Desert

We arrived in the north of Chile on Day 21 (February 4) and will be sailing south off the coast of Chile for almost 2 weeks, stopping in seven ports. I now know that Chile is the longest and narrowest country in the world, 2,700 miles long.

The first two ports we visited in northern Chile, Arica and Iquique were the most desolate landscape I have ever seen. They get essentially no rain and in most places we visited there is no vegetation. It looks like what I imagine the moon would be like. And, it is hot. This Atacama desert is the driest desert in the world and goes for a thousand miles down the coast of northern Chile.

The best part of those two ports were trips into the desert to see the hillside geoglyphs. I learned that “a geoglyph is a large design or motif (generally longer than 4 metres) produced on the ground by durable elements of the landscape, such as stones, stone fragments, gravel, or earth.”

Here is a slide I found on the web that shows what the geoglyphs look like on the sides of the hills near Arica. They are very old, way before the coming of the Spaniards and seems that they were used for expression and probably to indicate a meeting place for the coastal people and people coming from the eastern highlands to trade.

Also near Arica is an area with concrete sculptures in the middle of the desert called Presencias Tutelares. Lots of tour busses pulling up in the middle of nowhere, unloading so that people can get out and walk under the hot sun to see these sculptures that were made to honor to indigenous peoples.

We visited a museum and saw some of the mummies that were a result of the burial practices of these indigenous people in the very arid conditions. I am still vague about which indigenous groups they were and that feeds into my sense that the tour just touched the surface. Unlike areas further north, in Chile, there is very little inclusion of the particulars of the indigenous experience. Worth noticing. Our tour guides were translating the Spanish of the museum guides and the overview left me with many questions. This seems like an area worth going back to visit with someone well versed in the archeology of the region.

Our tour also visited a huge “ghost town” in the middle of the desert. It was called Humberstone This was a huge town of 3,500 people (at its peak). It was a company town for the mining of salt peter (nitrate). Humberstone was one of many such towns in the desert and it was used from the 1870s until it was abandoned in the 1960s. The dry climate has preserved the buildings, so that one could get a sense of the way this community of the managers and workers lived their lives together. In many ways it was a very stratified community, only improving a bit after a massacre in the 1930s brought attention to the conditions and some improvements.

After a day at sea, we arrived on Day 24 (February 7) at the port of Coquimbo. Driving east from Coquimbo in a bus, the desert was now called transitional. There are cacti in many areas. There is some irrigation and there are some vineyards and some small trees. We visited a pisco factory. Pisco is a liquor with about 40% alcohol content made from the local wine. It makes a very interesting pisco sour, which is pretty tasty. This was a nice way to end the desert stretch of Chile.