, but it caught out attention . . . . and we did not drive off road.  If fact, it was so wet we had to push our van out of a mud hole on the road.  

An elderly lion, favoring his right rear paw, limped down to where our vehicle was parked.  Somewhat haggard, he was clearly beyond his prime.  But, then, he may have thought the same about some of us.