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Published: April 19th 2006
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To begin with, I have to say I feel somewhat vindicated for the whole being sent to Antipasta, aka "I just dont like that place (actual quote from Chilean)", Chile. And it wasnt just friends- complete strangers openly expressed their disbelief that I would willingly board an aircraft which I knew full well was headed for Antofagasta. But in the end you can´t argue with year round sunshine, people, and furthermore, I will never find a mushroom growing on
my clothes . . . So what that I am living in the driest desert in the world, choking on dust kicked up from a mixture of the 23,984,723,847 surrounding mines (rough estimate based on # of mining trucks I see multiplied by # of times I am almost run over by them daily)?? As I see it, the Atacama Desert can either be a) Death Incarnate or b) a lovely expanse to explore without pesky vegetation and living things to get in your way. Its all in the eye of the beholder, and, after doing some exploring of my own (see pics of Porto Fino/Pan de Azucar), I have come to the conclusion that El Norte Grande
rocks big time (pun fully intended). Yesterday I met the City Engineer/Planner for Antafantasma (he´s an ex-Fulbrighter) and he gave me his bidness card . . . I´m thinking of e-mailing him to propose a new town slogan:
¡Life´s a Beach! in Antofagasta- Ojo with the mining trucks though 😊.
Okay, fanatic bursts of nortina pride out of the way- on to the photos . . . During Semana Santa, or Easter weekend, I managed to get Thurs-Sunday off and headed out on what was supposed to be a 6 hour drive to Porto Fino, departing mid-afternoon, to camp/surf/hike along the local beaches and the Pan de Azucar National Park. Cut to Thursday, midnight: the 5 of us crammed into the 2x4 truck (cause "we won´t need 4 wheel drive- well just stay on the road") finally pulling out of Antofagasta after three 10-minute wrong-turn detours within the city limits, a half an hour waiting for "Coco" the surfboard repair man, and 45 minutes of frantic grocery shopping at Jumbo followed by an equally frantic search through the parking garage at said Jumbo looking for firewood. (You cant find it while camping, there being no trees/herbaceous materials whatsoever...) Then cut to 35k
Porto Fino
where campers camp later: suddenly the road stops and we find ourselves lost on a dirt path facing (as in its-sitting-in-oncoming-traffic-lane style) a minibus, still running, full of what can only be described as dead people, and a truck on the other side of the road with one dead person riding shotgun. A sign reads "road closed" in one direction, and nothing in the other. After making the questionable decision to continue down Dead Man´s Alley, we drive between the dead-people-filled vehicles and then it got really creepy: the whole car fogs up instantly and the air pressure drops audibly. Basically, I think we stumbled upon the Bermuda Triangle of the lower Atacama desert. After continuing down this road to nowhere for a few k we finally acknowledge that the only reason we haven´t turned around yet was that no one wanted to go by the dead guys again, and they were fully blocking the only exit. So we turn around, full speed ahead down the unpaved dirt road in our 2x4 truck-on-a-car-bed mobile and round Dead Man´s Corner on two wheels. Cut now to an hour later: still on a dirt road, literally bumping along in the dark, havent seen another (alive)
person since we left, when suddenly the right side of the road drops away and we realize we are on a sheer cliff dropping down into the ocean. This is Highway 1, or the ocean drive. It would be generous to call this "one lane", and the scattered signs that show narrowing road ahead are not kidding, if by narrowing you mean choked to within 2 feet of existence by wayward boulders. We had to off-road to stay on the road, which led us to all to sheepishly recall the famous last words of only a few hours earlier- "we dont need 4 wheel drive- well just stay on the road". Thats a good plan as long as the road doesnt abandon you in the middle of nowhere. All told, in over 8 hours on so-called "Highway" 1 we took the car-truck above 2nd gear only twice, and both times for less than 60 seconds (this is not hyperbole- we timed it). What should have been 6 hours was more than doubled thanks to our 35k/hr pace. We finally arrived in Porto Fino well past day break, where we promtply fell out the sides of the vehicle and slept on
Porto Fino 3
number 3, because its hard to capture the scenery in one photo the beach before at last waking up and looking for a campsite.
The three days that we spent there were awesome; as you can see from the photos, Porto Fino is a beautiful peninsula beach in northern Chile which makes you realize that a tiny drawback like "no rainfall in recorded history" can be greatly mitigated by the presence of something like a Pacific Ocean to your right at all times. We met a lot of other nice surfers and thoroughly enjoyed Easter weekend. On the way back we decided to take any road other than Highway 1, which turned out to be an excellent decision. Pavement is nice to drive on. We stopped during the day at various points in Pan de Azucar National Park, a desert hugging the Pacific coastline that, due to some particularly successful cloud-capturing rock features, manages to trap enough annual moisture to actually boast both flora and fauna (see fox pic)!! We got a little lost again in the Park and saw a sign saying "Lomitos- 12k". Lomitos sounded like a good time so we decided to take it. After 30-oddk something seemed wrong and we found ourselves in that all too familiar wtf-is-going-on
Big waves
big waves/silver tent phase. This time we persisted, and eventually arrived at a lovely little beach community which, while definitely neither Lomitos nor 12k away, was a beautiful and obliging host for our Easter Egg Hunt 2006. A successful weekend overall- after all, it takes a lot more than neverending roadways punctuated only with misinformed signage to ruin Easter, wherever you are.
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anna
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Emily, You need to write a book - I can't stop laughing everytime I read your blogs. Sounds like you are having a great time- wish I were there rather than in lame claremont. Miss you tons and can't wait for the next installment! Love you, Anna