"I would not have made this so long except that I do not have the
leisure to make it shorter."
[INDENT][INDENT][INDENT]-Blaise Pascal
[/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT][SIZE=2]This past Christmas, I was fortunate enough to have a few ‘free’ days off, which I could cobble together a whole week (yes, seven whole days, whoo-hoo!) for a vacation. The Significant Other and I decided we’d do another one of our ‘quick get-aways’, this time to central Chile. Why [I hear some people cry] go there, a good 10¾-hour flight away? Especially given that there are so many perfectly-good tropical birding destinations to be visited, at only about half the distance? Well, several independent factors coalesced to motivate this choice of destination, but the main ones were these:[/SIZE][INDENT] #1 – New country, ergo, new everything (pretty nearly). Neither of us had ever seen Chile before. We had done a couple of previous trips to South America, but these had barely taken us beyond about one degree south latitude. So, there was a whole bio-region there – the south temperate – which was terra incognita for us. As south American countries go, Chile has a very limited overall checklist, but virtually all of these would be lifers.
[/INDENT][INDENT] #2 – We would be hitting the ground in Chile just a few days after the Summer solstice; this meant the sun would rise before 0700, and not set until after 2100. The long daylight hours were a big draw, not just because there’d be more time for bird-watching, but also because they would make life easier for traveling – more time to get from place to place, in an unfamiliar country.
[/INDENT][INDENT] #3 - As always, for us, convenience plays a large part in our choice of destination, especially for trips of such short duration. We chose Chile partly on the strength of the fact that we could reach Santiago via a direct, non-stop flight from Toronto Pearson (which is less than an hour’s drive from our house); we wouldn’t have to go through security several times, worry about transferring luggage, and, most importantly, would have to waste any of our precious 168 available hours sitting around, waiting for a connection.
[/INDENT]With only a week, and non-infinite funds, we couldn't afford to be very ambitious in our itinerary. The blue rectangle in the attached outline map shows, very roughly, the area we visited on this trip.