The Aldea of Tulor

Located just ten kilometers outside of San Pedro de Atacama, the archaeological ruins of Tulor, a small pre-Columbian village gives a glimpse into the area’s past. The village was first discovered in 1956 by Gustavo le Paige but more was uncovered through excavations made in 1982 by archaeologist Ana Maria Barone. Since then it has had a tumultuous story. In 1998 the World Monuments Fund, an international non-profit organization, listed Tulor on its World Monuments Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. Unfortunately, the Chilean government did little to protect it and the site was re-listed in 2006. In 2009, the government, through the Corporación Nacional Forestal (CONAF) an environmental agency and in collaboration with the University of Antofagasta, initiated a project for the creation of a preservation plan for the ancient village. The project involved the installation of tourist facilities including signage and an information center and caps were installed to protect the ancient earthen walls against erosion. Unfortunately, in April 2010 the site was vandalized. According to Chile's Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales, this was the worst damage to the site in decades. A few months later, in November 2010 CONAF’s office at Tulor was set on fire. Now, under a new agreement, it is currently being administered jointly by the indigenous Community of Coyo, and CONAF and members of the Coyo community act as guides and historians for the village. We found our guide very knowledgeable and eager to help us understand this ancient culture. She told us that through radiocarbon and thermo-luminescence dating, the village is thought to have existed about 3,000 years ago with a population of between 150 and 200 inhabitants and is one of the oldest human settlements discovered on a salt bed. The people first came as hunters following animals down from the Andes. When the animals became scarce, they turned to gathering their food and basic farming. They spent their time weaving and making garments and producing ceramics while supporting themselves growing crops and raising livestock. They constructed their adobe buildings in a circular fashion joining one to the other with patios and passageways. The rooms were built with an arched ceiling that sometimes reached as high as two meters, finished off by a conical roof supported by wooden poles. The site, which had numerous circular adobe structures surrounded by a perimeter wall, was abandoned around 300 AD, when the river oasis dried up and the dunes advanced. The original village is long gone but they have reconstructed a few homes along the lines of the originals. When we entered one of the houses it was surprising how cool it is and how they were designed to capture as much daylight as possible. Fortunately via a footbridge, there is a viewpoint that allows visitors to view the ruins from above to see the formation of the walls, the layout of rooms for living, sleeping and cooking and the communal rooms for gatherings. Because the village was buried in sand for centuries, most of the village is miraculously conserved, yet since its discovery little has been done to preserve the area. As a result there is ongoing damage to the archaeological remains through erosion, sand encroachment and lack of maintenance. Unlike many of the more commercial ruins – like the many Inca and Mayan – these ruins have a sense of remoteness and vulnerability and unfortunately unless policy changes, the Aldea of Tulor will become as obsolete as the people who once inhabited it. The village is an open air museum and anyone who enjoys archaeological and cultural sites will definitely like this one.

Valle de la Luna

Located 13 kilometers (8 mi) west of town in the Cordillera de la Sal, Valle de La Luna is a part of the Reserva Nacional los Flamencos and was declared a Nature Sanctuary in 1982. This is a huge reserve managed jointly by the indigenous communities and CONAF and is the place to be for sunset. We are going into Sector 6 which is part of the Coyo community. At the entrance, there is a small visitor’s center and we are given a map of the reserve with the best vantage points for watching the sun set. The first view point we come to are some natural salt caves called Cari’s Broken. Set a little way back from the road, these caves go deep into the mountain and there was a tour bus visiting so we decide not to stop. We pass the dunes which we will come back to and watch the sun set but keep driving to the end of this sector as there is an interesting formation we want to see. As we drive we can’t help but notice the total isolation of this valley. One of the driest places on earth, it is barren, inhospitable and brimming with extraordinary rock formations, so it’s easy to see why this unique setting gets its name. Carved by wind and weather, the various stone and sand formations, which have an impressive range of color and texture, look somewhat similar to the surface of the moon. In fact a prototype for the Mars rover was tested here by scientists because of the valley's dry and forbidding terrains. There are dry lakes where the salt composition makes a white covering layer of the area. At the Tres Marias (Three Marys), the three rock formations which look like bent, broken fingers stretch high from the desert floor particularly the center one. The result of an intense erosion process, they are approximately one million years old and composed of clay, salt, gravel and quartz. With plenty of places to photograph and be photographed we spend quite a bit of time here. We then head back the way we came to an area called “the amphitheatre”. This huge formation in the Cordillera de la Sal was formed by layers of sand, clay and salt which were moved and shifted vertically by earthquakes and the tectonic plates moving. Then with wind erosion, a sequence of giant peaks grew. From here we can clearly see the Andes and more dramatic, a chain of volcanoes including a fabulous view of Volcan Licancabur which towers over the town of San Pedro. It is now late in the afternoon and we make our way back to the sand dunes to get the perfect view for the setting sun. Over thousands of years, strong winds have created this huge field of sand dunes. However, in this valley populated by withered pillars of salt and stone is an enormous sand dune called “The Great Sand Dune” and this is the one which we climb to see the sunset. I find myself scrambling, my feet sinking into the sand and my hands clutching at any jagged outcropping to get to the top. This narrow path is steep and I would have given up long before the top if it had not been encouragement and a helping hand from Tom every so often. At the top, the sand, the scrambling at times on both hands and feet, were well worth it. The view is quite simply, spectacular. This is Chile's “Valle de la Luna”, the legendary moon valley, crowned on all sides by volcanic peaks that cascade as far as the eye can see. It's these peaks that grab my attention now. One by one as the sun gets lower in the sky, they're painted in the pinks and reds of the setting sun, and the valley becomes a glowing kaleidoscope of new shapes and colors. Breath-taking. By the time the sun had set and we had scrambled back down the “Great Dune”, it was getting quite dark. Driving out of the reserve the dark looming shapes started to look more alien than in daylight. We are going to spend the night, parked just outside the park’s entrance by the visitor’s center. After all the visitors had left and the rangers had locked up for the night it was one of the quietest nights we have ever spent in our three years of traveling. Oh, and on this clear, cloudless night away from any city lights, the stars were almost as spectacular as the sun setting over the valley. Almost!

