Chile. Part II. North

Map

December 30, 2006 — January 10, 2007

Our plane landed in the town of Caspana, where the only thing of any interest is the copper deposit. The houses look like temporary accommodation for construction crews. By the town entrance there’s a monument made out of the mined material. Travellers don’t sojourn here because no one has gone to the trouble of opening a decent restaurant in this town (despite its 60,000-strong population).

Whereas in the village of San Francisco de Chiu Chiu, for instance, you can actually find somewhere to grab a bite to eat. That’s because tourists do actually venture out here.

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New Year’s celebrations without traditional Russian olivye salad, Putin, or snow are perfectly commonplace in the village of San Pedro de Atacama. Conifers, traditional this time of year, don’t grow here, that’s why the Christmas tree is a cross between fishing gear and camouflage netting.

It’s tradition to set ablaze a straw man on New Year’s Eve. On January first you can see wire mesh carcasses, survivors of the night’s festivities, everywhere.

There are huge numbers of stray dogs all over the country, lazy and devoid of aggression.

There are just as many stray cars, still sitting in the same place where they were last parked many years ago.

A cross always marks the spot where a car accident occurred. From time to time you spot these crosses in completely flat, deserted places. The inventiveness of those desperate to die behind the wheel never ceases to astound.

By the way, the roads are pretty good throughout the entire country. What’s more is, there are road signs even in the most deserted of deserts, on the most winding road halfway up a mountain without a soul in sight. There are more of them than you can shake a stick at— Chileans sure do like order. I compiled quite the collection of cars spotted on “steep descent” and “steep ascent” signs, including beetle-morphic, sombrero-like and chisel-esque ones.

There are three main materials the locals use to build and decorate with. The first is stone.

The second is old car tires.

The third is sheet metal procured by flattening fuel drums.

In the USSR they used to plant spruces in front of every single state agency (three fir trees for a district committee, ten for a city committee). Here the authorities have a predilection for cactuses.

Cactuses look unattractive in their natural habitat, reminiscent of the five o’clock shadow in a safety razor commercial.

People in the north look more like Bolivians or Peruvians.

At the entrance to every village there’s a sign stating its name and population. I don’t have the foggiest how they adjust the figures after each baby delivery.

Urban adventure hunters probably find Chile quite boring, given that the main attraction is nature. Here, for instance, is a pool full of brine shrimp in the middle of a salt lake.

Flamingos with black and pink arses graze on the boundless salty expanse (the lithium recovery facility has been thoughtfully hidden from view for the benefit of panoramic landscape lovers).

At an altitude of 4000km above sea level the grass grows in clumps so as to avoid disturbing its neighbours.

They tried to build a thermal power station in this geyser valley as far back as the 1970s. Nothing came of it except for this surrealist heap of metal in the middle of an unreal landscape.