Puerto Williams: Head South to Leave Civilization

Hello everyone, and welcome back to GeoAdventures. In case you're new, this is where I highlight a random place in the world that has some pretty interesting stuff going on, while sprinkling in some other facts as well. Today, we are heading to Puerto Williams, Chile, the southernmost town in the world! Now you might have heard before that the southernmost city is in Argentina, which is true. That city is Ushuaia but Puerto Williams is south of that, but doesn't have the population size to classify it as a city. Anyways, let's start learning about what I like to call The World's End.

Puerto Williams is on Navarino Island and is the capital of the Chilean Antarctic Province. It has a population of just 2,874 and primarily served as a naval base for Chile. However, the naval community has shrunk over time and the civilian population has risen. Being that Puerto Williams is the southernmost town in the world, it is not surprising that it serves as the main hub and port of entry for Antarctic travel and research. There are also some great festive celebrations and competitions that Puerto Williams holds, such as the “Glorias Navales Regata” which is essentially a sailing competition among the fjords that dot the southern end of Chile. But why stop at Puerto Williams? While we’re here, let’s explore the entire nation of Chile, and see if it is as spicy as its name implies.

Chile is a country in the continent of South America, surrounded by the Andes Mountains to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Its capital and largest city is Santiago, and like most countries in South America, speaks Spanish as its national language. Chile also owns some land outside of the continent, such as Juan Fernandez Island and Easter Island in the Pacific, and territory in the frigid ice cap that is Antarctica. And out of all the countries in Latin America, Chile is quite prosperous, with great living standards, a low sense of corruption, and competitive income per capita. It is also quite safe, experiencing low homicide rates, 2nd only to Canada. Aside from Santiago, the largest cities in the nation include the coastal ports of Valparaiso, Concepcion, and La Serena.

In the northern part of Chile lies the Atacama Desert, heralded for hosting the driest spots in the world. And for a little film trivia, the TV series Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets has filmed scenes in the Atacama Desert because of the region’s sand looking “otherworldy.” In fact, the sand has held several comparisons to the land on Mars, and NASA has used the desert to test their Mars projects.

Alright, that’s all the time I have for this post. Thank you to everybody who has read this far. I hope to see you all soon for the next GeoAdventure! (Also, if you could, please click on this post so that I can track the number of views this post receives as I haven’t been able to do that thus far. Thanks again!)

Pandemics: Proof That We Will Beat COVID-19

Hey Everyone,

If you’re reading this around the time of posting, we will all be in a period of social distancing because of the Coronavirus. While it started out with a few cases in China, it has now spread to become a worldwide pandemic that is very dangerous. Now I know that this time can be very hard for people in various ways, but in this post, I want to try and highlight some parts of human history, specifically when major disease outbreaks had occurred. I am doing this not to point out dark times, but to instead show how we as people were able to prevail from similar situations, and provide hope that we will do the same now.

The first period of history I want to talk about happened around 1918 to 1920. These two and something years were host to a flu pandemic caused by influenza. Now, there were many times beforehand where the flu had stricken but what was so scary about this strain of influenza was the people that it affected. Previous outbreaks only affected weak immune systems(like those of infants and elderly) but this strain had started killing healthy adult individuals and left weakened immune systems alone.

The next period of history I want to inform about was in the mid 500s. In 541-542, Europe faced its worst pandemic that it had experienced, called the Plague of Justinian. It tragically killed a quarter of the Eastern Mediterranean population and may have perhaps left only half the population of Europe living. The disease was the first instance of the Bubonic Plague, and 800 years later, it would strike again.

From 1346 to 1353, the Black Death reigned over Europe. Possibly the most well-known outbreak of known history, this version of the Bubonic Plague left an estimated death toll between 75 to 200 million people. It was thought to have originated in Asia, from fleas that infested rats, which were plentiful on trading ships. The rats and fleas escaped into Europe and decimated the continent for 8 hard years. Thankfully, the plague began to die down, most likely after implementing what we all are doing now: self-quarantining.

Thanks for reading this post, and hopefully you have a little more hope now that we will get through this. In the meantime, stay close to your loved ones, friends, and society as a whole. Make sure people are aware of the dangers of COVID-19, and implore them to take precautions if they aren’t already. And with the extra time inside, pick up a new skill! I personally have been learning to type more efficiently instead of just using my index fingers. Anyways, I hope you all stay safe and try to make the best of a very unprecedented situation. See you soon!

Worldwise Event Highlight

Just so you guys know, this is not going to be a normal post about a place around the world (but don’t be alarmed, cause they will return). This was a picture taken while at one of the first Worldwise events. In this picture, I was teaching kids how to play a game called GeoPlunge, where they can learn about different aspects of each state in the US.

It was exciting to see other kids so fascinated by things like the state animal of Oregon (a beaver, if you would like to know) and get so drawn into playing games to learn more about the world. Everybody was having a blast, running to maps and other atlases to come up with the perfect guesses for another team’s location. We also were able to talk about what I like to call GeoChallenges, where I pose a hypothetical worldly event (like a country’s population having to relocate to some other nation) and ask each team of students to research and come up with the best answer for my question, with reasoning to back it up. I was again astonished by how committed they were to coming up with the right answer, and I think this kind of open discussion will help them in school as well. They all came up with great arguments and it seemed like everybody learned something new.

I know this blog post was out of the norm but I just wanted to highlight the other area of this nonprofit, focused on inspiring a love of the world through games and challenges. I’ll be hosting more of such events in the near future! Thanks again and see you on the next (normal) blogventure!