The Desert: Chile - Part III

27 June – Iquique

Poor Gayle and Victor - smushed in the far back!

Made it to Iquique! We packed up and left Arica this morning at 9AM, meeting our driver Alex in the town square. We SQUISHED ourselves and all our luggage into the minivan and headed out into the Atacama Desert. I find it interesting that the drive doesn’t follow the coastline but rather the valleys and desert slightly further to the east. It’s a desolate, rocky place that looks a lot like what I’d expect Mars to be – very little vegetation.

Nothing a bit o' tape can't fix...

We stopped at an overlook that had a small memorial to the Chinchorro culture – and to fix the van (which is pretty run down – Victor helped tie on the back bumper, and the car alarm kept going off every so often... made for an exciting ride...).

We did get a nice view down one of the valleys, showing the dry landscape with the green vegetation at the bottom that was common for every one of the valleys in the area. Not what I expected when I think of the Atacama!

The tamarugo trees

At one point along the journey we passed through the Pampas del Tamarugal – an area where suddenly there was vegetation known as the tamarugo tree, which were artificially planted only in this very dry, arid region. All around was a very hard rocky soil with a dusting of white powder, which is the nitrate residue that is the reason mining is huge in the area. And just as suddenly, the tamarugos dissappeared and we were back to dry, sparse landscape.



Near the town of Huara, we took a small detour to see another geoglyph, El Gigante de Tarapacá which is the largest anthropomorphic geoglyph in the world. It’s 86 meters high on the Cerro Unita, thought to be an Andean god Tunapa. It really did seem to be out in the middle of nowhere, so it’s interesting to think about who made it and why they chose that spot.

In the desolate desert...

Ceviche the Chilean way

We made it in to Iquique at around 3 - Mario’s sister and brother in law met us to help us check into our rented apartment. We immediately headed out since we were starving – we walked down the beach and found a small café for lunch/dinner – another delicious grilled fish and vegetables.

Downtown Iquique - it's like an Old West movie set!

Stacey was tired so she headed back, and the rest of us wandered downtown to see the old streets.
The buildings were beautiful – Mario says the wood was imported from England, and you can easily see the European colonial influence in the architecture.










28 June – Iquique

Mario, driving us thru the drive-thru

A lovely day exploring the area around Iquique. We were scheduled to be picked up at 8:45 so went next door to McDonalds for breakfast... which was interesting because even though they were open 24-hrs, their cash registers inside didn’t turn on until 9AM.
But they said we could order at the drive-thru window, so we walked out – only for them to tell us the only thing they were serving was hamburgers. Can’t say they were delicious, but at least we didn’t starve.

Worker housing, Humberstone

Our first stop with driver Pablo was the old saltpeter mining town Humberstone. In the early 1900’s, they were built up to produce nitrates (used in things like fertilizer and gunpowder). For a while it was the most successful saltpeter works in the world, but was then abandoned in 1960. There was an entire town set up, with a hospital, school, store, theater, and fire station, and the buildings look very European. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005.

From Humberstone, we stopped at Pozo Almonte for lunch – I had a great Casuela – traditional Chilean beef soup. Then headed for Los Cerros Pintados – the painted hills, where an entire hillside was covered in geoglyphs. They were most likely created betwen 500 - 1450AD as guides for caravans crossing through the Atacama Desert coming over the Andes to the Pacific.

Los Cerros Pintados

Shark, penguins, and llama?

Giraffe! Enter here for baboon face!

There's a nice trail going along the base of the hills with stops for several viewpoints, and it was fun and interesting trying to decipher the different shapes and figures that we saw.

The lagar in Matilla

mmmmmMangoes...

Our next stop was Matilla, where we visited the Lagar – an old wine production house from the 1800s. Then we saw the church and shopped for alpaca yarn (and where they gave us fresh mangos, grown in the area!)

The famous Pica fruit

We also drove to nearby Pica (where there are hot springs, but it was too cold to go and we weren’t that interested), where most of the fruit of the area is grown.

The famous Virgin Mary,
with the starry ceiling

On the way back we stopped at La Tirana, where the largest religious festival in Northern Chile is held.

Mario's dad and bro
made this!!

We saw the famous Virgin Mary statue in the iglesia (and where Mario’s dad had made a beautiful Jesus portrait made out of tiny squares of wood.) We also stopped briefly to see the gorgeous sunset, but rushed back to Iquique because Chile was playing Colombia in the Copa America and we wanted to watch.

Sunset outside La Tirana

Dinner at Ely's

We went to Mario’s sister Ely’s apartment, where his dad made pulpo (octopus) empanadas (SOOO good) and his sister made fresh fish and the best pebre that we’ve had! And it was fun to watch the football game – what we were watching on TV was delayed by about 10 seconds, so we could hear people cheering out the window. And when Chile scored a goal, Ely would come running out of the kitchen before we knew and start screaming. Chile’s two goals were both taken away because of penalties, but they won at the last minute on the final penalty kick at the end.

We then went to Marlene’s to get all our suitcases and clothes. At least we were able to get changed and cleaned up a bit, because we were scheduled to take the overnight bus from Iquique to San Pedro de Atacama. At least we had super-comfortable seats – they reclined and had plenty of leg room, but it still wasn’t the most comfortable thing and we all had iffy sleep.

