TRAVELERS’TALES SHARE YOUR STORIES AT WWW.AUDLEYTRAVEL.COM/SHARE Blowing off steam The Millers enjoyed seeing dozens of geysers in El Tatio; (opposite from top left) moai on Easter Island; street art in Valparaíso; a rhea in the wild; locals paddling reed boats during the Tapati Rapa Nui Festival
CHILE
Gordon & Jane Miller traveled to Chile and Easter Island with Audley
W
e love variety when we travel – a mixture of culture, scenery, and flora and fauna. Several friends had suggested that we might enjoy Chile and Easter Island, so, with considerable help and advice from our specialist, Chloe Dillon-Smith, we embarked on three weeks exploring this fascinating part of South America. A lengthy long-haul flight took us from a freezing cold January evening to the pleasant 85-degree heat of Santiago. We paused for a half-day walking tour of this
city before flying north to the village of San Pedro de Atacama in the Atacama Desert. Away from San Pedro’s dirt streets and adobe houses, we watched the early morning water vapor hang above dozens of geysers in El Tatio (made even more impressive at sunrise). At lower altitudes, we drove across the desert plains and salt flats to see Chilean, Andean and James’s flamingoes and their pretty pink plumage. Flying back to Santiago, we touched down briefly before the five-hour flight to Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, as it’s named in Polynesian. The small island’s only
community, Hanga Roa, is one of the most remote in the world, and it was an ideal base for us to begin our explorations. The highlight of the island had to be the moai dotted around the coastline, and the quarries where the dark-grey and black statues, and their reddish topknots, were carved from volcanic stone. Theories abound about how the moai were moved from the quarries to their seaside locations, but the most plausible would seem to suggest the ‘fridge-walking’ technique, where the stone was walked into position by rocking it from side to side.
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