Onward to a day in Calama… a lovely place during the day, but it apparently gets cold at night… I didn’t hang around that long.
Immediately made plans to see Chuquicamata… the world’s biggest open pit copper mine… I have gotten so used to the world’s biggest “this” and best “that,” that I just went to see an impressive place. My expectations, though ruinous sometimes, were met… and it was just a gi-normous mine… owned by the state of Chile… and they pump out a bunch of copper. Huge trucks carrying outrageous loads of rock. The mine is 5000X3000 meters and nearly 1 km deep… spiraling down, wow. I forget other numbers but it costs them $0.80 to produce an amount of copper… which is sold in the USA and Europe for a current rate of $3.18…. as low as $3.00 and as high as $3.40 in the past three years. I don’t do numbers professionally, but a 400% return is an ok figure as far as business goes, right, Dash? Supply and demand at its best… so long as Chile keeps gouging a stupid world that pays it… why not… and the Chileans benefit… the goal is that they all benefit… it is a slow process, especially when everyone knows the money exists, everyone wants it. Such is life. The government has a lot on its hands, but it had better fix the public transit system in Santiago before all hell breaks loose!
Tried to stop off and see penguins… and waiting around at 6am for city government offices to open in Vallenar- a place not used to seeing Gringos like me- was a cold one indeed! That was a failure. So I pushed on four more hours south to La Serena (where I could have actually booked the penguin excursion) and settled for lunch another hour east, in Vicuña. I had been here before with Adam, Jake and Cara three years ago. We escaped floods in the capital to get to this energy location… a trend with my trip… energy locales, right?
I enjoyed the most wonderful empanadas, filled with goat cheese**, corn, other fresh veggies… though, I did have a chicken one too, despite my attempts at veggie-hood. Hiked to see the sunset, but the clouds that colored the sky prevented me (twice) from going to the Mamaluca Observatory- because this Valle Elqui has the clearest skies in the world to see stars (300 days of the year, or when I am not there!). I headed deeper into the valley, explored Pisco Elqui again and was convinced to stay overnight. (Incidentally, Pisco, a Chilean sense of national liquorical pride, is made in this valley with the same name…) I rented a bike and had time to delve into nearby canyons to sneak a glance deep into the Andes at other angles… towards Cochihuaz in the afternoon and to Horcón the next morning.
There was about to be a rodeo while I was in Horcón, a rad artisan village (with a bunch of great vibes), but I had to return the bike in Pisco. I had planned to hitchhike back to the town, but my body just headed back towards Vicuna and towards La Serena to get that last minute bargain to arrive in Santiago in the morning. I don’t know what happened; I called it quits three days early.
When I arrived in Santiago at 5:50am on Sunday I waited in the dark cold for a bus to come. I had thought of taking the metro, but it doesn’t open until much later. As the thoughts of taking a cab filled my mind, a bus finally stopped and I crammed in to the back along with the others who had wanted to pay, but didn’t have the patience to go in the front door… so typical with the TranSanti-fiasco.
And this is where the story gets interesting…
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment