Chile Disney Travel Agents Near Me

Overview

Introduction

Between the Pacific Ocean and the base of the Andes, one of world's great mountain ranges, Chile boasts some of the world's most varied and dramatic landscapes. To comprehend its diverse geography, imagine a single country stretching from Baja California through California, the Pacific northwest coast and up to the Alaska Panhandle. Chile's length—including the entire length of its jagged coast and islands—is an amazing 7,633 mi/12,606 km in all, making it the 19th-longest country in the world when measured by coastline, and the second-longest in South America.

Once considered remote, Chile is now one of South America's most modern and convenient travel destinations, with contemporary infrastructure and comforts, and an outstanding reputation for safety. Combined with its booming economy and strong peso, that also means prices are high in comparison with the rest of the continent. Among Chilean specialty tours are those focusing on wine production, desert flora and fauna, fly-fishing, skiing, river rafting and kayaking, and hiking through stunning Patagonian landscapes.

Modern Chile reflects Spanish, Basque, British, German and Croatian ancestry, but the bulk of the population is mestizo. Even so, there are still a million indigenous Mapuche in the south, a nation that remained autonomous until the late 19th century.

Geography

Exclusive of its thousands of coastal islands, Chile is roughly 2,700 mi/4,300 km long, but averages only 100 mi/160 km in width. Desert conditions dominate the subtropical north, and glaciers and tundra the far south. In the center, where the majority of Chileans live, the Mediterranean-like conditions have enabled many fertile valleys and vineyards, and the temperate south features remnants of glacial lakes and soaring volcanoes.

The nation's coastline is indented by many bays and fjords, and the eastern frontier is marked by the colossal Andes mountain range. Some people associate all of South America with the steaming Amazonian rain forest, but all of Chile's temperate rain forest lies in the middle latitudes.

Politically, Chile is divided into 15 regions, each denoted by a Roman numeral (for example, Region IV) except for Greater Santiago, which is known as the Metropolitan Region. Except in the southern Patagonian regions of Aisen (Region XI) and Magallanes (Region XII), regional identity has limited significance.

History

In pre-Columbian times, northernmost Chile formed part of the Inca empire, and the semisedentary Araucanians (ancestors of the Mapuche) occupied most of the heartland and southern temperate zones. In the far south, there were small populations of hunter-gatherers.

Spanish explorers, conquerors and settlers arrived in the mid-1530s and began a struggle with the native residents that lasted more than 300 years. Even after Chilean independence in 1810, it was another 70 years before the Mapuche finally were defeated.

By the early 19th century, criollos (American-born Spaniards) had already made substantial moves toward independence. Led by Bernardo O'Higgins, the illegitimate son of the Irish Viceroy of Peru, and others, an independent junta was created on 18 September 1810. With the assistance of Argentina's Jose de San Martin, O'Higgins fought to expel the Spaniards from the continent. Chileans consider O'Higgins the country's greatest national hero.

Throughout most of its history, and unlike its neighbors, Chile has enjoyed constitutional rule, an undefeated army and a republican form of government. It achieved its present boundaries after gaining the nitrate-rich Atacama Desert in the late-19th-century War of the Pacific, against Peru and Bolivia. The most notorious period of Chile's recent history began in 1970, when economic difficulties and political unrest followed the election of South America's first Marxist president, Salvador Allende. The tensions culminated in 1973 when a military junta headed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet took over the country.

Pinochet ruled the country with the proverbial iron fist until 1988. Critics of his regime were executed or imprisoned (many were mysteriously "disappeared" by the armed forces), and others went into exile as the general isolated Chile from most of the world. But Chile's democratic tradition reasserted itself when Pinochet decisively lost a 1988 plebiscite (held because he wanted to legitimate his presidential powers for another decade). A presidential election brought Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin to power, initiating an unbroken series of victories by the center-left coalition known as the Concertacion until 2010, when center-right president Sebastian Pinera took office.

After Pinochet's surprise arrest in London in 1998, a bid to try him in Spain for alleged human-rights abuses against Spanish citizens failed in 2000. His return to Chile, however, did not mean the end of his troubles. The Chilean courts showed themselves willing to enter legal action against the former dictator and his collaborators. He lost even many of his diehard supporters with revelations of secret overseas bank accounts and false documents, including passports, for himself and family members. However, his lawyers stalled by arguing that he was too ill to stand trial, and he died 10 December 2006 after a heart attack.

A year earlier, following a highly successful presidency by Pinochet opponent Ricardo Lagos, Chileans made history by electing the continent's first female president, Socialist Michelle Bachelet. Bachelet, Chile's defense minister under Lagos, was herself a torture victim. Her father, an air force general, was killed by the Pinochet regime. President Pinera, who had openly criticized the dictatorship during the plebiscite, is the first successful president candidate of the Alianza por Chile, a right-of-center coalition that includes many former Pinochet supporters.

In recent years, Chile's economy has proved the continent's strongest and most stable, thanks largely to strong prices for copper, the country's main export, which helped the country to recover quickly from the massive February 2010 earthquake.

Snapshot

Chile's chief attractions are historical places such as the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Valparaiso and Chiloe, the vineyards of the central valley, geoglyphs and ghost towns in the Atacama Desert, Easter Island, and the national parks of the lakes district and Patagonia. Activities include skiing, hiking, river rafting and kayaking, surfing and fly-fishing.

Nearly everyone will find something of interest in Chile. The quality of accommodations everywhere is among the best in the continent; only in a few areas is it still marginal.

Potpourri

In 1945, Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral became the first South American writer to win the Nobel Prize. Fellow Chilean poet Pablo Neruda became the third, in 1971. Mistral's poetry has an otherworldly, spiritual quality, and Neruda's work seems more grounded in this world—full of the combative political spirit that made him a controversial figure (though Chileans of all political persuasions take pride in his work).

Though less well-known than her House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune paints a vivid picture of life in Valparaiso and San Francisco during the California gold rush.

The Atacama Desert may be the world's driest, but its southernmost parts erupt with colorful wildflowers in rare wet years.

For much of the 19th century, Chile's principal export was guano, fertilizer made from sea gull droppings. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was mineral nitrates, also turned into fertilizer.

Dating from about 13,000 years ago, archaeological finds at Monte Verde, near the southern city of Puerto Montt, appear to predate by at least a millennium previous evidence of the earliest human habitation in South America.

The northern city of Arica is the main port for Chile's landlocked neighbor, Bolivia. Bolivia lost its maritime access to Chile in the War of the Pacific more than a century ago, and many Bolivians still resent Chile for this loss, but Arica belonged to Bolivia's ally Peru.

Its clear desert air has made Chile the center of astronomical research in the Southern Hemisphere. Three of the world's largest observatories are near La Serena, with another near Antofagasta. At the same time, Santiago has some of the worst air pollution of any city in South America.

Chile's population is overwhelmingly urban (87%). About one-third of all Chileans live in and around Santiago.

In area, Chile is slightly larger than the U.S. state of Texas, though it's never wider than 180 mi/290 km.

Although Chile trounced its neighbors Bolivia and Peru a number of times in the 19th-century War of the Pacific, it took Spain and Chile some 350 years to defeat the semisedentary Mapuche people in the far south.

The term "Chilean sea bass" is actually a trade name for a species whose common English name is the "Patagonian toothfish."