Sandboarding Epiphany in Chile

Sitting at the top of a sand dune, with board attached to my feet, wind and sand pelting my face, looking out at the alien terrain reminiscent of Star Wars, is when I finally realized how damn lucky I am.  Maybe it was the altitude or maybe it was the exhaustion from trudging up the steep sand, but something finally jostled me and opened my eyes. 

Here I am sand-boarding in the San Pedro de Atacama in the Northern... [Read more]

The Grandness of Valparaiso

I was once lured to read Isabel Allende’s novel Daughter of Fortune upon recommendation, but never got more than forty pages in. Though I stopped reading, I still remember the magical description of a bustling port city at the turn of the 20th century. Allende’s  heroine runs about a city built along hills and terraces that look out onto the sea, and from her description I knew Valparaiso was a city... [Read more]

Crossing the Andes

I was in Mendoza, a desert in the west of Argentina that is now wine country, taking tours of vineyards and wineries and tasting the local Malbecs (Argentine wine). I was having a lovely time, but all I could do was stare off into the distance to the jagged Andes that ran to the west. 

There they were, the second highest mountain range in the world and so close. And to think just west of the mountains was Chile.... [Read more]

The Island of Poetry, Isla Negra

Mark Twain wrote in Innocents Abroad that there are places in the world where we can find “nothing to remind... [Read more]