Chile Forum

Once you get south of Puerto Montt, there are very few people/houses/settlements, yet there is a huge territory between PM and the southern tip of the continent. What are some of the reasons for this?

Bad agricultural land?
Remoteness?
No road from the mainland?
Wind?
Rain?
Cold?
Earthquakes?
Cost of food, household things, building materials?
No way to make a living?
Unfriendly natives?
The locals prefer to live in town?
Parks and reserves that do not allow private ownership?

This looks like a beautiful area, I'm just wondering why there are so few people.

Not sure I will be able to cover all of it in one go; however, I will give it a shot. The most important reason I think is lack of people. Chile only has 15,000,000 , and better than 1/3 live in the Central Region.

There are a few other things to consider. The great highway system that Chile has, that allows people to drive at breakneck speeds is really new. From Santiago to Purto Montt use to be just a two lane highway not too long ago. So, just getting the population growing that far south was a major move. I am talking like the late 80's and early 90's here, not the 1950's. So, if you wanted to make a living you needed to be in the central region. Even the "town" of Temuco is only like 200,000 today, and that is considered a major city in the South.

The problems get harder as you move even more south of that. Places like Futaleufue did not even have a road connecting them to Chaiten untill the 90's. People road horses to get to town. Even today, the road is dirt. Add to that the problems of finishing the Austral Highway across Pumalin Park, that cuts southern Chile in half, and you can see why it is not that appealing a place to move to if you need to make a living on the Chilean economy.

All that is starting to Change as Chile decentralizes more, and the tourism and salmon industry is turning that part of Chile in to something worth investing in; However, for most Chileans, that part of the country is still an unknown (you would be suprised how little they know about it). There is a view that it is for the "indians" or "country people", and is not viewed as being say a resort spot like Pucon or Puerto Varas; thus, the domestic tourism industry is not likly to really touch that part of the Chile for another 10 years or so. There are almost no big Chilean owned and operate tourism biz in the area. The serious ones are all owned by Gringos, or companies from the states or Europe. By contrast, you can not walk down the street in Pucon without finding a tourism agency at every other door (hundreds in the summer time).

We were told about a NASA Scientist that quit and moved to the south of Chile around the IX region after using NASA's super computers and sats to work out what place in the World would be most safe to live from man made disasters such as Nuclear accidents. Which may or may not be true, as far as we know.

It does not sound so crazy myself, as one of millions around the World that lived in the direct path of the Chernobyl accident in the Northern United States as a kid, with a family that has lived downwind of the test site in Nevada for generations, and feeling for myself the nuclear test at the Nevada proving grounds shake buildings in downtown Las Vegas ( after the test band treaty ).

However, what really sold my wife and I on returning to Southern Chile was what a friend asked my in China a couple of years ago while we were teaching at a University. He asked me if I had ever seen the stars. It just slapped me in the face. A guy the same age as me had never seen the stars in his life because of the contamination of the air in China. No one has seen the stars in Eastern China for more than 30 years. When you walk down the street in China, your pants and shoes are covered in contaminated chemical dust. My friend had also never swam in a river or lake in his life. What scares me is not the 1 hour accident, but the slow creeping accident with the environment ( and not really that slow at that ).

Coming from an area where we endure ice, snow and arctic winds for three months of the year, the XI and XII regions look like they have an attractive climate. I'm sure they have their own challenges of wind, heavy rainfall and depending on elevation, snow and cold.

I have spent many hours (at work) google-earth flying the coast, and quite often come to a bay or harbor and wonder "why isn't there a city here?". With new roads going in, I bet there are opportunities to build new cities.

The story about recruiting people to settle on islands is interesting. There are quite a few people in this area whose dream it is to move to northern Michigan or Alaska and build a log cabin up in the wilderness. I'm sure the Chilean government could find a lot of recruits around here, although we tend to be an ornery bunch!

Me, I like small towns, the coast, trees, cool weather, rain and the green that comes from it.

That aluminum smelter issue in Aysen is kind of a negative for that area. Do they know which sections of the river the dam would flood?

Another oddball question: are there substance abuse problems in Chile? especially those that would affect others, such as having to deal with a lot of drunks or thieves stealing anything they can get for more drugs?

Well alcoholism is very relative. Chile drinks a lot, to put it politely, more than just about any other society I have seen. It is not uncommon for people to go to lunch and have more than a few. Which is o.k. On some level, if of most the remainder of the society also has a few over lunch. A drinking culture tends to develop in which the work day really gets going at about 10 a.m., lunch starts about 1 p.m. and everyone comes back from lunch about 3 p.m. to get ready to go home at about 4-5 p.m.
By they way if you are in the banking industry in Chile, the doors close to the public at 2 p.m. Odd, but it seems to work.

