Tired of the Desert

Another day, another 320km slog through some of the earth’s least forgiving places. To see this locale, thousands of square miles of the Atacama Desert, is to truly understand the Old Testament God. You know, the psychopath who spoke to Abraham and demanded that he march his son up a hill and murder him, as a test of his faith. That guy.

Our tour guide in San Pedro (a trained air-traffic controller, turned geologist, turned guide) was a Bolivian national and devout Catholic. As we drove to the various points of interest, I noticed him gazing through the windscreen at the passing roadside shrines to the victims of traffic accidents. He crossed himself, put his first two fingers to his lips and silently offered a kiss & a prayer to the heavens. Given that there was a “memoria” every 2-4 kilometres, this practically qualified as an aerobic activity.

When we were at one of the Lagunes, situated in the shadow of 2 massive volcanoes, the guide said that, back in the day, the indigenous people would annually hike up the biggest volcano and sacrifice a sheep, sprinkling the blood on the side of the volcano as an offering. The idea was to placate the anger of the Gods with a gift, and a prayer that roughly translates to, “Don’t go blowing your top, for Christ’s sake”.

After spending 1 week, in the Atacama Desert, I can appreciate the need for a belief in the supernatural. According to the internet, the Atacam Desert occupies 128,000 square kilometres, if the barren lower slopes of the Andes are included. The terrain is made up of sun-baked rocks, salt lakes (salares), sand, and felsic lava that flows towards the Andes. 

·         Average rainfall in this region is about 1 mm per year. Some locations within the desert have never had any rainfall whatsoever

·         Soil samples from this region are very similar to samples from Mars; for this reason, NASA uses this desert for testing instruments for missions to the red planet. Other parts of the desert are more moonlike, based on rock formations and colours. Practically 0% of the Atacama Desert look like the planet earth, or a facsimile capable of sustaining human life

·         The oldest artificially mummified human remains have been found in the Atacama Desert. These mummies predate the Egyptian mummies by thousands of years, and the extreme lack of moisture helps in the preservation of these samples. So, we may have been wandering the desert for 1 week, but the good news is that we likely haven’t aged a day

Back in 2013, the Chilean government announced that they were going to become the Saudi Arabia of solar energy. The project was called “Cerro Dominador”, or Hill Dominator – unselfconsciously pretensious in name and scope. The idea was to introduce a new technology that was supposed to allow for solar energy production 24/7 (Concentrating Solar Power). It was designed to have a sea of solar panels and mirrors all focusing to a point on a tower 250 meters above the desert. We drove past the place on our way to our stop for the day.

Currently, Chile buys the majority of its electricity from cheaper providers in Argentina/Bolivia – fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and oil. But, as with most things in Chile, the government decided that the best way to get this done was through the power of the invisible hand of the private market. 

The sun didn’t let them down, but the financiers and the market went dark nonetheless. The project almost went bankrupt, and wound up being sold. It’s kind of hobbling along now, not unlike the entire country. And it’s both a cautionary tale of the limits of profit-driven ventures, and a reminder of the untapped potential of this place.

That being said, we’re both pretty happy to be seeing the back of this desert. We’ve got 2 days in a gritty beach city called Antofagasta, then we fly to Santiago to pick up nuestro amigo“Howardo”, and then follows our great and grand Patagonian adventure.