Antofagasta

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Antofagasta is 19 hours from Santiago, 11 hours from Peru and 8 hours from natural vegetation. Stuck between the extremes of the Pacific Ocean and the Atacama Desert, the driest in the world, Antofagasta has been said to be the "ass end of the back of nowhere". Although that may be quite true, Antofagasta is quite an enjoyable town. Back in the day when nitrates, used for fertilisers, were found in the Atacama Desert, Antofagasta was the main export port. Today, with a population of just under 300,000, Antofagasta exports much of northern Chile's vast copper resources.

I jumped on the bus in Santiago at around 9:30 on Wednesday night for Antofagasta, a pretty long 19 hours away. I slept for most of the night, then spent a large part of the day wondering why the scenery never changed. For hours and hours it stayed unchanged. Then I realised that we were only in Copiapo, that I wasn't even in the Atacama Desert yet, and that I had still many many hours to ponder the driest desert in the world. The scenery of the desert was quite remarkable though. Compared to the desert in Central Australia, the Atacama is more of a brown colour, and has a mountainous range that runs through it. The other amazing thing is that there is simply no vegetation whatsoever to be seen. Only rocks and mountains and sand to be seen in any direction, unless you're on the part of the Pan-American Highway that runs next to the Pacific, in which case you get an amazing contrast between the sea and desert. North of Copiapo there are numerous communities nestled on beaches, though mostly they are just windswept, one street kind of places which look absolutely deserted. The other curious thing I discovered as I sat in my seat for hour after hour were the little shrines that seemed to line the road. Looking at first like dog kennels, I quickly realised from the inclusion of religious symbols, photos and flowers that they were actually monuments to those who had died along the road. The sheer number of them, along what is mostly a perfectly straight (though perhaps a little narrow) road made me rather curious. Apparently most of the accidents are from tyre blow outs, and we actually even saw a truck on the side of the road that had rolled a few times - complete with men busily working to retrieve the load.

After turning off the Pan-American highway just after a copper mine we arrived in Antofagasta, a very narrow city compacted by the Pacific to the West and a Mountain range only a couple of hundred metres to the East. After I had got off the bus I realised that I had no map of Antofagasta, and no real idea of where I was supposed to be meeting up with Sandy. It ended up being that I walked into a kiosko and borrowed the Yellow Pages (or equivalent), and took photos of the bits that I needed. Then off I walked, through the streets of Antofagasta, zigzagging my way down and up the streets until I came to Sandy's house. Naturally, I wasn't expecting him to be home, and he wasn't, so I went to the school that he teaches Grade 2 at, just a couple of blocks down the road. Again I was knocked back, but on the way back to his apartment I was intercepted by Paul, his housemate, who had first thought 'haha! why would a backpacker come here' before realising that I was supposed to be staying with him. Sandy came hobbling up the street a couple of minutes later, his beard more complete than I had recalled. Our warm embrace was very touching, though we both managed to fit a couple of cracks about each others age before we backslapped joyfully. Back at the apartment (I had been knocking on the wrong door) I found Nancy, Sandy's friend from Maine who I had met a couple of years back when she was living with Sandy in Canberra. We walked a couple of metres down the road to the ocean for the sunset. Sandy and I discovered that if you jumped up just a bit you could see the coast of Australia, but Nancy thought that was just a cloud formation. Nancy gave us a bit of stray dog history, before we retire back to the apartment for a rico (rich/delicious) dinner. Afterwards Sandy took me down the street to the Jumbo Supermarket (called Jumbo, a freakishly massive place with 50 registers) where he met up with a couple of his students, who work for the major mining company in town. We sat in the cafe as Sandy taught them English, American and Australian, all in one. We headed back home, both quite tired, and hit the sack.

After Sandy woke me up at 3am (well it felt like it) with the lights and a 'good morning sunshine' we hustled to get to school. Sandy teaches the cute little Grade 2s at the Antofagasta International School, and Friday was assembly day. Sandy had printed me off the Chilean National Anthem, thinking that it might help me, but indeed it did not. However, I learnt all about how to help our Earth, and learnt a song about the solar system - my heart breaking at the absence of Pluto. Back inside the classroom we did 'Language Arts' and 'Mathematics' interspersed with playground duty, before it was time for the library. I kind of bailed on Sandy, and joined in on Paul's year 5 class on landscapes. The kids get an early mark on Friday, but the teachers do not, so I took a bit of a stroll down to the ocean and to the swimming beach. To my amusement the local high school was having a week long celebration down on the coast, with music and soccer matches and free hotdogs for everyone. After finding out what was happening from an English speaking student, Francisca, I watched the beach football game before the sun started to get low.

