The “Best of South America” Study Tour

The first Study Tour for 2011 set off with 27 participants just after Christmas, 2010, on what has become the Society’s most popular tour in Colin’s Program; it was the 7th one to South America, popular because it offers a great variety of interesting cultures, some of the world’s most spectacular landscapes, and is not an easy tour to undertake independently. Flying into Santiago, Chile, the party toured that city and also Chile’s major port, nearby historic Valparaiso on the Pacific coast, and they discovered much about Chile’s history and economic development which grew principally out of mining, sheep ranching, and forestry, following the European settlement of indigenous peoples’ lands which ranged from the driest desert country in the world in the north, through a densely populated area of Mediterranean agriculture in the centre, to the cold wet forested land of the south; the party was shown evidence of the country suffering from very frequent earthquakes, and learnt how the port city suffered economically following the opening of the Panama Canal when trade around the Horn ceased.

Chile's port-city of Valparaiso

It was New Year’s Eve when they flew on to Lima, Peru, with celebrations occurring there just after landing. The city tour concentrated on the growth of an impressive modern centre out of a once-vibrant Spanish colonial settlement with magnificent World Heritage buildings over 300 years old, and the group explored the catacombs beneath the San Francisco Monastery where the remains of more than 70,000 people lie buried. With so much of interest to see in Peru, the party would spend more time in this country than in any other. They flew on to Iquitos on the Amazon River and travelled down-stream to stay in a jungle lodge and see how rapidly the indigenous peoples’ lifestyles changing in a visit to a model village they were shown how the Yagua Indians once lived and survived by subsistence farming in forest clearings and the hunting of animals with blow-guns, they viewed the peoples’ prosperous new village of Indiana where large quantities of bananas were being brought in by boat to be sold to traders for export to Iquitos and beyond.

Banana traders at Indiana on the Amazon River, Peru

Returning to Lima, they headed off next to the beautiful Peruvian Andes centred on the historic city of Cusco, an amazing old Spanish-colonial town at 3,500 metres (11,500 ft), built on top of the remains of the once-magnificent capital of the Incas. From there they explored the remains of many monumental Inca constructions – places like Sacsayhuaman, Machu Picchu and Olantaytambo, with buildings of massive

carved stone fitting perfectly together. The Quechua people today still farm the mountain valleys and slopes of fertile soil for their main staple, the potato, with over 300 varieties, but grow some corn in warmer valleys.

Old city of Cusco with Plaza de Armas and the Cathedral

Lost City of the Incas - Machu Picchu

Tour group at the Inca ruins of Sacsayhuaman

Quechua peoples' Market Day at Pisac in the Andes

From Cusco, the party then made a day-long luxury train journey south between the two main Cordillera of the Andes, passing over the La Raya Pass at 4,300 metres, and crossing the Altiplano with its flocks of grazing lamas and alpaca, to arrive in Puno on Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest navigable lake. Although the lake’s surroundings are intensively settled and farmed, there have been about 2000 Uros people living on some 60 floating islands of reeds in the lake for several centuries, growing subsistence crops in small gardens and catching fish. Some of these floating Uros villages were visited by launch.

The Altiplano train journey

Lake Titicaca Uros village people

Continuing on by bus from Puno, they crossed the border into Bolivia, and transferred into boats at the Lake Titicaca port of the Bolivian Navy, to travel to the southern end of the lake at Puerto Perez, and, after staying the night there, they travelled on to visit the vast ruins of the ancient city of Tiahuanaco whose people pre-dated the Incas, and developed ingenious irrigation systems, leaving behind Bolivia’s most important archaeological site which dates from 600 BC. Bolivia’s impressive capital, La Paz, came next, built into basin, over 400 metres deep, below the Altiplano. A city tour here, took in yet more Spanish colonial architecture, the beautiful main street – El Prado, a museum, the world’s highest football stadium, and an impressive area of badlands known as the Valley of the Moon.

City of La Paz with the world's highest football stadium

El Prado, the main street of La Paz

With some serious transport difficulties cropping up, involving two flights to reach Sao Paulo and then an unexpected but necessary express bus from there, the party reached Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, not at 6.30 pm as expected, but at 4.00 am. And, having managed to sleep in the comfortable reclining chairs of the bus, they were able to take in the sights of this very beautiful city quite with ease – the old city centre, the famous beach suburbs, the cog-railway up Corcovado with its huge statue of Christ, the cable cars to the top of the Sugar Loaf at the entrance to Rio’s fine harbour, and even a spectacular samba Show in the evening.

