every chilean i meet asks me this question: why did i decide to come to santiago/chile? my answer is generally a vague, i'm-not-really-sure, i-just-decided sort of response, but my trip this weekend reminded me a thousand times why i chose chile: its amazingincredibleunparalleled unique diversity of environments and the adventures to be had exploring them. i spent this past weekend with ciee in san pedro de atacama, in the heart of the desert of northern chile, and had an absolutely incredible time. leaving santiago was a breath of fresh air that came at the perfect time, and i came back reenergized and geared up to travel as much as i possibly can during the next few months.
DAY 1
my alarm goes off at 3:25am so that i'm up in time to catch a shuttle to the airport for our 6:30 flight north. unfortunately, our group is sharing the plane with an even larger group of chilean high school students who do not seem to be aware a) that it is 6:30am, b) that they are sharing the plane with other people and should probably not shout/scream/bark/whoop/etc., c) of any form of airplane etiquette- they were clambering over seats, standing in the aisles at all times, snapping photo flashes in the otherwise dark plane, congregating by the bathrooms, and basically anything else you can think of that most people would consider unacceptable plane behavior. despite our resulting lack of sleep, it was an interesting cultural insight into the social world of the wealthy chilean teenager.
arriving in calama, we head off for a tour of the nearby chuquicamata mine: the largest open-pit copper mine in the world. i have never seen a mine of any sort before, and i was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the operation. some fun facts: the mine employs 100 trucks the size of a small house with wheels taller than i am that cost $25,000 USD each (these are the largest possible mining trucks you can make, because these are the largest possible tires- made by michelin- that can support that largest amount of weight).
out of 100 trucks, there are only 2 female drivers. 20,000 workers toil 8 hour days here every day of the year (with three shifts per day the mine is literally always in operation). there has been no rain in chuquicamata since february 2006. while touring around the mine we got lucky and got to see molten iron being poured onto a hillside deposit, as well as an explosion in the mine itself meant to loosen rock so it can be removed. from afar the mine looks like flat-topped hills built in layers of dusty grey- a contrast to the real hills surrounding it that are red-brown clay and remind me of georgia o'keefe paintings of new mexico with their colors and shadows.
after the mine we made a stop to grab lunch and 5 liter jugs of water (which i did indeed finish by the end of the trip) before hopping on the bus for the 2ish hour drive to san pedro. the landscape in and around san pedro is absolutely awesome- although the region is a desert, it is by no means a boring horizon of flat sand. every turn brings different rich shades of brown, mountains, salt formations, volcanos, and gorges. a secret of the desert i learned: the seemingly random lines of desert shrubs that look like they should be shriveling under the unrelenting sun are alive because they grow on top of a subterranean water flow that comes down from the snow in the andes, through the quebradas (gorges/ravines) that crease the landscape, and eventually underground across the wide open pampa.
the town of san pedro was an immensely welcome change from the always-moving crowds of santiago. despite being an important tourist jumping-point for all the region's activities, san pedro has a calming, relaxed attitude that infects both locals and tourists. none of santiago's too-pushy restaurant callers or shouting vendors; just lazy sandy streets lined with adobe and straw houses where you can stroll along after a full day of adventures. this is the iglesia:
everyone is just happy to be there, from the local niños playing in the plaza and around their parents' shops to the non-locals in their hiking boots and fleeces. the only negative of our trip was not having more time to really explore san pedro itself.
for dinner i grabbed an empanada of tomato, cheese, and basil for about $1.50 USD- it was so delicious i would've paid five times that if they'd asked!
then at around 9:00 we drove out into the desert to see the stars. i learned SO MUCH in the next three hours- if i had more than one life to spend, one would definitely be dedicated to astronomy. another would be as a geologist, the earth formations i saw this weekend were fascinating. but anyway, astonomy- the night was perfectly clear with a beautiful moon and stars and the wide open sky and space around us was perfectly calm. we arrived at the house of alain, a french-born chilean (here to take advantage of the grade A stargazing conditions and work on the upcoming ALMA telescope project here) whose clearly french-accented spanish was a (linguistic) treat in itself. alain explained to us about the point of rotation of the sky, the galactic system, different types of stars and how to name them, how to use astronomy for romantic purposes, and then pointed out various constellations with his oh-so-useful green laser. it was incredibly cool to know that we were seeing things that are never in the sky at home like the cruz del sur and scorpio. we then got to make use of his 8 or 10 telescopes to see cool things like jupiter, a white nebula, a star that was in reality one blue star and one orange star, a butterfly-shaped group of stars, and a close-up of the moon's craters (which he later took a photo of with my camera through the telescope!)
after a couple hours out in the more-than-chilly winter night we went into alain's open-sky living room to drink delicious hot cocoa by candlelight and hear more about the stars. by far the most worthwhile night i have spent in chile thus far.
days 2 and 3 to be added soon...
