Day 163: Pukara de Quitor

On my last day in San Pedro de Atacama, I did a small hike. About 3 km from the village, there are the partly restored remains of an old mountain fortress, the Pukara de Quitor.

I had already seen a pukara in Argentina. The main difference between the two is their use of construction materials. While the stones in Argentina were a light grey, the stones available near San Pedro are red:



This overview of the pukara shows the side from which the fortress could be accessed; all other sides of the hill were a lot steeper than that.



On one of the steep sides, there were two indigenous faces carved into the stone. As the park surrounding them was opened only recently, I'm not quite sure how old the carvings actually are; but impressive nonetheless!



Close to the pukara, another path led up to a mirador. Halfway up, it offered views of these fantastic red hills:



And from the top, there was a wonderful view of San Pedro. From this perspective it suddenly became clear to me why San Pedro was originally chosen as a settlement: it is an oasis!



Back in San Pedro, I visited the archeological museum. Due to the aridity in the region, many artefacts are preserved perfectly. The museum therefore has exhibits that would have decayed in many other parts of the world, for example baskets woven from plant fiber.

What I found quite surprising was that many of the museum's exhibits were related to the production, storage and consumption of hallucinogenic substances. Apparently, the usage of drugs, at least for spiritual purposes, was very common. This picture shows a sample of the instruments: a pestle for production, and a tablet from where the drugs were inhaled via a pipe.



I wonder if drug use was as widespread in ancient European cultures?

Day 162: Lakes in the Altiplano

Today I went on a tour to visit the Salar de Atacama and two lakes in the altiplano.

Our first stop was Laguna Chaxa, a salt lake populated by flamencos and some other birds. All around the lake, there are fantastic shapes of salt and stone that developed when the lake's water level dropped.



As in the Salar de Uyuni, they also found lithium in the Atacama salt flats. Lithium being an important resource in battery manufacture, both countries are keen on exploiting these deposits, destroying the awesome natural environment in the process. As our guide today put it, some of the donkeys the Spanish brought are now wild, and some went to work for the government.

The next stop, Lake Miscanti, was a beautiful, impossibly blue mountain lake surrounded by snow-capped peaks.





Its sister lake, just a few hundred meters away, is Laguna Miñiques. While Miscanti often freezes over in winter, Miñiques does not because it is fed by warm underground water.



All around the two lakes, we could find volcanic stones. Given a little patience and a steady hand, it was possible to balance them on their tips. Some even managed to stack them:



Close to the lakes, there was a huge area with holey stones. The way this came into being was that the hot lava erupted by one of the nearby volcanoes mixed with the snow-covered softer rocks in the area, and was thus was cooled down rapidly. When the ice and soft rock were washed out later, they left cavity-riddled stone behind.



At the end of the day, we also paid a visit to the church of Toconao. The church has a roof and staircase made of cactus wood. While pretty, the problem with cactus wood is that it grows incredibly slowly, only about 1 cm per year. This is why today there aren't too many cactuses around and cactus wood isn't used for construction anymore.

Day 161: Geysers and Stars

This morning, I had to get up at 3:30, because my tour to the El Tatio geysers left at 4 in order to get to the geysers in time for the sunrise. The morning didn't start very well: the heating in the bus didn't really heat, and the windows kept opening themselves because of the vibrations on the rough street. So I was cold all through the bus ride - and then, at the geysers at 4200m above sea level, we were kicked out of the bus to have breakfast... outside! By that time, I was pretty grumpy - the way I always get when I'm cold and tired.

Luckily, the geysers were very nice and kinda made up for the early time and cold weather. The El Tatio geyser field consists of more than 80 geysers - small ones, big ones, bubbling ones, and steaming ones:



The steam plumes are another reason the geysers are usually visited early in the morning. As soon as the air warms up, the plumes disappear.



Like most countries with geothermal activity, Chile also tried exploiting it. These are the remains of a previous attempt - but apparently, they discontinued geothermal exploitation in favor of the touristic one.



El Tatio has not only geysers, but also steaming hot rivers:



On the way back, we got to enjoy some beautiful mountain scenery:



My mood improved back in San Pedro, relaxing in a hammock under the warm midday sun. In the evening, I was ready for a real highlight: an astronomy tour in the atacama desert, under a perfectly clear sky and far from any major settlement. This was easily the best tour I've done in San Pedro, probably because the guide was really passionate about astronomy and explained everything in a brilliant and funny way.

To point out constellations in the sky, he used a strong green laser pointer - the perfect method to make sure that even the unimaginative and blind could see what he was talking about.

