San Pedro de Atacama

Back at the end of June we treated ourselves to a long weekend in San Pedro de Atacama. This was the third time in six years we made it up there, and June is a great time to visit, with plenty of sun and pleasant temperatures. It's also a nice time to escape from the wintery Santiago, which this year has been fairly wet (for Santiago standards, all you UK folks would laugh).

A mix of solstice celebrations: We tripantu, Wintersonnenwende Feuerzangenbowle

In many countries of the northern hemisphere, autumns and winters can be very cold, dark and miserable. We think that as a result of that, it was useful to have something like Christmas to break this part of the year down a bit and give people something to celebrate in the deepest and darkest winter.

Pica, an oasis named "the flower of the sand"

We recently took a 3000 km road trip from La Serena to Iquique for work. The Atacama Desert is an incredible landscape and it is also very diverse. At this year we have had some rain in the desert, it is likely that we will have blooms again in September. In fact, some areas, were already starting to be covered in green patches with plants.

Niebla, por que deberias considerar adoptar a un abuelo

En enero, en Chile, una pareja decidió que la mejor forma de sacar un perro de la tercera edad de una galería era a palos. La pareja había sido pagada por la dueña de la galería. No es sorprendente que el perro se pusiera nervioso cuando empezaron a golpearlo… lo impresionante es que siguieran hasta que mataron al animal de una paliza que duró casi 30 minutos. La escena fue grabada desde un teléfono móvil y se hizo viral.