San Pedro de Atacama

This past weekend I visited the north of Chile for the first time since I was very, very young. Yearning to see the stunning night skies of the Southern Hemisphere, I and two friends (Margarita from Murcia, Spain, and Oscar, from El Salvador, Chile) traveled two hours by plane to the driest desert in the world, and the widest section of Chile. San Pedro de Atacama is a tiny tourist town an hour away from the nearest city; a natural oasis surrounded by the third largest salt flat in the world, mountains, a volcano, geysers, and a wealth of archeological treasures from the Atacamenyo peoples.

In choosing our lodging it became clear that water was an issue - many reviews attested that the hot water shut off at night, and that the water pressure was frequently minimal during the day. And while technically potable, other articles noted that high levels of heavy metals, including trace amounts of arsenic, made it preferable to drink the expensive bottled water. I wonder if the minerals have always been in the ground water, or if they were released by industrial activities.

The commercial part of the town caters almost exclusively to tourists; almost every locale is a.) a restaurant, b.) a souvenir shop, c.) a hostel. The town is tiny, perhaps five by five blocks, all dirt roads. In keeping with tradition, all commercial buildings are made of adobe - excellent for the intense heat of the day, and below freezing temperatures at night. We might have been considerably warmer at night had our hostel room been made of mud bricks as well!


The photos to the right are of the native's houses on the outskirts of the village, the part the tourists don't come into contact with.








On the tours we booked we visited the salt flats, saw the famous Andean flamingos (four species,) passed through tiny adobe villages where all the inhabitants had Altiplano indigenous features, toured salt lakes and pools, saw a herd of vicunyas, and the mountains and salt fields lit by sunset. One night we indulged in a breathtaking visit to an observatory. There were wishes to spare with all the shooting stars that lit the sky above us. And there was no moon at all, making the southern hemisphere milky way shine all the more brilliantly. I guarantee you, the northern milky way cannot compare in complexity or beauty. I saw Saturn's rings, new and old nebulas, a star on the horizon glittering with colors a thousand times deeper than a diamond, the double star system of Alpha Centauri. I learned to recognize the Cross of the South, and therefore how to find "South" by the stars. I am also lucky to have all of my toes and fingers.

Chile supplies 40% of the world's Lithium, and lo and behold, from a high altiplano road the lithium salt pools and processing plant were visible to the eye. The industry sucks water out of the salt flats and forms pools on the surface, collecting the metal when the sun bakes the pools dry. I heard murmers of dissent at such industrial practices - the water table for the region is falling as a result. The water table that feeds the salt pools that have drawn so many tourists, and more importantly, the water used by households, is evaporating into the sun for the profits of the lithium company.

We caught a bus back to the airport as the sun fell, and the moon emerged a pale curved sliver over the bruise hills. Only in an airport so small can you make it with 20 minutes to spare before the plane leaves.

In support of the informal economy?

Although I would lean towards describing Chile as a developed country (a strong state, that in addition to having full civilian control over the military, can provide security, education, health care, stable infrastructure, etc. to a high degree), the country certainly does have a bustling informal economy. The upper classes rely mostly (or exclusively) on stores and supermarkets for their purchases, but given that they're only 10% off the population, there is a healthy demand for more informal venues - street vendors and markets.

Even in Providencia, which is commercial but surrounded by upper class residences, street vendors lay out pirated movies, $2 shirts, low quality makeup (possibly cancerous?), and now - Chinese-made gloves and scarves. They are constantly looking out for the police, and swoop up their goods, vanishing, if the army-green "pacos" approach. But there must be a certain degree of tolerance on the part of the police - I see the same vendors again and again in the same place.

Walking down into the metro, there's often an older woman (with an infant, for added effect) offering bandaids with a mournful, pleading voice. This is a frequent phenomena - I suspect there is a bandaid warehouse somewhere in the city, selling these generic, mediocre bandaids wholesale to (whether purposefully or not) raise these people a small step above begging. After noting the price of bandaids in farmacies, I'm beggining to spend some sort of collusion between these vendors and the farmacies - a box of bandaids can cost you $4 easily. So I buy generic.

