EcoaustralChile

WHY A GREAT SOUTH PARK?

Chile is truly a great Southern Hemisphere nature reserve, a place where diverse elements and processes of nature and culture converge and are preserved.

Chile is the great reserve that EcoAustral invites you to visit, so that travellers from all over the world have the opportunity to approach and experience the value of this diversity.

Chile is a living and dynamic testimony we would like to share with the world, so that ever more people join the cause of supporting a world that is rich and diversified in nature, culture and humanity.

Map of Chile

CHILE

Chile is a long and narrow country located in the South West of South America, flanked by the Pacific Ocean to the West and the Andes Mountain Range to the East. To the South its boundary is Cape Horn, on the way to Antarctica, and to the North it borders with Peru. It resembles a long and narrow coast in movement, an encounter between the ocean and the Andes, where the continent ends submerging itself into the sea to the sound of cracking ice, fragmented into a thousand isles and fjords in the glacier regions of Patagonia.

It is a country dominated by the great summits of the Andes Mountains which steeply lead down to the deeps of the Pacific coast. In only 300 to 400 kilometers it is possible to go down from mountains that rise up 6,000 m above sea level to submarine graves that can reach as deep down as 4,000 m. Many short and turbulent rivers cross this narrow extension, arriving in few kilometers to the coast. Many of them originate fertile valleys famous for the vineyards that have bred wines of great quality and variety praised throughout the world.

Chile is an endless transition that you can discover starting from the dry and unique desert to the north, with its extensive and extraordinary beaches, oases and the Altiplano; passing on to the fertile valleys and mountain gorges of the central zone; crossing over to enigmatic and volcanic isles that are lost in the Pacific; then, the apparition of the volcano chains and lakes of the South, flanked by amazing millenary forests. Further south still, the continent fragments into the thousands of isles of Patagonia, small barren islands and channels, that culminate in grandiose Tierra del Fuego, before giving the last jump to the Antarctic continent.

Chile is indeed a unique land of transition, diverse and spectacular, finding its expression in a single nation, diverse and multicultural, which with great effort and along an extensive history of pioneering and other world-known episodes, has managed to form a democratic, pluralist society that is enterprising and, despite periods of rupture, has maintained itself one of the safest and most stable societies in Latin America.

Chile has been forged by its own original towns, with a legacy of strength, courage and closeness to nature that remains to this day. It is also the fruit of the effort made by immigrants from many nations, especially Europeans, who settled this land, becoming a part of this nation, so unique in the Southern Hemisphere and so diverse.
Chile is a democracy and a Republic, in which freedom of expression coexists with the determination to close the wounds of a not-too-distant past, characterized by a period of rupture with its democratic institutions as well as of numerous confrontations between politically antagonistic currents, at times dominated by the most extreme tendencies. The great majority of the country, nevertheless, agrees on positions of dialogue and moderation and this has been the axis of the country’s recovery and sustained economic and social growth.

Chilean people are welcome and have one of the highest levels of education and culture in Latin America. Chile is a land of artists, and there have been many outstanding figures in the world of art and literature, like Nobel prizes Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral, and other writers of great repute like Vicente Huidobro, Nicanor Parra and more recently Isabel Allende, to name a few. Also, painters like Roberto Matta, Juan Francisco González and Nemesio Antúnez are outstanding in the arts.

The country counts with a high level infrastructure and services of good quality and reliability, including aerial transport, marine and terrestrial. There’s an excellent international airport in Santiago and also in the main cities of the country, a railway network that runs between the central and the southern zone, and a subway system in Santiago comparable to the best in the world.

The power supply, drinking water and sewage systems are modern and safe, and there has been remarkable progress in the control of pollution as also in the disposal and processing of domestic garbage and industrial waste.
The country has a good medical attention service, with many state hospitals and private clinics in most of the cities. The national police, known as "Carabineros de Chile", is a widely respected institution in this country, enjoying the people’s consideration due to its seriousness, reliability, honesty and professionalism.

