We spent the better part of our two days in Concepcion trying to figure out how to get to the ranch of Butch Cassidy, the outlaw who I learned about in the hit movie with Paul Neumann and Robert Redford (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). It was complicated. First we had to find the little town in Argentina where the ranch house was located, then work out border issues crossing from Chile, then seeing if we could drive. We couldn’t. For reasons beyond us Argentina made driving a rental car from Chile across the border prohibitive. So we found a bus to get us to Bariloche , Argentina (8 hours) and then a car to drive 3 hours to the little town. Logistics were, shall we say, complex. Thus getting to Concepcion and closer to Patagonia was good but the nearby mall, which was huge, constituted all of our explorations.

It’s almost a direct line from Santiago, Chile to the smallish blue collar city town of Chillán 430 miles to the south. We picked up our little VW and came out of thick traffic before escaping the low, shrub-pocked mountains of the city. High above, in the haze and heat, the Santiago Andes stared down at us with their volcanic eyes. For the next several hours we passed a little bit of everything - shanties hugging the highways outside the city, then warehouses, motels, granaries, cornfields, wineries. Once in town, we walked to the colorful La Ramona restaurant for a late dinner. Everywhere we found great street art.

Valparaiso is famous for its color, steep, winding streets and boisterous street art. It’s a vibrant and diverse city. We explored our way through its bohemian section up to the Brighton Hotel, a three-story house perched above the streets below (see the view). Buildings here are both festive and ragged, which gives them a tired but still lively charm. They remind me of parts of New Orleans and Pittsburgh’s Mexican War Streets. The artwork is phenomenal, and dinner at the Brighton was excellent!

Each evening in Valparaiso we walked along the beach. The video reveals many ways folks find to make a living. But one of the most unique was this fellow who created these amazing rock balancing acts. He had made a good dozen when we saw him. People watched and explored and, like us, made a small donation for his efforts.

We arrived in Vina Del Mar, the stepsister and symbiote of Valparaiso. A lovely cliff side town along the Pacific. It was dinnertime and we were looking for seafood. We found it at Restaurante Cochoa but getting there meant dropping down the the cliff side 250 feet and then back up. It was worth it (see seafood and views). The weather is perfect! 50 degrees at night. 70 during the day.

Vina Del Mar is a beautiful beach town next to Valparaiso. Above the Pacific, the steep cliffs hang one high rise after another, too many, I fear. While walking I caught four hang-gliders swooping above. They rode the current for hours. What a view they must have had. The steep hills here and in Valparaiso give Pittsburgh and San Francisco a run for its money. We climbed several to get down to the sea for a bite to eat. Plus walking up and down 300 feet of stairs is a great workout!

Our bandwidth is severely limited given how remote the mountains are where we are staying. So I can’t send the Choquequirao and Machu Picchu videos I was hoping to get out. But I am hoping I can send these few pictures today. We are just outside the small down of Vicuña adjacent to the Atacama Desert which makes these mountains home to some of the world’s best and most powerful observatories, including Cerro Tololo. I tried to capture this picture of it on a far mountain as the mist cleared at sunrise this morning. When the sun sets at night the skies come alive with stars and we are spending our nights enjoying the show. An app called Stellarium allows you see see the night sky and identify what you see. This screenshot is an example what we saw as we looked at the stargazing sign for Capricorn. When I get more bandwidth I’ll send more.

Our last evening in Vicuña we decided to get an even better view of the night sky and arranged to meet with Victor and Lincoln Alvarez who bounced us and a handful of other stargazers through the mountains to a spit of flat rock where they had set up a motorized 14inch telescope. The starlight was magnificent and we took close looks at the Tarantula Nebula more the 1000 light years in diameter, Orion’s Belt (the middle star is really a nebula), Saturn, Jupiter, the brightest star in the sky-Sirius, a baby at 250 million years old and, course, the moon. See it all is humbling and resets your view of life and the world. Thanks to ElkiMagic.com for setting it up. These images were made available using the the Stellarium App. If you like Stargazing you can down load it from the Apple App Store for free.

As we head to the tip of South America (a very long way to go), we wanted to explore one of Chile’s many well known observatories. One of the most famous is in Vicuña, deep in the Atacama Desert. But that’s an almost 12 hour drive so we stopped for Thanksgiving in the small fishing village of Caldera. No Turkey dinner here! But the fish is spectacular and we tried our hand with the Chilean version of chicken fajitas! A very tasty cross between Mexican-American fajitas and Chinese stir fry. In Peru they called it chaufe.

Before departing the sleepy town of Caldera, we found the location of the first train to depart South America. Created by American entrepreneur William (Guillermo) Wheelwright, the train was built to carry ore from the Chanarcillo mine for export from the harbor. The original depot is long gone, but locals are still proud and working to develop it into a tourist destination with this museum.

We spent a couple of days in Antofagasta, a city along the Pacific on our way south. It’s a busy port city where copper is mined and then shipped around the world , mostly industrial but with beautiful views of the ocean, barreling waves loved by surfers and high cliffs and mountains. It was a Bolivian city until 1879 when Chile occupied and one obsession in the Latin American War of the Pacific.

The terrain between Iquique and San Pedro d’Atacama is desiccated and wild, almost alien. But when we came over this ridge into the Atacama Valley with its sprawling desert and magnificent volcanoes, we were stunned.

Our first full day in the Atacama Desert- the driest place on earth with less than an inch of rainfall per year-we explored Valle de la Luna, the Valley of the Moon so named because of its unearthly landscape. Later we watched the sunset over a portion of the valley called Coyote Point. Some say the name comes from the terrain where the famous battles between Cartoon characters Wiley Coyote and the Road Runner took place (one of my favorites). I have to say, it does look familiar! And terribly beautiful.

We didn’t spend much time in Iquique, but we enjoyed what we saw. A beautiful malecon along the Pacific, with high mountains at its beachfront shoulder. It’s growing fast. Hopefully they won’t over due the development along the coast.

A half hour from Arica is the tiny village of San Miguel with an impressive and growing archeological museum dedicated to the history of Chile including the ancient Chinchurro people who mummified their dead at least 7000 years ago, predating the Eqyptian culture. We found examples of the mummies which have been found through the region where the desert has protected them. The Chinchurro were a long-lived advanced culture that developed along the Pacific and into the desert. I only wish we could have found the locations of the discovered mummies.

We arrived at a small eco-hotel in Arica-the Hotel Apacheta— highly recommended. This was the sunset as we settled into our room and the view of the rocky volcanic coastline outside our door. Heaven. There are also beautiful beaches nearby.

We spent a few days in Arica, enjoying the Pacific, catching up on work, exploring the town a bit. We entered a mall and thought we were in the United States! Almost all US stores. Along the road we saw an Arica version of the Pittsburgh chair 😊. And every day the sunsets were spectacular.

We leave Arica and this beautiful sanctuary with this video of ocean, birds, clams and crab as we next go in search of the mummies of the Chinchorro people of ancient Chile.