Sunday, November 2, 2008

November Surprise: A Patagonia Quiz

In anticipation of Tuesday's U.S. election, I am offering one of my periodic quizzes, for which the prize will be a copy of the new edition of Moon Handbooks Patagonia, which came out last month. It will not be difficult - in fact, it should be pretty obvious - so I expect to have a winner soon. It will have to be soon, as I'm due to leave to fly to Santiago to begin updating Moon Handbooks Chile by next weekend.

The question is this: which current U.S. presidential candidate paid a visit to Chile's then-dictator General Augusto Pinochet in 1985? The individual in question also visited the farm of Marco Cariola, a former right-wing Senator, in Parque Nacional Puyehue. The trail to Volcán Puyehue, whose lush temperate rainforests were devastated by a spectacular 1960 eruption that left a desert of fumaroles (depicted here) on its shoulder, passes through Cariola's property. Cariola collects a toll for the privilege of accessing the volcano via his farm.

Please send your answer to the quiz to the email address in the header above. The first correct answer received will win the book, but previous quiz winners are ineligible.

I might add that some people might consider the title of this post misleading, as Parque Nacional Puyehue is part of the "lakes district," rather than Patagonia proper, but there's room for debate as to what constitutes Patagonia. In any event, for purely pragmatic purposes, Moon Handbooks Patagonia includes the lakes district, also known colloquially as the "Sur Chico" ("Lesser South").

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