He also explained details for a few stars. Among them: Pollux. Pollux happens to be 33 light years away, which means that the light we see today was emitted when I was born. An entirely new and great way to relate to distances in space!

Another thing the guide explained was that the southern hemisphere is the best place to see the center of our galaxy, the milky way, while the northern hemisphere is better for looking beyond our galaxy because the dense center of the milky way doesn't get in the way.

Finally, they also had ten telescopes pointing to various objects in the sky. We could see Mars and Saturn, complete with its rings and moons, Sirius, the jewel box, the tarantula nebula, and a few other far-out objects.



Having professionals point the telescopes at interesting objects for you removed all the hassle from stargazing and left only fascination. What a wonderful experience!

Day 160: San Pedro de Atacama

Today, with a delay of about seven weeks, I finally arrived in San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is a tiny village in the middle of the world's driest desert. A sign announces just under 2000 inhabitants. I suspect that there is room for about as many tourists again, and the main street is lined with tour agencies and restaurants. Another place whose entire workforce is employed in tourism...

There is nothing really to see in the village, just brown adobe houses and lots of dust. The paved road leads right up to the village, but within and beyond, there are only dirt roads.

The desert landscape around San Pedro, however, is spectacular. In the afternoon I visited the Valle de la Luna - I wonder how many valleys of the moon I've seen now, the name seems to be quite popular ;-)



The valley is located in the Cordillera de la Sal, a several million year old mountain range that consists to a good part of salt. This explains the white color on this rock formation, called the amphitheater:



While most of the valley consists of stone, there are also some sand dunes. This one is the biggest in the valley, called Duna Mayor:



Due to the wind in the valley, the dune moves with the wind to one side. How fast, the guide couldn't tell me. But it's beautiful anyway :-) I especially liked the contrast to the rocks all around:



After the dune, we went to a viewpoint to watch the sunset. Even before that, the red rocks looked fantastic:



The sunset-watching spot was well chosen: the clouds lit up very nicely, and the views in combination with the landscape were wonderful.

Day 159: Diving in the Pacific

After three months, I finally went diving again today. It was my first dive ever in the Pacific ocean, and it was spectacular! Every inch of the ocean was brimming with life - and what wasn't was swaying along with the current anyway ;-)

I saw a trumpetfish, looking like a long yellowish leaf, molluscs in a hundred different shapes and colors, orange plants looking like upturned buckets, spiky red plants, starfish half a meter in diameter, and lots of colorful fish hiding among the plants.

Even the stones were packed full with life, being covered by small snails, plants, and tiny fish.

I'll have to get a real underwater case for my camera one say, it's just too beautiful down there :-)

Day 158: Humberstone + Santa Laura

Visiting Humberstone had been on my list of things to do since I first arrived in Chile, and today I finally had the chance to go.

Humberstone and Santa Laura are ghost towns, the sites of long abandoned saltpeter refineries that noone bothered to deconstruct. Since the workers in these refineries lived on site - commuting to Iquique, 50 km away, wasn't an option in the late 19th century - towns with all kinds of amenities were built to cater to the workers and their families.

Around the two towns, there is nothing, except for brownish hills (and saltpeter). Right in the middle of the desert, there is not even enough water for nature to grow a few low bushes. Have a look at the landscape in this picture to get an impression - the front shows Humberstone's deserted basketball court:



In its prime, Humberstone was home to around 3000 people. Various types of housing were available, from tiny 13 square meter rooms with shared bathrooms for single workers to big houses with 140 square meters and accommodation for the nanny. To the left of this swing, right in front of the school, are some of the biggest houses I saw:



When Humberstone was closed in 1960, the people left with their belongings, but the houses remained standing. Due to the passage of time and earthquakes, the buildings are in various states of disrepair today. Many walls have cracks, and in many floors, the wooden planks have lifted to form small waves.

The theater is in surprisingly good shape - I suspect it has been restored so that its stage and 700 seat auditorium can actually be used safely.



The swimming pool - quite big with 24x12 meters - was constructed out of ship plating. Only the English inhabitants of Humberstone were permitted to use it. The locals were only allowed in just before the water in the pool was changed.



The entire atmosphere in Humberstone, an unpopulated wasteland with almost recent remains of civilization, reminds me of the computer game Fallout. Fallout is made to appear like the fifties, the time just before the clocks in Humberstone stopped. Coincidence?

This collection of advertisements for Chilean fertilizer, displayed in one of the administrative buildings, is almost too colorful when seen in direct comparison with the discolored buildings in the desert.