Customs stop at 3:45AM

Plus, at 3:45AM, they woke us all up and made us get out to go through customs – Iquique is in Tarapacá, with a tax free zone called zofri, plus it’s fairly close to the border, and we were going into the neighboring region – Antofagasta. We had to take all our bags out and go through an x-ray, then get back on the bus. Not fun in the cold and dark!

After a stop in Calama (that we didn’t realize, so we got off only to get called back on by Mario), we made it to San Pedro de Atacama – a charming but dusty town in the middle of the Atacama Desert. The bus for some reason wasn’t allowed in the bus terminal, so we got dropped off on a random street and had to find our way around. We walked back to the bus terminal, then found a taxi to get us to our Airbnb. The driver, Victor, had a van so we asked him to take us around. We met him back at the bus station and we drove out to the Valle de la Luna.

The Valley of the Moon is a dry, arid area outside San Pedro that is noticeably devoid of any flora or fauna. There is a dusting of white over almost everything because of the salt, and a mixture of rocky landscape and large sand dunes.


The colors are gorgeous and there are different textures all in the same area. It really does look like something you’d find in outer space! It's so dry here that there have been some places where supposedly rain has never fallen - but in the middle of the valley earlier this year there was a huge rainstorm, which caused damage to some of the trails. Because of this, access salt caves was closed. Instead, we did the hike up the side of the Great Dune, with a great view of the valley. 

Victor drove us back to town and dropped us off at the Artisan’s market where we walked through to the Plaza. It just happened that we were there for the Fiesta de San Pedro y San Pablo festival, when the patron saint of the town, Saint Peter is celebrated along with Saint Paul. A procession goes through the city with music and dancing – it happens every June 29 - the cacharpaya. We watched some of the procession, with native dancers in traditional costumes.








We wandered back out of town to the Museo Gustavo le Paige – an archaeological museum that features a collection of artifacts from the Atacameño culture.

The dusty little streets of San Pedro

It’s actually in a temporary site (and really does feel like its in the middle of nowhere), but has some interesting pottery pieces. We then had a delicious dinner (huge plates of chicken and rice) then went back to the house since we’re all exhausted. And so dusty (since it was windy in the Valle de la Luna – I have sand in my ears!) – finally, a shower!



30 June – San Pedro de Atacama
Another fun day! This morning we went straight to the bus station to see if we could get on the ALMA Observatory tour – we were waitlisted (and Gayle didn’t even get on the wait list, but there was another list – the ‘hope’ list!), so we lined up at 8:45 to see if there was room. There were about 30 of us waiting, including an Israeli family and a group from the US – one who worked in aerospace and one at NASA (but not on the technical side). And luckily, a ton of people didn’t show up and we all made it on!

In the data center at ALMA

The bus took us up to the (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) Operations Support Facility – where 23 different countries have set up 66 radiotelescopes in order to observe the radio waves emitted in deep space so that astronomers can study things like planet formation. This location in Chile was chosen because of several reasons: its proximity to the equator (so it could observe most of the sky), its altitude (so there is less atmosphere to look through), and its climate (less humidity means less water vapor in the air to obscure images – at the array, the humidity is at about 2%).

What the incoming data looks like
from the radiotelescopes

Data after processing (image of TW Hydrae,
a young (5-10 million yrs old) star closest to
our Solar System. The two dark rings are
protoplanetary discs, showing where
two planets are forming 

ALMA is interesting because astronomers don’t actually go there – they apply for time, and the ALMA technicians gather the data then send it back to the scientists. The time allotted to scientists is divided based on how much each organization contributed – North America and Europe each contributed 25 antennas and East Asia provided 16; by agreement, Chile automatically gets 10% of the time. Around 1,800 people apply for telescope time, and around 500 get it.

One of the radiotelescopes, down for maintenance

The array itself, located on the Chajnantor Plateau 30 km higher than the AOS, is at an altitude of 5,000 meters (so no workers stay overnight, and they wear oxygen canulas when they are outside). Each telescope weighs 100 TONS and has a diameter of 12 meters. They are set up in an area around 16 km in diameter, which means working together, the array is essentially a 16 km-wide telescope. (When ALMA contributed to Dr. Katie Bouman's image of the black hole in galaxy M87, it was working with a network of 8 telescope arrays around the world - essentially creating an earth-sized telescope!) Because of the delicate instrumentation, the insides have to be kept VERY cold – around 4° kelvin, so they are cooled by helium.

After our visit to ALMA, we went back to the city center for lunch, then we went to find our driver Victor at the bus station.

Because it was already close to 4PM, we didn’t have time to go too far, so he suggested we visit the ruins at Aldea de Tulor. This was the site of the Lickan Antai people, who settled in the area 800BC to around 500AD (pre-Incan).

Reconstructed huts

The climate back then was slightly different – with more water and thus more plants and animals, and there was a river that ran through the area. The people built circular mud huts because they resembled the things they saw in nature – celestial objects, birds nests, etc. The huts were interconnected, with smaller rooms used for storage, cooking, and housing animals.

The still-buried 'village' of Aldea de Tulor - which is most
likely much bigger than what has already been discovered.

It was interesting to see the reconstructed huts, and the archaeological remains of the original ‘city’, which is now almost completely buried under the sand and dirt. They haven’t done enough research to know how extensive the complex is, but walking back the 1km path, we could kind of see how there may have been city walls or other structures extending much further into the desert. Back to the Airbnb early to pack up and relax, since we have to leave early tomorrow for our flight to La Serena!