The best travel books should leave you with a desire to visit the places they describe. Experiencing these journeys vicariously is a wonderful way to discover potential destinations, or to see ones you have already visited through fresh eyes. It is also a great way to see how all of us travel in different ways.
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'When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.' I find it hard to believe that I haven’t used that quote from Ansel Adams before!
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Islands are often special places, removed as much in their culture from the mainland as they are physically separate from it. Chiloé is no exception. This is a place of soft green hills, wild coasts and homely architecture. Famed for its wooden churches, sixteen of which are UNESCO listed, its people still more than half believe in the witches, ghost ships and forest gnomes that inhabit its mythologies.
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It takes a certain amount of sacrifice and discomfort to visit El Tatio. For one thing, you will sacrifice sleep, as all tours leave very early in the morning. The steam from the geysers is most active and visible at dawn, so you need to be there before sunrise. You must also be prepared to be very cold and to cope with altitude; the geyser field is at 4,200 metres above sea level. So is it worth it? Oh yes!
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Studio photographers can spend a lot of time getting the light just right, changing the angles, adjusting the brightness and colour. Landscape photographers don’t have that luxury; we have to work with the light we have, or wait until it changes naturally.
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If like me you enjoy a wander around an interesting neighbourhood just as much (if not more) as seeing the major sights of a city, Santiago’s Barrio Lastarria is likely to appeal. This is the perfect area to stroll through and enjoy for its ambiance and street life. And it's a great district in which to photograph street art.
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As a lover of mountain scenery, I have long wished to visit the high Andes of Patagonia, and specifically the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. This is named for the three distinctive peaks at its heart, the Torres or Towers, but these are just a few of the majestic mountains contained within its boundaries. Add numerous lakes, glaciers and rivers, and this is a landscape to tug at the heart strings and demand attention.
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The only way to properly appreciate the vastness of Chile’s Salar de Atacama would be to fly over it; but a visit at ground level offers a spectacular sight of the varied colours of this unworldly landscape. Before you visit the Atacama you will no doubt read or be told that it is the driest non-polar desert in the world, with no significant rainfall for 400 years. It is surprising then to arrive at the Laguna Chaxa and see so much water!
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Maybe a desert isn’t the obvious place to look for bird reflections, or indeed reflections of any kind. Deserts are dry, no? And the Atacama Desert in Chile is especially so. In fact, it’s the driest non-polar desert in the world, and has had no significant rainfall for 400 years. And yet, the shallow waters of its barren salt flats offer picture-perfect reflections of feeding flamingos.
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After the deforestation of Rapa Nui, and the destruction of the moai, probably as a result in part at least of war between the tribes, the people needed to believe in something; if their ancestors could no longer protect them, who would? The answer was, one of their own.