San Pedro de Atacama

Leaving Antofagasta, our next stop is San Pedro De Atacama. It is one of the top three travel destinations in Chile along with Torres Del Paine National Park and Easter Island. Our route takes us past the mining town of Calama and to the highest elevation we have been so far over, a pass at 11,500 ft. (3,593 meters). We are now deep in the Atacama Desert and the landscape reflects that, sand dunes and the occasional cactus are the only break – not a bird or animal in sight and very few people for that matter. Until we reach San Pedro. Long before the Incas conquered the area in the 1400's, there were other cultures that thrived around one of the rare sources of water in the Atacama Desert, the Rio San Pedro. The water ran from the Andes, forming an oasis before flowing into the desert where it evaporated. The people who first lived in the region at that time raised crops in small family style farms and developed a culture called Atacameño. Over the centuries they built settlements along the Rio San Pedro and fortresses for protection. The earliest Atacameño artifacts discovered date from 11,000 BC and native ruins from the Atacameño now attract increasing numbers of tourists interested in learning about pre-Columbian cultures. The rule of the Inca dissimilated this independent agrarian culture and then a century later came the Spanish. However no gold was found and with mining now centered on Calama, in 1870, government offices were transferred to that town and San Pedro de Atacama became unimportant. Now with the development of the natural resources of San Pedro and the Atacama into national parks and reserves, tourism is flourishing. Our camping is at Los Perales which turned out to be uninspiring, small and dusty but it is the only camping in town that has room for us to fit. Its saving grace is that the town center is close by and there is room to walk Winston. After settling in we walk to the town to explore before dinner. The streets of the town are unchanged from their early settlement days, narrow and lined with buildings built from adobe and trimmed with native woods from the carob, chañar and pepper trees. Because there is little rain and the desert air is so dry, there is no humidity to affect the adobe and it is in perfect condition. In the center of town is the plaza with benches under huge shady trees providing relief from the sun. To the left of the plaza, built in 1641 and named an historical monument in 1951, the church of San Pedro is one of those churches that is just rural; simple and pretty and picture postcard perfect. It is built with the same white adobe as the rest of the buildings in the village, with decorative wood from the cardón cactus and leather straps in lieu of nails. The artisan stores are abundant selling scarves, shawls and other articles of clothing made from alpaca and basketry and ceramic pottery crafts first developed by the Atacameños and now sold in the souvenir shops as typical products of the region. In fact, we were so seduced by the quality and prices that we purchased a gorgeous Alpaca shawl for me and a scarf for Tom. As we were examining the goods in one of the shops we met a couple vacationing from Peru. Carlos and his wife Jobita live close to Lima and are currently building a home in the south of Peru. When they heard of our journey, they promptly give us their contact information and told us that when we get to Peru to contact them and they will help us get acquainted with the area and cook us dinner. After a conversation about food, Jobita said with a twinkle in her eye “maybe I’ll cook cuy”. Hmm. Cuy is guinea pig and yes, the Peruvians eat it. It is a delicacy, so I am told. I am unconvinced but laughingly agree to try it, if that is what is served. As we walked back to Los Perales to collect Winston for an evening walk before dinner, we talked about Carlos and Jobita and again are amazed at the ease and friendliness that people exhibit towards us.