View over Rio de Janeiro from Corcovado

Sugar Loaf Cable Car, Rio de Janeiro

A flight to Iguacu Falls came next, with the group being able to explore the falls on both sides of the international border – an afternoon on the Brazilian side with its more expansive views of the falls that drop over 70 metre high cliffs for a 3km length of the gorge mainly on Argentina’s side, and, after crossing the border to stay the night at the Sheraton, the more intimate experiences of the falls – 275 separate cascades on Argentina’s side. Some of the group even took a very wet speed-boat ride up to the main falls drop – the Devil’s Throat.

Iguacu Falls, Argentina

Then, it was on to Buenos Aires on another flight, with exploration of one of South America’s greatest cities. With 13 million people in its metropolitan area, it is divided into 48 distinct neighbourhoods, called Barrios, with these grouped into 15 Comunas (local government districts). Of particular interest was seeing how the port facilities have moved in the same way they have done in Sydney – from docks near the CBD to outer areas with more space for containers, and leading to a redevelopment of the old port areas like our Darling Harbour and Barangaroo. Major sights included Av. 9 Julio - the world’s widest street; the famous Opera House (the Teatro Colon); the Barrio of Recoleta which includes a necropolis of some 8000 family mausoleums including one with Eva Peron (Evita); Plaza de Mayo with the Casa Rosada (“Pink House”) - the Presidential Palace, the Catedral Metropolitana, and the Cabildo (old City Council Hall) built ion 1751; the Barrio of La Boca, the most colourful neighbourhood which as built by early Italian immigrants; the memorial to the fallen of the Falklands (Malvinas) War; and the upper-class Barrio of San Isidro by the River Plate upstream from the CBD.

Buenos Aires with the widest street in the world - Av. 9 July

Another flight south took the party to Bariloche at the foot of the Andes Mountains in Argentina, and the start of a 2-day overland journey through the mountains involving three lake-crossings, busses in between, and an overnight stay in a mountain lodge, before ending up near Chile’s second biggest Pacific port, Puerto Montt. From here, they flew to almost the southern tip of the continent, to the southern-most city, Punta Arenas, on the Strait of Magellan, in Chilean Patagonia, where it was the centre of an important wool industry that competed with Australia’s. From here, they visited a Magellan penguin colony on the coast, and travelled north into magnificent Torres del Paine National Park, Chile’s finest, a small isolated mountainous outcrop of 400 sq km, consisting of granite quite separate from the adjacent Andes, and eroded by glaciers into shapes like Torres (towers) and Cuernos (horns). They spent two nights and a whole day here seeing much of the wildlife, magnificent mountain views, glacial lakes, glaciers and waterfalls.

Andes Lakes Crossing from Bariloche to Puerto Montt

City of Punta Arenas, Patagonia, Chile

Magellan Penguins near Punta Arenas, Chile

Torres del Paine National Park, Chile

A long day’s drive then took the party around the southern end of the Andes into Argentina’s Patagonia, with more sheep estancias (ranches or stations) on this drier side, and to the town of El Calafate, adjacent to Argentina’s magnificent Los Glacieres National Park. Two days of touring here gave everyone the opportunity to learn much about the glaciers which are amongst the most active in the world because of the very high precipitation on top of the Andes in the path of the Roaring Forties creating a mountain ice-cap which is the 3rd largest after Antarctica and Greenland – 13,000 sq km of ice, up to 1,500 metres thick, and receiving up to 40 metres of snow each year. In spite of the ice cap feeding very active valley glaciers, these are all receding – wasting faster than their fast forward movement each year. The group enjoyed many amazing sights – huge bright blue icebergs that had calved from glaciers entering Lago Argentino (the country’s largest lake), the huge 60-km-long Upsala Glacier seen from a mountain-top viewpoint, and the Moreno Glacier, famous for its periodic blocking of a river’s drainage to create a larger lake.

Icebergs from the Upsala Glacier on Lake Argentina

The tour group at the overlook for the Upsala Glacier, Argentina

Ferry cruise along the front of the Moreno Glacier in Lake Argentina

From Calafate, the party returned to Buenos Aires, to fly home from there on a Qantas plane at the end of a very successful Study Tour.