The infrastructure for tourism offers very good hotels and restaurants, at prices more reasonable than those of the main capitals of Europe, North America and Asia. The quality of services has been progressing regularly to reach international standards, but there is still room for improvement in this respect. In Santiago and the main cities of the country, it is possible to find many excellent restaurants with gourmet cuisine, as well as night-clubs, pubs and bars, some of them including live folklore, jazz or rock shows, which are a great attraction.

The country is in general very secure and stable. There is no terrorist activity and no systematic social upheaval, rather specific movements by a given sector looking for improvements, that are expressed like in any other democratic country of the world. In recent years, there have been some conflicts in the south of the country related to Mapuche communities (indigenous peoples), demanding lands that historically belong to them.

The economy of the country relies on the exploitation of its natural resources, like copper, wood, fishery and aquaculture. Nevertheless, the services sector has undergone remarkable development and many national companies have been expanded as investors in other countries of Latin America, an example of the outstanding growth experienced by the country. Chile also attracts foreign investors, as in the case of electricity companies and the natural resources sector.

Inflation and unemployment have remained under control over the last ten years, as a result of sound economic policies: austerity and responsibility. The growth of the economy has also been affected by a succession of international crises in recent years, but despite that Chile still has one of the highest growth rates in Latin America.
Computerization has seen rapid advances, with numerous activities starting on the Web. Educational programs, public services and private companies have contributed in making communications, information flows and transactions faster, counting on numerous development programs directly stimulating the acceleration of this process.

Telecommunications are excellent and count on a modern and competitive telephone sector and networks for Internet and cable television all over the country, except for remote zones.

In the matter of natural resources, about 20 % of Chile’s territory is made up of environmentally protected areas, which has permitted the development of conservation and recovery programs as in few other countries. Many national parks, national reserves and natural monuments are spread throughout the country. The National Forest Corporation, although counting on limited resources, has been able to develop a work of protection and environmental education of great impact and which is expected to increase over the coming years.

Chile’s extensive and important seaboard and coastal territories have also been protected through norms involving the Navy’s Administration as well as the Fishery and Environmental Authorities, obtaining the protection of areas and species in benefit of a sustainable activity. Of course this has been, as in other countries, a controversial field and there is still much to do to reach rules of conduct that generating agreements between the diverse actors.

Chile is rich in mineral, forestry and marine resources. Mining in the Atacama Desert and the Andes Mountains, where a great part of the copper consumed and processed all over the world is extracted, is one of the pillars of the country’s economy. Ocean streams rich in nutrients (upwellings) spread all along the country’s central and northern coastal waters, affording one of the richest deep-sea fisheries of the world. Also, the rainy climate and the fertile earth in the south of the country have populated it with extensive forests producing woods of great quality and value. In that same part of the South and in the zone of Patagonia, thousands of unpolluted fjords and sheltered bays have proved ideal for the development, in less than two decades, of one of the world’s most competitive aquaculture industries, resting mainly on the production of salmon.

TERRITORIAL – THEMATIC DESTINATIONS.
Even though Chile is subdivided politically into 13 Regions, including the Metropolitan Region, EcoAustral has carried out a different division, based on the peculiarities of nature presented by the Chilean territory, or The Great South Park. That is why we have chosen eight thematic, territorial destinations, that is to say:

-Silent and sidereal Atacama
-Valleys of the Stars
-Majestic Andes
-Enigmatic Oceanic Isles.
-A Varied Land
-Water and Fire Route
-Pacific Patagonia

South of SouthAll of them possess singular natural and cultural characteristics, and their description can be obtained by clicking on any one of them, where one can also consult the supply of regular programs offered in each case.

CLIMATIC MAP
The climate of the different territorial destinations identified by EcoAustral in The Great South Park (Chile), is resumed in the following Summary Chart accounting for their seasonal variations:
VIEW CLIMATE MAP

LINKS ON CHILE
More information on Chile can be found in the following Web sites:

NATURAL GEOGRAPHY and RESOURCES
General Information on Chile:
www.bid2001chile.cl
Maps of Chile:
http://usuarios.lycos.es/chilemas/mapa
National Parks:
National Forest Corporation (CONAF):
www.conaf.cl
Under-Secretary of Fishery Office:
www.subpesca.cl
Institute for the Promotion of Fishing:
www.ifop.cl
National Natural Environment Commission:
www.conama.cl