Roaming Through Chile: Five Impressions

By: Miguel Lasala and Mark Diehnel

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Arica Bound in the Atacama Desert: Northern Chile

Barreling down the Andes onboard an Arica bound bus then cutting through the vast Mars-like Atacama Desert in Northern Chile has a strange way of setting all things man-made into the foreground.

When a large rock is moved, or a ditch is dug, the almost non-existent rain here allows scars of human activity to remain on the surface indefinitely, at least until the next earthquake.

The Atacama’s dry and brutal landscape, 50 times drier than California’s Death Valley, is a scene of more than a hundred and fifty ghost towns, scattered and defunct nitrate mines, and very little in the way of life except for the occasional bundle of shrubs;

(or someone growing roses and geraniums in the lee of singular mud-brick house surrounded by sea of tumbling bone-dry soil.)

To experience this place for the 8 to 10 hour bus ride from La Paz is in many ways a perfect palate cleanser for a long sought out introduction to the rich Chilean Seafood that awaits in the costal city of Arica.