In Santa Laura, the situation is slightly different from Humberstone: all houses there were dismantled for wood, but the metal shacks containing the machinery, including some machines, are still there.

The owner's house has been outfitted as a museum, showing some furnishings and other items left behind. This was the dining room:



The main processing plant in Santa Laura:



In several of the buildings, there was still heavy machinery standing around. With the wind howling through the metal walls and rattling loose sheets, the atmosphere was almost spooky.



I found it extremely fascinating to wander around and discover what the passage of time has done to a once gleaming new saltpeter refinery. I want more sites like this!

Day 157: Sights in Iquique

Today I visited a few of Iquique's sights. First, the municipal theater. The theater is great in that it is not only beautiful, but also let's visitors take pictures and roam freely around the entire building. Consequently, I got to stand on the stage - nice view from up there, isn't it?



I also discovered that at least this particular stage is not entirely horizontal, but has a slight downward angle. Maybe this improves visibility of the back of the stage for the audience?

I also got to go below the stage. There, they keep the original wooden contraptions they used more than 100 years ago to move stage decorations. Fascinating!



Next, I stopped by the cathedral, but unfortunately the church was closed, so I only got to see its outside:



Finally, I visited Iquique's regional museum. Next to the remains of an ancient culture living in the area, they also have exhibits from a far more recent part of history: saltpeter mining. Saltpeter can be used as fertilizer and for gunpowder production, which explains why it was considered important enough to fight a war over.

According to the museum, today Chile is the only country in the world that has saltpeter as a natural resource. Most of the saltpeter mines were gained in the Pacific war - before that, the corresponding territories belonged to Peru and Bolivia. So while Chile became rich on saltpeter exports, Peru and Bolivia... didn't.

The history of saltpeter extraction is quite interesting. They implemented new methods of extraction several times to increase productivity, but at some point were made almost obsolete when German chemists discovered how to manufacture synthetic saltpeter.

The workers in the saltpeter companies were apparently not paid in regular money, but in company-made tokens - which the museum has a huge collection of. These tokens were valid only in the company's shops. When the workers wanted to exchange them for real currency, the companies deducted a hefty fee of 50% of the tokens' worth. No wonder that the workers united at one point and marched to Iquique to demand improvement of their conditions - a strike that ended in a massacre...

Another interesting part of the museum was the archive room. I stumbled upon the room by chance, but was immediately drawn to all the super-sized books inside. When I asked the archive keeper what they were, he explained that they contain newspapers. He showed me the book for October 1939. Every day, they had a new piece of bad news about warmongering Germany on the front page, while the inside was filled with other news, movie ads, etc. What a fascinating outside glimpse at German history!

Day 156: Iquique

I arrived in the Chilean coast town Iquique around 3 am. Luckily, the bus company let us sleep in the bus until 7, so I didn't have to look for a hostel in the middle of the night.

Iquique is located right between the Pacific and the desert. There are reminders to conserve water everywhere, and the hills just outside the city appear quite barren.

The beaches, on the other hand, are really beautiful, with nice waves and plenty of people surfing (or trying to).



On one of the stonier parts of the shore, there was a series of small rocky islands populated by pelicans:



Iquique's main boulevard is lined with colonial houses, where the people who got rich on saltpeter mining showed off their wealth. On its entire length, the boulevard is a pedestrian zone, with palm trees in the middle and extra wide wooden sidewalks. After all the somewhat ugly, noisy and cluttered Bolivian cities, I especially enjoyed strolling along this wonderfully calm and clean street with its airy architecture.



On one end of the boulevard, it leads onto Plaza Prat. Colonial architecture continues on the plaza. There are a few old wooden tram carts, benches with roofs overgrown with flowers, and the magnificent municipal theater on one side.



The plaza is named after Arturo Prat, the Chilean national hero who died in the naval battle of Iquique. The battle was part of the Pacific war that resulted in the loss of territories, including access to the Pacific, for Bolivia. On the Chilean side, of course, people are generally happy about the outcome of the war, whereas in Bolivia, people always mentioned it with a sort of disgruntled teeth-clenching.

Day 155: Goodbye Bolivia - Hello Chile!

So, after the strikes blocking all outbound roads yesterday, today was the day I said goodbye to Bolivia.

