The problem with tunas, and really any other fresh food sold here in Chile is that you have to buy a motherlode of it. Everything is packaged or grouped or sold in vast quantities, which always presents a problem at the fresh market, most of all for those of us who...

long shadow, ciclovía de vespuccio Cargado originalmente por bearshapedsphereAs my northern hemisphere friends and family roll up shirtsleeves and tend to gardens recently springing to life, here in the southern cone, we're starting to hibernate.Out comes the heavy...

oh heavens, don't get the 4th thing on the list Cargado originalmente por bearshapedsphereOne of the lovely things about traveling in another country is the myriad foodproducts, foodstuffs and foods that you've never heard of or tried before. In Chile, most of the...

the perfect sky Cargado originalmente por bearshapedspheresometimes when the sky is just right, I just open my windows and see what I can catch on film. Santiago doesn't tend to have the puffy, cloud-filled skies of my youth, it's usually either blisteringly sunny or...

colors in El Morado glacier valley Cargado originalmente por bearshapedsphereMy eyes are not big enough and no camera is powerful enough to feel this place. To record what I really saw and to show you the clarity of the air. The El Morado Glacier valley is a stone's...

splendor Cargado originalmente por bearshapedsphereWith a 4WD or a car and a lot of patience, and don't forget the dramamine, you, yes you can rocket up from 500 m above sealevel in downtown Santiago, up to 3200 m in just a couple of hours and 40-plus hairpin curves....

I know it's wrong to start from the end, because what people really want is to start from the beginning. But it's the end of the trip, and it's the post trip blues/excitement about being home. Today was not my first trip back to the Vega (fruit and veg market) since...

You would think that the cold weather would inhibit the smelliness factor of say, a penguin colony, or a cormorant rookery, or a flummox of sealions (I made up the last one). You would be wrong. Big stink. Meaty, musky, amonnia-y. The wind shifts and the smell curls...

Why bear-shaped? And why not? I remember that as a child, we were discussing the solar system, and naturally the planet we live on. My first grade teacher, an impossibly pale woman with fuchsia lipstick and an exaggerated limp, was there in the WPA-era built red brick...