NOTES, COMMENT AND BUZZ FROM EUGENE KASPERSKY – OFFICIAL BLOG
September 6, 2024
Unlike Colombia, the latest business trip to Chile turned out to be very rich in tourism: we climbed the Sollipulli volcano, got acquainted with some other sights of Araucania, and had a peek at Lake El Yeso. So far – so good! But there’s also a “bonus track” – our visit to a ski resort near Santiago.
It’s real close, so off we popped. Not to ski; just to breathe in the mountain air and enjoy the views…
September 5, 2024
There’s a good quantity of natural marvels of a high caliber dotted throughout Chile. Many I’ve already seen down the years and reported on on these here blog pages (for example, the Torres del Paine National Park and the Uspallata/Bermejo Pass/Cumbre Pass), but there are still some that I’ve yet to check out – including the Atacama Desert, and the marble caves at General Carrera Lake.
However, those two are quite far from Santiago – where we’d just finished the working portion of our trip. We needed something nearer. We asked the locals, and the answer came swiftly: the El Yeso reservoir and dam – but only in the summer when the water’s turquoise and the rocks are multicolored. Well that was no good to us here in August – the last month of winter in the southern hemisphere) ->
All the same – we went to have a look…
Now for some technical details…
September 4, 2024
Sollipulli volcano – conquered. So what else is interesting around these parts (in the Araucanía Region)?
First, much of the local population is made up of indigenous South Americans – the Mapuche. And you can tell this simply by walking along the bank of a lake here. Different toponomies are also curiously interesting; for example, we passed a road sign with Das Dorf on it: clearly there are plenty of Germans here too…
But for me the main things here are the natural beauty and the meditative views. For example, there’s the Villarrica volcano (named the same as both the lake and town it towers over)…
September 3, 2024
After Colombia, next up on our tour of Latin America – Chile. All as per: busy – meetings with partners we’ve been working with for many years and also large clients; new acquaintances, and a few university lectures – since educating specialists for careers in cybersecurity needs to be done as early as possible. University is a little too late; better to start at middle-school level (which we do, but that’s a whole other story). Still – better late than never…
Fortunately, between the working portion of the Colombia visit and that of the Chile visit – weekend! Time for some active tourism. So out came the map of Chile to work out what we could check out in two days. Not that it took long, for as soon as I saw them it was as good as decided: volcanoes!…
That photo is of the caldera (~crater) of the Sollipulli volcano (here). Impressive, eh?
January 3, 2023
Santiago and Sao Paulo are both real lucky: just an hour-and-a-half from each city there’s a resort town by the ocean. But while the temperature of the ocean by Brazil’s Guarujá is a comfortable one, that in Chile’s Viña del Mar is much less so. A cold current runs along the shore, so the water temperature is rather invigorating. Despite this, the whole shore is crammed with hotels:
Read on: Mind blown from red hot Chile peppers – and graffiti.
December 28, 2022
Hola folks!
Herewith, a continuation of my late-2022 international business trip series. You’ve had Egypt (+1); you’ve had Jordan (+1); you’ve had Brazil (+0); and now – Chile (+0)!…
You guessed it – we flew to Chile from Brazil, so of course the flight wasn’t long. That’s just as well, for I’d had my fill of extended long-hauls of late (one of which lasted 38 hours door to door!). Another bonus regarding this flight: the views out the plane’s window over the Andes – oh my good-gracious-me! ->
Mountains, cliffs, valleys, glaciers – in places fading from browny-gray to bright yellow and orange (no Photoshop) ->
July 29, 2016
Recent extreme water-sports up in (surprisingly) sunny Greenland got me thinking. Maybe I could try and reach into the recesses of my memory to come up with accounts of my most unusual, interesting and enjoyable swims I’ve had around the world – a ‘Top World-Swims’, if you like. For swimming – or mere bathing, or just plain getting into bodies of water besides those in a hotel room bathtub – I’ve done rather a lot of, in all sorts of far-flung weird-and-wonderful locations…
Taking dips: it’s an interesting topic – especially now during the summer season of R&R, beaching & resorting, and the attendant water-based activities is upon us. For maybe some of you are near pools, lakes, seas or oceans right now and may be in danger of missing the very best spots – as attested to by Yours Truly. So, without more of a do, let’s get these aquatics started.
All righty. The plan here is as follows: I’ll be telling you only about swimming/bathing in natural water bodies. Mega swimming pools, aqua parks, spas and so on won’t be included. Here it’s all about the most unusual organic bathing experiences. I’ll work across the globe from left to right, top to bottom: Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia. I’ll be missing out Antarctica as I didn’t manage to get any bathing in down there, if you can believe it :).
Oh, and btw: If anyone can see any glaring gaps to my global natural-aqua-must-swims, please don’t be shy; let us all know about them in the comments. I for one would be most grateful…
Ok. Let’s go. North America…
I’ve been to Alaska, but much like on Antarctica, I had things other than bathing on my mind. Therefore, I’ll jump straight over to Greenland, which is still technically North America…
1. Bobbing up and down among chunks of Greenlandic ice.
To swim bathe float in a Michelin-Man costume in among big chunks of floating ice and icebergs, to touch them, or even clamber up onto them, is an unforgettable experience. There’s nothing to fear: those brightly colored costumes are dry and comfortable. Only your hands get to feel the water – but even then only a bit: just a little water gets inside the mitts.
September 9, 2015
Hola amigos!
Not long ago I flew one of the most unusual commercial air routes I’ve ever taken.
It was the Santiago–Sydney-route on Qantas QF28 in a Boeing 747. The route forms a smile shape as it curves downwards and flies past… Antarctica! It felt a bit eerie flying – for 14 hours! – over a part of the world where there happens to be absolutely nothing at all! No islands, no ships, no folks, no hamburger stands… the very definition of ‘godforsaken’! Even submarines don’t bother with these remote southern reaches. Curiously, there’s one thing that features relatively prominently here: deceased satellites! They have them fall out of orbit and give them a marine burial here, well out of the way so they do no harm to Homo sapiens.
“Cheese!”
September 8, 2015
Santiago (the capital of Chile) is situated in a valley between two mountain ranges. The bigger of the two is called the Andes. The other… I never did get round to finding out its name. Anyway, the reason I’m telling you this is that, by and large, the wind here tends to blow across these ridges – i.e., not down the valley – leaving the valley, and Santiago, thoroughly ventilation-less. This means there’s nothing to shift the thick smog that hangs over the valley. It looks, to be honest, disturbing. Imagine breathing that in all day and night, year after year. Yikes!
March 10, 2014
Jules Verne, fat adventure novels, In Search of the Castaways, Paganel and Patagonia…
Such childhood reminiscences are indelibly etched somewhere in the deeper recesses of my memory. I always conjured up images of mysterious countries in far-flung corners of the world, all exotic and unusual… but always beautiful.
Turns out those images were pretty accurate. For four decades later I found myself in Patagonia on a hiking trip, and if I was only allowed one word to describe the place, it would not be difficult choosing it: beautiful.
We wound up there after having a few free days left over after our visit to Brasília. And since that visit was a culmination of non-stop mental effort and oratory exertion, the timing was just right for some serious back-to-nature getting-away-from-it-all with lashings of fresh mountain air.
Of course, the whole of Patagonia can’t be checked out in just a few days as it covers such a massive territory. Still, we did manage to experience one of the most precious jewels in the Patagonian crown – the Torres del Paine National Park.
