Lautaro Lodge

T Sanders David

Description

An Englishman, Roger Richardson is intent on establishing his company as a viable competitor for concessions from the Chilean government to extract lithium, a major element needed for modern batteries to advance the use of electric automobiles in the manner his father developed platinum mines for the reduction of emissions from internal combustion engines. In doing that, he and his wife, Margo, created a lodge from where professionals he engaged discovered positive elements for the retreating ice sheets, fossils, and created important wildlife reserves.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
• Date de parution: 06 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781645758075
• Langue: English

Extrait

L autaro L odge
D avid T. S anders
A ustin M acauley P ublishers
2023-01-06
Lautaro Lodge About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgment Chapter One: Continental Shift Chapter Two: Estancia Margo Chapter Three: Survival Chapter Four: Mega-Fossil Chapter Five: Near Disaster Chapter Six: Power-Plant Planning Chapter Seven: The Wildlife Count Chapter Eight: The First Guests Chapter Nine: Retreating Ice Chapter Ten: The High Mountains Chapter Eleven: Vegetative Cover Chapter Twelve: Abduction Chapter Thirteen: Mapuche Homelands Chapter Fourteen: New Beginnings Chapter Fifteen: The Countess Chapter Sixteen: Natural Resources Potential Chapter Seventeen: Funding Chapter Eighteen: Further South Chapter Nineteen: Beagle Channel Chapter Twenty: Marco’s Return Chapter Twenty-One: Lithium Chapter Twenty-Two: Homeward Bound Chapter Twenty-Three: Safari Chapter Twenty-Four: Nature Preserves
About the Author
The author writes novels with emphasis on history, travel, and the actual environment, six of which have been published, or are in the process of being published. He also provides services as a consulting geologist.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to those involved in wildlife conservation worldwide.
Copyright Information ©
David T. Sanders 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Ordering Information
Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Sanders, David T.
Lautaro Lodge
ISBN 9781645758068 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781645758051 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781645758075 (ePub e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022922181
www.austinmacauley.com/us
First Published 2023
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
40 Wall Street 33rd Floor, Suite 3302
New York, NY 10005
USA
[e-mail]
[phone]
Acknowledgment
The assistance of Joy Jennings Danziger, as a proof-reader and advisor, and the administrative services of Amar Dhariwal are hereby acknowledged.
Chapter One Continental Shift
There were still hours before sunset on a long summer day in the Southern Hemisphere when Derek Lugard departed a boat at the dock in Puerto Natales . The tourist vessel on which he had traveled for nearly a week from Puerto Montt , through spectacular scenery in the Los Lagos Region of Patagonia, was his last mode of travel. He arrived in Chile by air, following short visits to several South American cities on his way from southern Africa where he had spent more than a decade working as a Wildlife Conservation Officer and a hunting guide.
Reluctantly, he had accepted a job in Chile offered by an Englishman he had guided on three big-game hunts. He became aware during the sail along the inland waterway from Puerto Montt that if he was to work in the rugged, mountainous terrain, fjords, glaciers, and rivers he had seen from the boat, this was going to be a tremendous challenge, and Roger Richardson, his new employer, had told him that the land he had purchased on which he wanted Derek to work was typical of the region. With a full understanding that the geography, geology, flora, and wildlife of this country was vastly different from that with which he had become so familiar, living in South Africa and studying at a university in Pretoria, he had been trying to learn all he could in preparation for the new job since he accepted it.
He spoke several languages fluently, but not Spanish. He thought his studies of that language were progressing very well until arriving in Santiago to find that the dialect spoken in Chile was much different from the Castilian version he was learning, causing him to make the many adjustments.
Derek seldom stayed in hotels if there was an alternative. He had booked a room in a bed and breakfast inn in the outskirts of this quaint, waterfront community. Having brought with him most of his belongings in a large leather suitcase and a backpack, it was necessary to hire a vehicle to take him from the dock to that inn. The driver he secured said little on the way there, but Derek was able to get directions from him to the vehicle rental company where Mister Richardson had informed him, by a telegram he received before leaving Johannesburg, that a prepaid rental vehicle was to be held for him there. The inn was old, but the room assigned to Derek was large, well-furnished and clean.