As for the Carabineros, if in an emergency I had the choice to call any police force in the western hemisphere it would be the Carabineros first. They are likely the most honest and hard working police force I have seen anywhere in the World. Next to perhaps the Canadian Mounties, they likely do not get sufficient credit for what they do. During the dictatorship they manged to stay out of the whole mess, and stick to domestic policing for the most part. They are very proud of their honesty. Don't ever try to bribe one or you will get what you deserve.

As for the substance abuse in Chile (alcohol aside), most of the drug problems are centered in the central region. In the big picture of international drug problem, very little by way of drugs makes it to Chile other than drugs on their way to North America and Europe through Chile's ports. That is changing a bit as Chile becomes a much richer country. One of the drugs that is a primary problem is a drug which is basically all the chemical trash that is left when Cocaine in made. It is very Cheap, very addictive, and far more damaging than cocaine alone. A few of the other suspects are around; however alcohol, like just about every other place on the planet, is still the most abused and common drug. Drug problems in Chile do not even begin to hold a candle to the drug problems in almost every country between Colombia and the United States.

Living in Temuco myself, I am really far more concerned about the street dog problem.
I normaly consider myself a friend to most every street dog I have met in the World, but the ones here do not seem to consider me a friend. There has been some articles recently in the paper about how the street dog problem has been growing around Temuco.

Temuco is growing fast, and the urban problems with it. Still Temuco, and the rest of the cities in Southern Chile, have about 1% of the problems you would expect to find in most cities in the world.

This Wikipedia article claims there is a pollution problem in Temuco.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temuco

Is this accurate? And if it's not, you can amend it.

Despite all this, its good air quality has started deteriorating because of the thick smog layer, which is saturating the environment.

I don't think smog is the cause of pollution anywhere in the World, but I appreciate what they are trying to say.

The pollution in Temuco is because of the wood burning stoves in the winter and it being located in a river valley. The city is growing very rapidly, but wood is still the primary source of heat for around 95% of the population. This year was worse than most because we did not get the steady rain that is typical in the winter. Really if you go to just about any good size city in Southern Chile in the winter, wood smoke pollution is an issue.

I also love the detailed description of the driving habits:

Drivers often disregard marked traffic lanes and many buses and collective taxis will stop virtually anywhere to take on or discharge passengers.

It goes on and on about the negatives of Temuco. I think the guy was from Puerto Montt or something.

Do you feel like doing a little editing? Since you live there and all.

I made some changes, but I am not going to get carried away with wikipedia. I have plenty of websites to edit.

I have done a lot of work on southern Chile before for in their Chile sections, just to have the admins come in and cut it. There are a lot of people that run web sites in Chile that use it to post links and are admins / editors. Typically other web design companies.


I have the same problem with DMOZ.org directory. All the admins are web site designers from Santiago, and will not post anything about Chile. The web designers in Chile are really what is shooting Chilean tourism in the foot, not the smog.

I have posted allsouthernchile.com just to see if it would stick.

I have had them cut links to government website I have posted. As I understand it now however they are moving to a system that blocks all the links from being indexable, and thus removes the appeal of posting links on it, and thus the need for the editor battles. We will see.

We have our own Chile wiki coming shortly to allchile.net . We will get the corrections on the net one way or the other.

I was living in Ancud (Chiloe) during 4 years and alcoholism is a serious problem there, weeks raining without stop and nothing to do leads people to melancoly and alcohol, unless they have intelectual interests or something to pass the rainy days apart from alcohol. As most of people there (farmers, etc.) are not so educated they drink heavy and the social life tends to be quite violent. That is why Puelche says that far south is "not for everyone" as I understand, and that was the reason -I guess- of too many failed temptatives to colonize with people from the central zone, most of them idealistic but completly unprepared to live in the wild.

Yea, we have seen a lot of people come in to Southern Chile ( foreigners ), with romantic ideas about what the Patagonia is all about. Six months or a year later they are putting their property up for sale.

On the other hand we have a lot of people come in, and simply slip in to the culture like they were born there and had just been out of the country for a while. Kids obviously adjust best, along with people that have lived in rural areas somewhere else.

The nice thing about Southern Chile though is that you really need to look around. There is a bit of everything for everyone. Those who are not in to the ruffing it lifestyle, would likely be fine in some of the bigger city, or some of the resort towns like Pucon or Puerto Varas.

We have also encountered a funny trend of European men that came with their wives or girlfriends. The romance of southern Chile did not do the trick, and the women went back to Europe and the men stayed. They picked-up a local girl, and years later are happy campers.

It is really hard for us to predict when we meet a client for the first time if things are going to work out. The backgrounds and cultures they come from are so diverse, their reaction to Chile is also diverse.

My theory is however, those that adjust well to Chile would have adjusted well to just about anything. Those that do not, they would have had trouble moving across the street from where they live now.