Volcanoes and Rivers

After meeting Nick in Santiago we took a side trip south in search of shady forests, big rivers, and something to climb. Before returning to the arid north for the final push with The Gold Link, we wanted to explore a different part of Chile. The following pictures show what we found: Las Siete Tazas (the seven cups) for perhaps the world's best swimming holes in a series of basaltic bowls carved out by sapphire clear water, the Teno River valley where we met Eduardo Doerr, co-owner of Chilean Adventures, at his family's stone house beside the brown, fast, paddleable Teno River, and Volcan Planchon on the Argentina-Chile border overlooking the massive high-alpine Teno Lake.
The southern detour ended with the Gastronomic Festival in the small town of Santa Cruz: meat, fresh empanadas, cheap wine, and live traditional music and dance.
Off to La Serena to meet with Barrick 's Ron Kettles this evening and then further north to the Huasco Valley.

Mission

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is curiosity. Edmund Burke

With a passion for authentic cultures, wild places, thoughtful adventure, and the artistic expression of each, we hope to create compelling visual stories that will transport consumers to the origin of products and resources they use everyday: the morning shower, the gold broche, the tank of gas. Because we believe people are curious and want to connect to the intricacy of the global economy, we illustrate the good - personalities, landscapes, innovative and sustainable ideas - and the bad - corporate corruption, greed, exploitation, irreparable loss - of its interconnections. We hope that a more aware consumer will become a better consumer. Ultimately, we're curious and we like getting in deep.

The Source Loop blog serves as our bank for past, current, and future stories. Link from here to discover sources of OIL: Ecuador's Amazon Basin (2005); GOLD: Mines in the Chilean-Argentine Andes (January 2007); HYDO-POWER: Rivers in south-central Chile (January 2007), and upcoming projects.