That evening Sandy took Nancy and I out to dinner at a delicious restaurant, across from the water. Sandy kind of went all out, and we shared a prawn entree followed by delicious steak. The only problem with the meal was that the chocolate and orange cheesecake was fresh out, but we went home satisfied and very happy. The next morning we got up early to be picked up by Mario, the father of Sandy's star student Camilo, and his wife Carmen. Nancy, Sandy and I crammed ourselves into the ute with the whole family, and we went for a road trip to the Portada, a natural rock arch formation a hundred metres offshore, just north of Antofagasta. We went and took lots of photos of Antofagasta's main tourist attraction before Mario took us on a bumpy ride up and down the dunes that line the cliffs overlooking the water. Here we found another car, a strange thing to find in the middle of the desert, and a monument to someone wh had driven over the cliff years and years ago. Afterwards we got back onto the main road to head to Jose Lopez, a little town out on the penisula to the north of Antofagasta. Just a small town which comes alive during summertime, it is rather deserted during the winter months, though we managed to find an open place where we bought some octopus empanadas for lunch. Looking out over the bay from the point you could see some great areas for scuba diving and a boat that was hovering nearby, with an air compressors for divers who were fishing down below - what for we don't know. After lunch we headed back to Antofagasta, Mario letting us out at the fishmarket where there seems to be a semi-permanent colony of sea lions always waiting for fish heads and scraps. The sea lions all seemed very eager to get the fish when you kicked the heads over the sea wall, even though they all look rather well fed and trained after years and years of easy meals.

Back at Sandy's place we had a snack before heading out to a games night party, hosted by one of the teachers from work. Most of the teachers at the Antofagasta International School are relatively young, mostly female, and mostly from the US. It was a well organised night, with lots of games to play, many of them involving alcohol (apart from Boggle) and humour. Feeling a little weary, we both left not too late. After a good sleep we got up on Sunday morning and headed into the city to meet up with Sandy's friend Manuel and his wife Carolina who we went to lunch with. We went to this beautiful little Spain inspired restaurant. It was completely empty when we got there, but my fears were quickly put aside as it filled up very quickly, especially since once the pianist started playing some heartfelt latin tunes. Sandy got a bit carried away on mango sour and red wine, and ended up taking Carolina to a small space between the tables where they danced, to the delight of everyone in the restaurant. Later Sandy took Nancy for a tango, and everyone was in awe. It was a beautiful lunch, and we felt so sad to leave and say goodbye to the pianist, who Sandy had wooed with red wine and 'bravo's!.

We jumped on the 114 bus and headed north, into the 'Old City' of Antofagasta, better referred to as the working class neighbourhoods of the city. The houses stretch up the side of the mountain, over looking the city out towards the ocean, and the bus worked its way up through along dusty roads and through side streets, until we found ourselves at the flea market. Walking down the hill towards the ocean, I had to walk in front of Sandy to stop him rolling down the hill in his tipsy state. It was rather late when we got there, but the markets were still really busy, with people selling everything from fake DVDs to car parts (repuestos) and rotten spanners. It was quite enjoyable because the markets weren't anywhere near as touristy as the other ones that I have been to while I've been here in South America - in fact I didn't notice a single other tourist. Antofagasta gets really very poor reviews in the guide books, so its not very surprising not to see anyone, and rather nice as well. We came home for dinner, which Sandy kindly made, and I'm just about to head off to catch a bus to Arica, on the Chile-Peru border, from where I'll catch a bus to La Paz tomorrow. Hopefully, if everything works out just right, I'll be in La Paz by tomorrow night, and will be able to organise myself into hiking for 3 days the Choro Trek, which decends a few thousand metres from La Paz into forest. Oh, and a trek around Lake Titicaca. I can't wait! I've only got another month in South America, and I've got a lot to do, so it is going to get very busy from now on in, as I try to fit all the hikes that I've been dreaming of in.

Hearts and Minds!
Love,
Mark

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Photos

Atacama Desert
On the way to Antofagasta, this is the endless scenery that greets the eye.

Sunset
Sunset over the pacific ocean. If you stand up whilst looking at this photo you can see Australia in the background.

Coastline
A few minutes drive north of Antofagasta is the Portada, and this sand dune cliff coast line.

Fishing for?
This boat had air compressors on board, with hoses fed out to divers under the sea. What they were diving for I don´t know.

Jose Lopez
The sleepy little holiday resort of Antofagastans.

Old Town
This is how the majority of Antofagastans live, in sprawling neighbourhoods that spread up the side of the mountains opposite the Pacific.

Comments

[james st. james]

antofa
another great blog. you're very lucky to have such well placed friends. you're really getting to see chile from a perspective most tourists never would. antofagasta used to be a very ugly and unattractive city (i was there in '99) but since then the government (both city and national) have made a great effort to improve the quality of life for its residents. i think the aridness of the area adds to the "ugly" factor b/c it makes everything look dusty or dirty. i just wanted to add a note about the library you went to in santiago. until i saw the pic, i wasn't sure what you meant when you described it as looking like a laboratory (i'm still not sure i get it), but this building dates from 1928 and only became a library in november of 2006. between those dates, it was a warehouse for the government. this might be why it almost resembles a prison from the outside. as a bit of trivia, its art-deco facade was declared a "national monument". good luck in bolivia. be sure to ask bolivians what they think of chile, hee hee.....cheers!

[emma]

yeesh, i have a newfound respect for the detail you put into your blogs. maybe i'm a slow typer, maybe i'm incredibly cheap, but the time i've spent on these computers doesn't seem like enough to get it all in. don't be too dissapointed by the blantant tourista nature of my trip thus far. we're learning. and having fun. that's all that matters? livers, (where egyptians believed emotion to come from) em