Despite all the warnings I read in the guidebooks, nothing bad happened to me during my six weeks in Bolivia. No robberies, no pocket picking, no accidents, no encounters with fake police. Quite the contrary: in many places there was a high presence of tourist police. They made me feel quite safe - and they were also friendly and helpful when asked for directions :-)

So now I've left the country - where people called me either mamita (without intending to comment on my age, I think) or amiga. To be honest, I'm looking forward to leave the altitude behind me for now. I hate being constantly out of breath! But there are also things I'm gonna miss, for example the fresh orange juices to be had on every street corner. So here is my farewell look at La Paz:



The border area was very busy. There were long lines of trucks on both sides. Since Bolivia doesn't have a port, all imported goods or raw materials must enter the country by truck... I found it very impressive to see this fact illustrated by trucks without end for kilometers.

The landscape was also very nice, on both sides of the border. This is Bolivia:



And this Chile:



So now, in Chile, I remembered the Chilean chant I first heard at the triathlon in Pucón:

Chi chi chi le le le
Viva Chile!

I'm happy to be back!

Day 154: Witch's Market

Today I paid a visit to the witch's market in La Paz. This is a market where all kinds of esoteric objects are sold, most of them connected to the belief in the earth mother Pachamama.

There seem to be numerous occasions when offerings have to be made to Pachamama. One of them I noticed during carnival in Sucre, when everybody was burning offerings in front of their doors. There also seem to be two ways to make offerings: burning and burying.

One of the most significant or valuable offerings that can be made are llama fetuses:



There are also many pre-compiled sets of offerings where you don't have to worry about selecting the ingredients yourself. Note the wine - the label says that it is wine specially made for offerings to Pachamama. My guess is that this is wine that is too bad to drink ;-)



Finally, there was an incredible variety of powders and perfumes for a million different purposes. For erotic uses, for example, there were dog tongue powder and "Sexovit" - a combination of vitamins and yohimbine:



There were also powders for salesmen, to summon money, to forget, hate, unblock, and many more:



In a country that is supposed to be deeply catholic, I wouldn't have expected such a market and the corresponding belief system. I guess the Spanish weren't so successful in their evangelizing efforts after all ;-)

Day 153: Tiwanaku

I've known Tiwanaku as a city name for a long time - in the computer game series Civilization, it is one of the proposed city names for the inca civilization. As I learned today, strictly speaking this is not correct. The Tiwanaku were predecessors of the inca, which were one of many civilizations that flourished in the wake of Tiwanaku's downfall.

The city of Tiwanaku was the political, religious and astronomical center of the Tiwanaku culture, which lasted for 2700 years, and covered an area of 600.000 square kilometers, almost twice the size of Germany.

Like many cultures in the southern hemisphere, they were greatly inspired by the southern cross constellation, using the cross not only for orientation, but its form also as a blueprint for some of their religious buildings. For example, this partly excavated pyramid in Tiwanaku:



The archeologists responsible for the ongoing excavations face a big problem. After the decline of Tiwanaku, the Spanish arrived and found hundreds of perfectly shaped stones just "lying around". So of course they took advantage of them, and did what they liked most: build churches. This one stands in the nearby village, and you can see that the stones look exactly like those used in the pyramid:



According to our guide, only 40% of the original stones remain in the ruins today. When you add to that the jumbled way in which the stones are found below the earth, you can imagine how big the puzzle is that the archeologists are trying to solve.



Another thing the Spanish did in their (rather successful) attempt to evangelize the native population was to deface statutes. The Tiwanaku culture had many richly engraved statutes laden with symbology, like this one:



Now what the Spanish did was try and cut off the statues' heads or noses, or, if that didn't work, add Christian symbols. You can see a cross a well as a triangle representing trinity in this picture:



Another artefact found among the ruins was the Puerta del Sol, the sun's door. Made out of a single piece of stone, the door is thought to represent a fairly detailed calendar with 12 months and 52 weeks, with an emphasis on the beginning of spring, symbolized by the big engraving of the sun god.



That the door is still in Bolivia today is actually quite lucky. In the 19th century, an English lord had found the door and intended to bring it back to England. But when the Pacific war broke out, he left Bolivia in a hurry and forgot to take the door...

The temple buildings in Tiwanaku were carefully aligned to emphasize certain astronomical events. This temple, for example, was built to catch the sunrise at the two days of equinox in a year.



The temple in the foreground features more than 100 stone heads with various shapes and faces in the walls:



Although the archeological site of Tiwanaku is already fascinating today, there's a lot of excavation work to be done, and a lot left to learn about the Tiwanaku culture. For example, what's inside the big pyramid? Tombs or treasures maybe? And why do all statutes have the right hand in the wrong direction? Why did the culture decline? What do the stone heads signify?

While the serious archeologists are trying to answer these questions, others have come up with an answer: apparently, some "scientists" think the culture was far too advanced and therefore must have been helped along by aliens...