Straight Out Of Santiago de Chile

Hello Folks,

I am rebooting Putah Creek Photo in South America.

I am out of California and now residing in Santiago, Chile with my wife of some eight years Lidice.

We live on the 11th floor of a sky-rise apartment with another 14 floors above us.  This change of lifestyle is as completely different from our quite small town life of Livingston, Montana as you can get. Tonight, for the first time, I got my new camera out and placed some new images on my computer for you all to get an idea of where I am living. Over the next few months, I hope to send you folks some nice images from Chile and eventually all of South America once we get settled.

Here is some hugs for my friends and family in California and my friends back in Montana as well.

Richard and Lidice

This view is looking east towards the Andes which shoot up over 20,000 feet right next to Santiago. They call this the Cordillera and runs for hundreds of miles all along Chile's eastern boarder. The plastic wire keeps little kids from dropping down on the traffic eleven floors below.

This hill in the above photo is called San Christabol.  And along with the Santa Lucia (Huelen) the Santa Lucia, both in the middle of Santiago. and are where the Spanish use to flee when the Native American Mapuche tribe use to ransack the city in it's infancy. From this hill top. the Europeans would fend off the Natives in epic battles of life and death over 400 years ago. The Mapuche kept the Spaniards from crossing any further south of the Bio Bio River in middle Chile for some 350 years. The Mapuche were a proud and fierce tribe that had advanced tactics in warfare and were very formidable adversaries that kept the Spanish from venturing any further south than that river. I will be heading up this hill sometime soon for some great views now that the rains have come and cleaned out the smog of the city.

The small hill to the right and above the roads is the famous Santa Lucia fort called by the Mapuche natives Huelen. The ancient Iglesia de San Francisco sits across the street from this fortress and when the indians would attack they would burn the church down and chase the Spanish up that hill for the centuries long death struggle for the city of Santiago.

This use to be an even better view. Unfortunately in Santiago, building grow like mushrooms and the last time I was here in the city that building to the right did not exists. Killed a killer view out of my wife's bedroom window that building did.