Travel - Chile / Patagonia, November 2011

By Dr. John

Boarding American Airlines flight 1028 from Denver on November 9 marks the beginning of a two week adventure, currently underway, to Chile, with the ultimate destination of Parque Nacional Torres del Paine in Patagonia.

Making a tight connection in Dallas-Ft. Worth on the 8:30 pm American Airlines flight 945 on a 767 Boeing, 9 hours 23 min later I land in Santiago, Chile. The first Paleo-Americans took several thousand years to travel from the Beringia, the landmass then connecting Asia to Alaska, to Monte Verde in southern Chile. Now, 14,600 thousand years later, the trip from Denver to Santiago takes half a day.

Those first Paleo-Americans, the ones traveling the western coastal route, likely paddled small hide covered boats and "fueled up on seafood, from shellfish to migrating pink salmon." Heather Pringle, writing in Scientific American, continues: "They may also have hunted waterfowl migrating along the Pacific flyway, as well as caribou and other hardy land animals grazing in the larger refugia." I am curious to see what my diet will be.