Carolyn McCarthy is originally from Boston in the U.S.  She has lived for the past 15 years in Chile, 12 hours south of Santiago in a rural area, where, since 1998, she's based herself as a writer for Lonely Planet. She has authored 50-plus travel guides for Lonely Planet focusing on the Americans. A fluent Spanish speaker and skilled at tough travel, Carolyn has explored the Amazon basin via dugout canoe, and solo hiked Patagonia for Lonely Planet's Tracking in the Patagonia Andes. She has documented life in some of the most remote corners of Latin America. For the past couple of years, she has worked as remote Global Communications  Coordinator for Tompkins Conservation. The foundation's landscape-scale projects focus on restoring native species in Chile and re-wilding threatened wildlife, such as the Jaguar and giant otter in Argentina.  Carolyn's website is http://www.carolynmccarthy.org/