Lastly, like in other Latin American countries I've visited, there's an easy relationship between bus drivers and street vendors. In the summer, a tattered vendor will hop onto the bus with a nod to the driver, and parrot the types of icecream he carries in a worn cooler, or even a cardboard box. His call becomes unintelligible to a newcomer "Kelao, Keloa:" is (I Think) "Quiere helado, quiere helado." He hops off, rarely successful, without paying his stay on the bus. Now vendors market chocolates and other bar candies, but I still haven't seen many sold.

Mendoza

One of the enjoyable things about an advanced developing country is that the population still largely relies on public transportation, but the roads are all well-maintained and the buses are many and safe.

There's an intense feeling of freedom and possibility in the many bus stations of Santiago - you can arrive at almost any hour of the day and within ten minutes be on a bus to any part of the country, even to Argentina.

My Spanish friend from the student residence, Marga, and I decided to head to the nearby Argentine city of Mendoza, just across the Andes from Santiago. Friday, May 1st is Labor Day, and "Dia del Trabajador" is taken quite seriously in Chile. Shops close early starting the day before, and not even the main supermarkets open on the holiday. The only stores I found open walking down several blocks of Av. Providencia, one of Santiago's commercial arteries, were a McDonalds and a Japanese foods store run by a foreign Asian woman. In order to avoid the sense of desertion that descends on Santiago on long weekends, Marga and I joined the hordes fleeing the capital and hopped a night bus to Mendoza. Round trip, per person, was $48 for an 8 hour bus ride in a "semi-cama" (almost fully reclining) seat, and snacks.

Mendoza, located between Santiago and Buenos Aires, has the reputation of mixing a little of each country. The native Mendocinos, although they clearly speak Argentinian (pronouncing the double l "ll" as "zh," instead of the "y" used by other latinos), speak a very light, almost Chilean form of Argentinian Spanish. Mendoza is a city that still believes it is a town, where the streets are wide and lined in sycamores, and the stores close four hours for lunch from 1 to 5pm. It has a reputation as a shopping city, where Santiaguinos come to take advantage of the significantly lower prices. A lunch "menu," with appetizer to dessert, costs $6, as opposed to $9 in a comparable Santiago restaurant. Books and CDs, which are quite expensive in Chile due to the 19% sales tax, are often less than half the price in Argentina. And I don't need to mention the high quality yet reasonably priced leathers.

Our Chilean guy-friends at the residence teasingly warned us about the "Trans-andinos," who are known to be significantly more forward in their piropos than their Chilean neighbors. Marga related her experiences on a previous trip to Bariloche, where Argentinian men had openly and gladly yelled their appreciation for her from across the street. On this trip I was amused to only hear a muffled piropo as a man passed us - we joked that he must have been Chilean.

Out walking Saturday night, the main streets were packed with people enjoying the warm evening and window shopping. If you can forgive the generalization, it felt quite European. The sidewalks were much more crowded than I'd ever seen in Santiago; the entire population was either out walking or serving the strollers.

The way back we saw the sun rise on the pass through the Andes, lighting the desert golds and reds of the Andes, up to the cool greys and purples of the snow spotted mountains. The mountains are dryer than they've ever been, but golden autumn alders and pampas grasses lined the few rivers there were.

A curious note - The drive over to Argentina from Chile takes 7 hours, but the trip back takes 8. The difference? The Argentinian customs, beyond checking to see if your papers are in order, is largely symbolic. They didn't go through or scan our bags at all, didn't check through the bus to see if we were bringing fruits or illicit products in, didn't walk a police dog by us. The Chilean customs was serious, doing all of the above. It makes sense, now that I reflect on it - much of Chile's international trade is agriculture. A vegetable or fruit disease would be devastating, as would any bug affecting eucalyptus or pine - Chile is also one of the top timber producing states.


We got back today, and it's gotten cold. The weather changes abruptly here; two weeks ago it could get up to 85; now the temperature drops to the 40's at night at struggles to reach 70 during the day. The trees which are almost exclusively deciduous, have all at once begun to turn golden and brown and precipitously dump leaves on the sidewalks. This is clearly to the chagrin of the apartment concierges, who are rather obsessive about keeping their gardens immaculate, and now have to sweep and rake the lawns every few hours.