The Tropic of Capricorn Monument.

One of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth, The Tropic of Capricorn (or Southern tropic) is the circle that contains the sub solar point on December 21st, the winter or southern solstice. It is the southernmost latitude where the Sun can be directly overhead. The northern hemisphere equivalent of the Tropic of Capricorn is the Tropic of Cancer. Extraordinarily, the position of the Tropic of Capricorn is not fixed, but varies over time. The reasons for this are pretty complex but as of 2013, its latitude is 23° 26' 14.908" south of the Equator. However, it is very gradually moving northward, currently at the rate of 0.47 arc seconds or 15 meters, a remarkable 48 feet per year. Most places along the Tropic of Capricorn have arid or semi-arid climates, though in Australia and Southern Africa this climate is exacerbated by the fact that tectonic activity and glaciations have been for the most part absent for about 300 million years. Here the aridity is compounded by extremely infertile soils, which explains all the famine in Southern Africa. In South America, the presence of the geologically young and evolving Andes means that regions in Brazil are on the western side of the subtropical anticyclones and receives warm and humid air from the Atlantic Ocean. As a result, these areas adjacent to the Tropic are extremely important agricultural regions, producing large quantities of crops including coffee. However, here on the west side of the Andes, the Humboldt Current makes conditions extremely dry and where no glaciers exist, helping to create the Atacama Desert, one of the driest deserts in the world. Vegetation as I have mentioned in previous blogs, is almost non-existent. Fortunately, unlike some of the southern nations of Africa, there is active trade among countries so even people who live along this section of the Tropic of Cancer in South America have access to food and water. Here in Antofagasta, The Tropic of Capricorn passes through the region to the north of the city, and is marked by a quite elaborate monument. The monument which was opened on December 21st, 2000 in celebration of this circle of latitude is clearly visible from the main road. Consisting of two parts, it is a huge steel structure with a copper surface that has developed a beautiful patina. Separated by about 18 inches (1/2 meter), the first structure is a large square frame and the second has an arched top. Depending on the time of year and how close to noon it is, the sun shines through it at various angles culminating at the winter solstice when the sun would be directly overhead. Since it was a hot day the sun cast plenty of shade around the structure for which Winston was eminently grateful, as we spent a long time reading the science behind the monument and taking photos. Given what we know, we could not work out the exact time of day at the solstice that the sun would divide the two parts or what affect the movement of the Tropic of Capricorn has on the monument but it was fascinating.

About a kidnapping (actually a dognapping)!

Here is a story for you and anyone with a pet will completely understand my meltdown. Our sightseeing trip of the day was going to be the Tropic of Capricorn Monument and the day started out like most others. Get up, make coffee and let Winston out in the morning for his business. In the mornings he is usually quick because he knows he is allowed on the bed to play and maybe catch a few more zzzs with Tom. After about 15 minutes, he did not come back. There were some surfers on the beach and they said they had seen him close by but then he just disappeared. After scouring the beach and even driving to the next cove over and asking everyone we met if they had seen a Beagle including the police, the gendarmerie and the garbage collectors, we came to the conclusion that someone had kidnapped him! Pascale, one of the ladies with the surfers suggested making flyers, so in tears I downloaded a couple of photos onto a USB drive and she took them to her home to make up some copies. During the time she was gone, Tom and I continued walking the beach even crossed the busy street to go up into a housing development and calling for him. When Pascale returned, we started posting the flyers on lampposts and handing them out to people. We are offering a $1,000.00 dollar reward for his safe return. I am a basket case and can’t stop crying. Tom thinks we need to be more proactive and decides to go into town and speak with the bomberos and see if they had any ideas. He also decided to visit the local TV and radio stations and if necessary pay them to put Winston’s information and reward details on the air. In the meantime I would stay with the RV in case someone brought him back. As I waited, there were quite a few surfers and their friends who were driving around the neighborhoods to see if they could spot him. One of them came back; he thought they had seen Winston with a lady. I got in the truck and went to the housing area where they had seen the dog. His friend had an older lady by the arm and she was with a beagle on a leash. My heart sank, it wasn’t Winston. “His name is Roy” she told me. “He’s mine and I’ve had him for 5 years”. After I had assured the two guys that it wasn’t Winston and to let her go, I almost smiled. If we were in the States this lady would have been screaming for the police if someone held her against her will accusing her of dog stealing but here…the poor lady just looked at us all defiantly, muttered again “He’s mine and his name is Roy” and went on her way. Unbeknown to me, Tom was already at the TV station and they put out an alert on air, free of charge (can you believe it!) and so everyone listening knew about the North Americans and our lost Beagle and that there was a $1,000.00 reward. Then, in the afternoon I was walking the beach, again and as I turned to head back to the RV, a car pulled up, the door opened; they pushed Winston out and took off! It was crazy. The surfers and I couldn't believe it. I started to run and call his name, Winston looked a bit dazed. They could have got the reward. I would have gratefully parted with $1,000.00 just to get him back. I was so relieved. Winston was limping from a cut on his leg and was hungry but was otherwise ok. When Tom got back from town, he was totally amazed. We were going to do whatever it took to get him back even if it meant renting a house and bombarding the media with photos. We tried to come up with a plausible explanation as to why the people did not try to claim the reward but could not think of a reason. We were just so relieved to have him home. When I told Tom about the false alarm and the story of the older lady and her dog Roy, Tom said that it was just as well that he was back. He said he would have had visions of people coming with a parade of Beagles to see if any were Winston. By evening word had gotten out that he had been returned, and not only did the TV people drop by to check on him but many people from the town. After that we dared not let him out of our sight because now everyone in town (and this is a poor town) knew that Winston was worth a thousand dollars! I jokingly told Tom "Jeez, if they know you will pay that much for the dog, what's the wife worth!" "Nothing" he said "We were only going to pay that for Winston so my life would be worth living!!" We both laughed but agreed it was a close call. Joking aside, he was gone for about 7 hours and it must have taken 5 years off our lives.

