Chile climbing, mountaineering expeditions mountain guide

		Torres del Brujo climbing
		The Central Andes Trip
		Cerro Plomo
		San Jose Volcano
		Tupungato Volcano

Chilli, in the language of the indigenous peoples, means "where the world ends." You can understand where they got this notion from when you consider that the country stretches to the southernmost point of any land mass in the world apart from Antarctica, to a latitude of 56 degrees south. The distance between Arica, the northernmost city, and Puerto Williams, the southernmost town in the country and the world, is about 4,300 kilometers (2,700 mi).

This distance is equal to the span between Madrid and Moscow, or San Francisco and New York. At the same time, its width never exceeds 240 km (150 mi), making the country more than eighteen times longer than its widest point. Chile is a country of startling contrasts and extreme beauty, with attractions ranging from the towering volcanic peaks of the Andes to the ancient forests of the Lake District.

The most obvious factor in Chile's remarkable slenderness is the massive, virtually impassable wall of the Andes, a mountain range that is still rising and that contains more than fifty active volcanic peaks. To the north the land rises and becomes more arid, until one reaches the forbidding Atacama Desert, one of the most inhospitable regions on earth. To the south just the opposite transformation takes place: the land falls away, and the region between mountains and ocean fades into the baffling archipelagic maze that terminates in Chilean Patagonia. Chile's southern extremity is marked by Cape Horn, a treacherous headland surrounded by almost continuously storm-tossed seas and passable only through the foggy stillness of the Strait of Magellan.

In the center of the country, however, is a long and expansive river valley, a five hundred mile corridor occupied in the north by vineyards and great farms and in the south by primeval forests and enchanting lakes. Santiago, the capital, anchors the northern and more prosperous section of the central valley. The great majority of Chile's people, as one might expect, are concentrated in the central valley. Spanish is the country's official language, but some of the Indian dialects remain. In the north, they speak Aymara, in the south Mapuche, and on Easter Island the Polynesian language of Rapa Nui.