Tag: South America
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The Falkland Islands, Part 2
Battlefield tour I am joining a battlefield tour today with the same knowledgeable chap, who we soon find out, has guided several TV crews and military experts and veterans. We are going to go up as far as San Carlos, where the troops were landed, back past Darwin, Goose Green, various memorials around those places,…
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The Falkland Islands, Part 1
I wasn’t sure what to expect of the Falklands. A friend inscribed in a copy of his book, ‘Falkland Islands Shores’ for me thus: ‘Please visit these beautiful islands’. That was before Argentina invaded and occupied the islands in May 1982 and the subsequent war with Britain. 43 years later and I finally get here.…
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Chile, Part 3: Easter Island (Rapa Nui)
Ana Te Pahu Our first stop today is at an area of collapsed lava tubes with gaping mouths. Inside the main cave here, Ana Te Pahu, after which the site is named, bananas are growing. The leaves poke out of it. Some bunches of green bananas droop from its branches. Also vines are grown in…
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Chile, Part 2: Easter Island (Rapa Nui)
Stage two of my travels to Chile and it is away from the mainland to the magical mystery isle of Rapa Nui in the South Pacific. Settled by Polynesians from the Marquesas islands it is thought. With its legendary carved stone heads, the moai, monuments to the ancestors. The first European didn’t arrive on the…
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Chile, Part I: The central mainland
So Chile is the destination for my winter excursion from UK. One excellent reason for this choice is that the country’s territory includes Easter Island (Rapa Nui), located about 2,240 miles west of the mainland in the South Pacific. And those enigmatic moai heads on the island are reachable only from Santiago de Chile, the…