Juan Enrique, I have been following firstly the Volcano eruption down there in Chile and more recently the huge floods you have been experiencing.

Hope you have managed to stay safe of course but I am wondering just what sort of effect these events have had on you and your landsailing venues?

Ron

Thank you for asking!!! (me commueve!!!)


The Chaiten Volcano is 1.300 km South of Santiago. People there must be suffering a
lot because of the lost of their properties and jobs, but they are all ok because they
were evacuated at the begining of the eruption, people didnt want to move, so the
goverment passed a fast track law giving them the right to evacuate everybody.
Thanks to that law, there was no people there when it began the bad weather and
snow, the Blanco river flooded the town, in todays news, the 80% of the home are
under 1 to 1.5 mt of mud.

Now there is a discussion about what it will happen with the town, maybe it will be
moved to some place else


The real problem there is that because of the geography, there is no road, so to get
there you should go traveling in ferries and transhipments or go around thru
argentina. a trip that should be no more than a couple of hours from Puerto Montt, it
takes almost 18 hours. The good thing is that now the goverment will invest a couple
of thousand of millions to build the road.


This image shows the ashes spreading thru Argentina, right over Rada Tilly




In this link you may see some amazing pictures of an electric storm on the volcano:

http://megagalerias.terra.cl/galerias/index.cfm?id_galeria=30734

Link with views of the actual Chaiten town, a ghost town.:

www.fotos.emol.com/index.asp?G_ID=5841#


this is video from youtube with some views of the eruption:



Regarding the floods:

I live in Santiago,
33?24'8.86"S 70?33'37.07"O
This is the street where we live, my home is in the next left corner.




and the first rain we got last week, it was in a not so cold days, so instead of getting
snow at the mountains (normally we get snow from 1500 mt above sealevel, ) the
snow level starte at 3800 meter above sealevel, so all that water came down to the
valley, flooding the foothills.


This week the temperature is getting lower ( now it is 8:43 pm and the temperature 4
degrees, and we expect to have -4 degrees below zero.


Regarding the landsailing, our favorite spot is 100 km from our home in santiago, but with the rain it must be very mudy.
and the international road to pampa del leoncito it is closed because of the snow and when it opens is very risky to be caught at the other side of the mountain, specially if we have to be back at the office on monday.




so now we are focusing on improving our pacific magics based on the recipe given by Mr. Landyacht ( by the way, did you get the red windbraker?).

this is all for now, reporting live from a rainy day!!! hahaha.

besides of all this trouble, this is a nice country!!!!!!!!! worth a visit!!!

I hope you can visit us soon.

regards
juan enrique


p.s. sorry for the off topic, but with the last sentence about the landsailers justufies the post!!

Wow, those photos sure showed some devastation. It is amazing that everyone was evacuated and no-one hurt.

I hope the ash cloud does not continue for long or cause too much difficulty.

When we looked at the photo of your street in Santiago we were amazed at the power lines - all the ones we saw in Santiago had at least 500 wire/phone cables hanging from them - your street looked quite normal - higher up the mountain?

Yes we have the red wind jacket thanks - will give it a run this winter - so far our winter has been very mild - a lovely warm day today. Hopefully the wind will pick up as we are planning to go sailing this weekend

Glad to hear you are well.
cheers Paul and Susan