After checking-in, he walked through the city to the rental establishment and signed for a new Range Rover Defender, with a body style the same as the six-seat, older vehicle he had sold in Johannesburg. The money received from that sale and most of his savings, in the form of Krugerrand gold coins, he carried in a money-belt he was wearing beneath his shirt and down jacket. The vehicle was a welcomed surprise. At the inn, he transferred most of his belongings to the rear compartment and locked it. There was nearly another hour before the dinner-time he was informed of when he checked-in, so he walked back into the city, looking for a pub.
He found a café serving drinks and sat at a small patio table, illuminated by a setting sun. He ordered a beer from a pretty European girl. Sipping the beer, Derek told himself he was going to like Patagonia in the summer months, but having never lived in a cold climate, hae was uncertain about the winter months of cold and long hours of darkness.
The dinner served at the inn was not unexpected in a region with extensive grazing lands that were once the center of a huge sheep industry: lamb stew.
Those at the dinner table with him were all young German men who had come to engage in trekking into the glaciers and high mountains. They did not involve him in their discussions. However, he spoke German, so he was able to share their enthusiasm for the area. The woman who served them spoke German, also. In response to Derek’s question after dinner, she told him that many German’s had emigrated to central and southern Chile in the middle 1800s.
Brandy was served after dinner. Derek drank one glass and went to the reception area to pay for the room, telling a man at a counter that he would be leaving early in the morning and would leave the key in the room. He showered and went to bed as soon as he got to the room, which was located on a wing of the building with a door facing a parking space into which he moved the vehicle. He quickly fell asleep.
He was awakened by the shaking of the entire room and the crashing of a lamp to the floor from a nightstand. Trying to stand, he fell back on the bed. The motion continued for a couple of minutes. Derek had experienced earthquakes before, but nothing like this. He moved to a switch to the overhead light-fixture near the door. The room remained dark and he threw open the door to more total darkness. He found his trousers and slipped into them. Leaving the door open, he went to the Range Rover and turned on the headlights. In that light, he finished dressing, grabbed his jacket and rushed from the room.
Driving eastward through a darkened city, he saw no one. At the first intersection of roads, he stopped and retrieved from his backpack a map to the Richardson property he had been provided. The markings on the map showed that he should turn left and go beyond the airport. He glanced at his watch. It was four a.m.
A sign announcing the Teniente J. Gallardo Airport was passed and faint lights could be seen in the direction an arrow on the sign pointed. Derek turned onto a road leading that way. Car headlights, pointed in his direction, were turned on and a man with a flashlight waved for him to stop. The man, a security guard in uniform, came to the window that he rolled-down and informed him the airport was closed. Derek asked if with emergency power, anything about the earthquake had been learned by radio. He was told that a major earthquake, centered off-shore Santiago, had done major damage, killed many people, and disrupted electric power to nearly the entire country. Thanking the man for the information, Derek turned his vehicle around and returned to the main road.
At the next intersection, a decision was made to wait there for daylight before undertaking a search for the property. The wait lasted until the sun rose over a steep escarpment, several hundred feet high, located a few miles away. Derek got out of the vehicle to take-in another enthralling view, a view that was overshadowed by scenery that included high, snow-capped mountains he saw as he turned to look to the northwest. It was toward that region he was headed.
The ground shook violently again before Derek got back into the vehicle. A very strong aftershock , he thought, as he tried to imagine the destruction being done throughout the country. He recalled that he had read about such a quake in 1960, 50 years previously, that was centered off-shore Valdivia. That was the largest earthquake ever recorded, killing thousands of people, and destroying cities like Puerto Montt , the city he found so appealing when he went there to catch the boat that brought him to Patagoni