Chile Facts:

• Chile's coastline stretches 2,700 miles long, running from the Atacama, the world's most arid desert in the north, through forests, valleys, mountains, lakes, glacier fields, the Tierra del Fuego and the Antarctic Circle in the south. Chile is never more than 110 miles wide east to west.
• Unlike most of the world, Chile is blessed with natural barriers. The fruit-growing region is protected by the Andes Mountains on the east, the Antarctic ice cap to the south, the Pacific Ocean to the west, and the Atacama Desert to the north.
• Chile has a broad spectrum of growing climates. These climactic variations favor diversified production of fruits and prolonged harvest seasons. In the past 16 years, fresh fruit exports from Chile to North America have increased over 700 percent. Chile is the primary wintertime source (over 95 percent) of fresh grapes for the US and Canada.
• The Chilean fruit-growing season is opposite that ofthe US., so marketing is complementary rather than competitive.
• There are more than 2,00 0 volcanoes in Chile, of which 50 are actually active.
• Chile is the second-largest producer of salmon in the world.
• Chile provides North America with almost 15 percent of all its fruit sales during the months of November through April.
• Soccer is Chile's national sport.
• Chile is the home of two Nobel Prize winning poets, Gabriela Mistral(1945), and Pablo Neruda(1971).
• David Selkirk, immortalized as Robinson Crusoe, survived a shipwreck and lived for several years on a desert island off the coast of Chile, no doubt thriving on the nutritional benefits of fresh fruit.