Chile is a country of startling contrasts and extreme beauty
Destination Chile, a virtual travel guide to the long coastal strip between the Andes
mountains and the Pacific Ocean. This page aims to give you a broad overview of Chilean art, culture, people, environment, geography, history, economy and government.
Beside a country profile with facts and figures, the page contains links to sources which provide you with all the information you need to know about this South American nation, e.g.: official web sites of Chile, addresses of Chilean and foreign embassies, domestic airlines, city- and country guides with extensive travel and tourism information on accomodation, tourist attractions, events and more like weather information, maps, statistics and local newspapers from Chile.
A three-year-old Marxist government was overthrown in 1973 by a dictatorial military regime led by Augusto PINOCHET, which ruled until a freely elected president was installed in 1990.
Sound economic policies, first implemented by the PINOCHET dictatorship, led to unprecedented growth in 1991-97 and have helped secure the country’s commitment to democratic and representative government. Growth slowed in 1998-99, but recovered strongly in 2000.
Discover Chile: the Andes, Atacama desert, volcanoes and lake
s, Santiago, ValparaÃso, Farellones/El Colorado, island of Chiloé, Valle del Encanto, Parque Nacional Lauca, Patagonia, Torres del Paine National Park, Easter Island, Isla de Pascua, Rapa Nui, Juan Fernández archipelago.
Accommodation, hotels, attractions, festivals, events, tourist boards, biking, hiking, mountaineering, climbing, skiing, cruising, diving, adventure tours and much more.
Located 2200 miles due west of Chile and 1200 miles east of Pitcairn Island, is a sixty-three square mile island formed eons ago by two volcanoes. Because a Dutch seaman, Jacob Roggeveen, came upon it on Easter Day, 1722, we know it on our maps as Easter Island.
Polynesians know it as Rapa Nui. By either name, Easter Island is renowned for the nine hundred massive carved statues known as Moai, some weighing more than fifty tons, which were erected centuries before lookouts on the Dutch ship spotted this speck alone on the Pacific horizon.
Modern DNA testing and carbon dating have answered many of the mysterious questions that have swirled over the history of the island’s early inhabitants and their seeming passion for constructing stone statues, all fundamentally the same in appearance. At that time the island was very hospitable. Fish and birds were plentiful, as was edible plant life. Much of the island was thickly forested, provided excellent habitat for the birds, as well as rich soil for the plant life. If anything, life on the island was too good. Moreover, it was finite.
Rich as the natural resources were, over-population, probably, resulted in their substantial depletion. Pollen records indicate the forests were endangered by 800 AD and likely disappeared in the 1400′s. Most of the Moai were sculpted between 1000 and 1500 AD. The timber likely utilized to move them from their quarries on specially built roads could have resulted in the exhaustion of the forests.
This may explain why almost half of the Moai were still in the quarries. Speculation also suggests that those in the quarries were somehow imperfect, therefore simply abandoned. The largest Moai, found incomplete in a quarry, was 72 feet long and estimated to weigh 165 tons. Interestingly, an early researcher put its size at 65 feet and its weight at 270 tons. Of the two hundred which were actually erected, the largest was about 33 feet tall and weighed about 80 tons.
