| Jeff Poulter & Graham Tillotson: 5th November 2004 |
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Antofagasta to Chanaral
About 50 km south of Antofagasta, we started to look for El Mano Del Desierto,
a bizarre sculpture made in 1992 by Antofagasta sculptor Mario Irrarrazaval.
It revealed itself, a giant hand, perhaps 15 metres high, carved out of
rock standing alone on an open sandy slope with low pink hills behind it.
Such a wacky concept so well executed is the sort of thing I thought only
the French did, so nice one, Chile.
In all of today's 400 km we didn't pass through a single town.. We stopped
for lunch at a cafe selected because of the many trucks parked outside.
The hosteleras along this road are Chile's equivalent of transport cafes,
so the truck count is a reasonable clue to quality. In this part of the
world it is difficult to imagine that Christmas is not so far away now,
but we had been speculating when we would see our first indication of Christmas.
And here, on the roof of this café, was a big wooden cut-out of Santa on
his sledge being pulled by reindeer. Only problem was, it was pretty much
weather-beaten, so was it this year's or last? Whatever, the almuerzo was
steak and it was delicious.
Eventually all this beauty had to end, and it did so quite dramatically. We could tell that the coast was coming up by the huge amount of cloud ahead. And thus we left the glorious desert, descending into the wrist-slitting overcast gloom of Chanaral, even more depressing than Antofagasta, on a par with Tocopilla. The government is thinking of moving this entire town 3km into the interior to remove its populations from terminal arsenic pollution of the land, caused by mining run off. Sums it up, really.
Jeff 05.11.04 |
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