Chile

Chile is a country of startling contrasts and extreme beauty, with attractions ranging from the towering volcanic peaks of the Andes to the ancient forests of the Lake District.

From salty-desert top to glacier-crowded bottom, Chile is a fascinating reminder of nature's beauty and power. This narrow trickle of a country is jammed with enough geysers, mountains, beaches, forests and volcanos to keep adventure nuts slavering for a lifetime.

For anyone who has ever been fascinated by geography, the long, impossibly thin line of Chile has always produced a tiny moment of astonishment. Chile stretches over 4,300 km (2,700 mi) along the southwestern coast of South America, a distance roughly the same as that from San Francisco to New York, or Edinburgh to Baghdad. At the same time, its width never exceeds 240 km (150 mi), making the country more than eighteen times longer than its widest point.

The most obvious factor in Chile's remarkable slenderness is the massive, virtually impassable wall of the Andes, a mountain range that is still rising and that contains more than fifty active volcanic peaks. The western border is of course the Pacific Ocean, but it is a misconception to picture Chile as nothing more than the steep western slope of the Andean peaks. All along its length Chile is marked by a narrow depression between the mountains and the sea. To the north the land rises and becomes more arid, until one reaches the forbidding Atacama Desert, one of the most inhospitable regions on earth.  To the south just the opposite transformation takes place: the land falls away, and the region between mountains and ocean fades into the baffling archipelagic maze that terminates in Chilean Patagonia.

Viña Del Mar, Chile's most luxurious resort town, attracts an eclectic mix of visitors from all over the world. Some come for Viña Del Mar 's languorous tropical ambiance--its grand avenues lined with palms and banana trees, its vast, soft stretches of white sand beach, and its sybaritic plenitude of gourmet restaurants. While Viña's celebrity has brought it any number of sleek, modern buildings, the character of the town is set by its many charming colonial houses.

Chile's distinctive culture has survived the violence and repression of its recent history and is thriving once again thanks to a people noted for their warmth and resilience. Despite having the most European community in South America, indigenous traditions persist in the Andean foothills and in the southern plains, while some of South America's finest national parks draw trekkers and guanaco spotters alike. Chile's population is composed predominantly of mestizos, who are descended from marriage between the Spanish colonizers and the indigenous people. The surviving indigenous groups consist of the Aymara, in the north, and the Mapuche, who number roughly 100,000 and continue to inhabit the forested areas of the lake district. Chile is also home to a number of significant immigrant groups, including minority populations from virtually every European country.

Full country name: Republic of Chile
Area: 748,800 sq km
Population: 15.5 million
Capital City: Santiago (pop 5,000,000)
People: 95% European descent & mestizo, 5% Indian
Language: Spanish; Castilian, Rapanui, Aymara
GDP: US$156.1 billion
GDP per capita: US$10,100
Major Industries: Copper, fishmeal, wine.
Major Trading Partners: USA, Japan, Germany, UK
 

For more information please visit: Chile Tourism

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