Venues

The Venues

The mini courses will be held at Universidad de O'Higgins in Rancagua, with the Workshop taking place at the Hotel Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz. 

Rancagua is the chief city of Chile's O'Higgins Region. It is located in the agricultural heart of Chile's Central Valley, in the Andean foothills along the Cachapoal River some 80 kilometers south of the capital, Santiago. The city offers a combination of history, traditions, modern infrastructure, and urban charm. Founded in 1743, the city would later become the scene of one of the major engagements of the Chilean struggle for independence, The Battle of Rancagua. While the area is considered the seat of Chilean culture, from song and dance to cuisine, Rancagua today is a modern and vibrant city, and an important industrial one too, with wine production, fruit and vegetable canning, and mineral extraction, particularly El Teniente, one of the world’s largest copper mines.

The charming town of Santa Cruz is located in Chile's Colchagua Valley, one of the most famous New World wine regions. Rich in natural beauty and cultural heritage, it is surrounded by picturesque vineyards and rolling hills. While parts of Santa Cruz offer the services and infrastructure of any modern town, it retains a distinctly provincial and rural feel. It has well preserved colonial architecture, a picturesque main square, and is surrounded by some of the best wineries in Chile. Wine aside, it offers one of the country’s most important attractions for visitors. The Museum of Colchagua houses an impressive collection of pre-Hispanic artifacts, items from Colonial times, the Independence years, and even an exhibit on El Gran Rescate (The Big Rescue), showing objects, photos and films related to the 2010 rescue of the 33 miners trapped underground in a copper mine near Copiapó.