Chile: Pitching In

Roughly 80 000 visitors come to Easter Island every year and as I told you in my previous post, it's a very remote island. You can only fly to it from two places: Santiago de Chile or Tahiti, an island in the French Polynesia. It's about a five hour flight from either place. The island itself is very tiny: it's about 163 square kilometres (the city of Calgary is over 700). So I ask you to think... When so many people visit such a small place, where do they put all of their garbage? There isn't enough space for a big landfill, it's unhealthy to burn it, and you shouldn't throw it out in the ocean, so, where does it go? Well, they have to send it back to mainland Chile, all the way across the ocean, which is very expensive.



So, I felt it was my responsibility to create even less garbage than I normally do, and to take as much of it out myself when I left. I tried to eat local foods and fresh things that didn't come in wrappers. I avoided buying bottles of water and instead used tablets to make sure the tap water was safe. And I was lucky enough to get to participate in one more thing to help the island's environment: I joined a group of high school students who were hiking out to an empty part of the island to plant trees.


The wind here on Easter Island is really, really strong, and there aren't very many trees. That means that erosion is a big problem here (when the land wears away and crumbles over time). One area in the island, in particular, is quite barren (empty). About 70 of us together hiked for a couple of hours to this section that is being rehabilitated.

It took us about an hour to plant 1400 saplings of Aito. This type of tree grows well in areas where the soil is really hard, rocky, and missing good nutrients. Once these trees start growing, they'll help to break down the hard soil and make it easier for other things to grow. Then Mako'i, Dodonea and Albizia trees will be planted as well. The naturalist in charge told us that about 90% of the trees we plant should survive, so we felt really good about what we'd done to help the island's environment!

Chile: An Easter Treat

From the coast of Argentina, it was a 12 hour bus trip back to the Andes. I spent two weeks hiking in El Bolson, then Bariloche, Argentina, before crossing the border into Chile. Chile is a skinny country that stretches from the desert in the North to the End of the World in the South. I was there earlier in the trip when I trekked through Torres del Paine National Park (click here to see my earlier post). They also speak Spanish, and the Andes create a natural border between them and Argentina. Chile's quality of life is similar to Argentina's, but to me it seemed a little bit better. The cities were much cleaner, there were sidewalks, and the National Parks are run very professionally. But to be fair, I haven't seen very much of Chile, so I would need to explore more to make a fair comparison.

I celebrated Easter in the capital city of Chile, Santiago. We met up with two friends from our trip to Antarctica, and rented an apartment together. We cooked a big Easter dinner on Easter Sunday and each called home to our families. Then on Easter Monday, we got a real Easter treat...we boarded a plane and flew to Easter Island!

Easter Island is tiny spot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is the furthest place you can be in the world from somewhere else that's inhabited by people. It's literally in the middle of nowhere! Easter Island was formed over time by three volcanic eruptions and was settled by a group of Polynesians. A few explorers happened upon the island in their travels, the most famous being Captain James Cook in 1774. Easter Island became a part of Chile in 1888.



The native name for the island is Rapa Nui, which is also the name of the language and the people who live there. It is famous for their big rock statues carved to look like humans, called 'Moai.' Researchers have studied the culture of the Rapa Nui people and the moai for many years and they believe that the moai were carvings made to honour village leaders or important people in the village when they died. Their bodies were buried under the platforms, called "Ahu" which the moai stand on.




No one is certain the history of the moai but it is believed that the islanders themselves (the Rapa Nui people) pushed the moai over. It's easy to imagine how shocking it must have been for them to have explorers arrive and they suddenly learned they weren't the only people on the Earth! My favourite group of moai are the Tongariki group, which are 15 in a row on an ahu. These ones are enormous and it is a magical experience to watch the sun rise behind them.

My other faovurite place on the island is Rano Raraku, which is the quarry. A quarry is a big pit where rocks are carved out of the ground. The moai were made from hard volcanic rock. Partially carved figures, mainly heads, still scatter the hillside.





The moai are the main tourist attraction of the island, but it's also beautiful to hike around. The ancient volcanic eruption made it a very hilly place and there is one sandy beach that was created during a tsunami. The weather is tropical: hot and humid, and it's spectacular to watch the waves crashing on the cliffs. I absolutely loved the week that I spent here and felt very lucky to have come!

Chile: Rockin' in Torres del Paine

The Andes is the world's longest mountain range, stretching over 7 000 km through 7 countries in South America. When I went to Antarctica, I learned that the Andes range goes even further... underwater... to Antarctica! The Andes is also the tallest mountain range outside of Asia with its peak, Mount Aconcagua, in Argentina, rising to 6962 m in elevation.

In Chile and Argentina, I did some hiking in some beautiful National Parks. I was amazed by the types of rock faces we were seeing; they looked so different from our Rocky Mountains back home. So I was curious to do some research to learn more about how these rocks and mountains were formed. I'll focus on Torres del Paine in Chile, one of the world's most spectacular massifs.

It all started 12 million years ago...

Hot, volcanic magma spilled over the earth, cooling and hardening into the igneous rock called granite. Granite is very tough, it's about a 6.5 on the Moh's hardness scale of rocks. Thousands of years passed where layers of sedimentary rock on top helped to compress the granite even more.

Glacier Gray

Glaciers came next, covering the area. As they grew, retreated (calved), and shifted they wore away at the rocks (called erosion). (Check out my previous post about glaciers.) The glaciers lifted the layers of softer sedimentary rock and moved it as they moved. The rocks were slowly worn away until only hard, resistant rock was left: granite, in the shape of impressive, near 3000 m tall towers now called Torres del Paine.

I spent three days hiking and camping around the park. I saw one of the ancient glaciers, named Glacier Gray, and I woke up at 4 am to hike to the towers for sunrise. Seeing the first light of the day hit them made them even more spectacular!