Chile Claims Alien Affinity With UFO Trail
by Mike Harrison
Inspired by numerous reports of extraterrestrial activity, Chile has opened the country’s first UFO trail.
A UFO hot-spot
When it comes to attracting tourists to a remote region in central Chile, the town of San Clemente is aiming high, playing up its reputed connection to visitors from outer space.
The Andean municipality, 150 miles south of Santiago, has opened the country’s first UFO trail, a 19-mile long stretch that takes in a supposed landing site for flying saucers and optimal lookouts for extraterrestrial craft.
Sernatur, Chile’s tourism service, is backing the initiative. “We support the creation of this UFO trail because experts say that it is a ‘hot zone’ for watchers,” the service’s director, Oscar Santelices, said.
However, just in case hordes of foreign tourists of the terrestrial variety turn up expecting to get a close encounter of a first, second, third or, heaven forbid, fourth kind (alien abduction) out of their trip, Sernatur had a bucket of cold water.
“In no way can we guarantee that a tourist coming to San Clemente will see a UFO,” it says in its brochure.
The Chilean town has long been am unofficial destination for UFO-watchers in the know, though mainstream curiosity-seekers looking for a bit of interplanetary mystery have been more often drawn to neighboring Peru to see the Nazca Lines, those centuries-old gigantic representations of animals in a desert which can only be fully appreciated from the air.
UFO researchers say hundreds of UFO sightings have been reported in San Clemente since the mid-1990s.
Rodrigo Fuenzalida, president of the Chilean Grouping for UFO Research (AION) said between January 1995 and the middle of 1996 there was around one sighting per week.
The last unidentified flying object spotted was in the third week of February this year, he said.
“It was an orange object located about 1,300 feet in the distance, with oscillating movements,” he said.
A site of special interest is a flat zone of huge volcanic blocks known as El Enladrillado, 37 miles from San Clemente and at an altitude of 7,546 feet, which locals claim is a UFO landing pad.
“There, sightings have been made of shining spheres going into the water and into wooded zones without any human explanation,” Fuenzalida said.
El Enladrillado, which can only be accessed after hours of trekking over rough terrain, forms the central part of the UFO trail.
Juan Carlos Cerro, of the local tourist office, says there are other points along the path which include signs detailing sightings, as well as restaurants, camping sites, hostels and cabins to serve hungry or weary Earthlings.
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