The Driest Place on the Planet

San Pedro de Atacama, our mailing address de jour, is the driest dessert in the world. We’re surrounded here by a moonscape of sand-blasted stone, with a foreboding backdrop of parched mountains, and sheer cliffs. The place makes Mad Max’s neighbourhood look like Ferry Lake. 

San Pedro (named for St. Peter – patron saint of this place) was originally taken from the native peoples by the Inca. The indigenous people had built a tiered fort that they thought was cutting edge. The Inca came in and said, “Thanks for saving us the trouble”, and took things over in the early 16^th century. The Inca were the badest boys in the hood at the time, but, being an advanced civilization and in the interest of good relations, they gave the tribal leaders a place of marginal power in order to win hearts and minds. The locals in general figured they could do worse, and accepted that a new sheriff was in town.

Shortly thereafter, like within 30 years, the Spanish hit town. The Spaniards at the time were living the original “Vida Loca” across South America. No one in these parts had ever fought against men riding horses, so it really wasn’t a fair fight. Kind of like an NFL championship team from the 1920’s lining up against the present day KC Chiefs, and being told just before kick-off that the forward pass had been invented and made legal. The smart money was on the Spanish interlopers.

The Spanish, being a generally despicable lot, not only chased off the Inca and took charge, but they gathered the leaders of all the various indigenous tribes, and cut their heads off in the main square. Unfortunately, this lesson was not lost on los Chilenos (see earlier posts about Pinochet, Pinero, etc.). The locals here in San Pedro still call their main square, a wonderfully picturesque plaza with a super cute Catholic church, the “place of heads”. Lest we forget.

The drive to even get here was a trek through hades. First a 2-hour white-knuckle winding climb from the beach town of Iquque along the Chilean version of  the Pacific Highway. The  two-lane road hugs the edge of the continent. On your right – a sheer drop to the Pacific Ocean. On your left – a whole lot of nothing but sand, rock, the occasional South American slum town near to one or another factory. Along this stretch of ocean, down below on the broad beaches, there are also official and unofficial campgrounds/holiday bungalow parks. It appears that this is the Chile version of the Santiago middle-class going to the cottage. We stopped a few times in the first few hours for scenery pictures. Truus says that this part of our trip reminded her of her time touring through Mexico.

The next 4-5 hours went by in a blur. We made a hard left turn away from the ocean, climbed up thousands of feet to the high plains, and cut across a sun-baked, Outback-like dessert. The only things breaking the monotony of sand were the countless “memoria” shrines along the route for the dead. We’ve literally seen hundreds of these. Some of them are extremely colourful and detailed, including bench seating and canvas roofing to shade the loved ones who come to pay their respects. The shrines are a reminder of how treacherous the driving is here. The mountain passes are bad – crazy changes in elevation, deadly corners, tractor-trailers passing willy nilly – but the bone-straight dessert roads are greasy and unforgiving. One moment of lost concentration at 110km/hr and it’s feeding time for the condors. The Chileans don’t clean up after a crash scene. The bodies are removed, but the vehicles are left where they lay. We’ve seen untold burned out abandoned wrecks. You can tell how long they’ve been there by the degree to which they’ve been stripped by the road vultures. On the way to San Pedro, we saw an SUV that was freshly crashed. The airbags had popped. The windows were blown out. The tires, wipers, and upholstery were still there, and the engine block was still visible under the collapsed hood. Fresh meat.

Tomorrow we’re putting our fates in the hands of someone else. We’ve booked a full-day driving excursion with one of the dozens of companies running tours of the local sites. Walking around town this evening going door-to-door getting prices, haggling, and dodging the hordes of other tourists, San Pedro felt a bit like being in Gas Town from the movie Thunderdome.  Surrounded by an unforgiving dessert, this oasis of commerce draws all sorts folks, each for their own reason. Me, I’m here with the small Dutchy with the sharp elbows who decided 6 months ago that this would be a good place for us to visit. And it happens to be the only place for 100km that you can fill your tank.