Mano de Desierto (Hand of the Desert)

The Atacama Desert is one of several seemingly lifeless places that make Chile look like another world. The scorched lunar-like landscape stretches for hundreds of miles on both sides of the Pan-American Highway, with much of that distance undisturbed by any sign of human, animal or avian activity. About 75km south of the town of Antofagasta, the monotony is broken by a sight even more eerie then the desert itself. I guess there is nothing like a blank canvas if you want to create a massive sculpture even if that sculpture is an enormous hand protruding out of the sand. And that's just what Chilean sculptor Mario Irarrázabal has done here. Inaugurated in 1992 with funding from a local organization, Mano de Desierto (Hand of the Desert) is made from iron and cement and looms 11 meters (36 feet) tall. Since its inception, it has become a point of interest and a popular photo stop for tourists traveling this section of the Pan-American Highway, even bus companies tell their passengers to “just look to the west”. We do not want to just look; we want to get up close and personal with the sculpture, which means leaving the highway and driving down yet another dirt trail. As we get closer, the statue towers over us. On closer inspection, the detail is incredible. Palm, thumb, fingers, joints even the fingernails, it is remarkable. Sort of like looking at your hand under a microscope. But why a hand? Well, the notion of hands rising from the ground is an obsession of Mr. Irarrázabal's and his trademark of ideas. His other famous work includes another over-sized sculpture of a hand exploring the same idea: We had seen Monument to the Drowned at Playa Brava in Punta del Este, Uruguay, when we were there. (see blog from Punta del Este, Uruguay). According to Irarrázabal he uses the human hand to express emotions like injustice, loneliness, sorrow and torture and the exaggerated size is meant to emphasize human vulnerability and helplessness. Well! It is extraordinary, if a little strange. It is also unfortunately an easy victim of graffiti and although it is cleaned occasionally that must not have been done in a while as there were quite a few markings on it. We took photographs while Winston waited in the shade of the palm and thumb, like I said this thing is rather large. After walking around it a few more times, we left but marveled at the fact that first of all someone had thought of doing this, two; someone agreed to fund it and three; they had chosen this of all places which is, quite frankly in the middle of nowhere to build it. Oh, and four; if you are ever in the area, don’t miss it!

La Portada ("The Gateway")

Located just off-shore, 18 km (11 mi) north of Antofagasta, La Portada is a natural arch and is considered to be one of the highlights of this dramatic coastline. Declared a national Monument in 1990, it is one of fifteen natural monuments included among the protected areas of Chile and covers an area of around 77 acres. It has since become an icon of the region and one of the most recognizable and photographed landmarks in Chile. Following a strong earthquake a couple of years ago, the whole area was redesigned and built with a new access road, several viewing platforms designed to optimize views of the arch from different angles and a restaurant. The arch itself is 43 m (140 ft) high, 23 m (75 ft) wide, and 70 m (230 ft) long and is clearly visible as we drive down the access road. Comprising of sedimentary rocks, yellow sandstone and layers of fossils that date back 35 to 2 million years ago, the sea has steadily eroded the cliffs to form this amazing natural structure. Unfortunately, it is surrounded by cliffs that are themselves the victim of erosion and after the earthquake left the cliffs more unstable, the beach and pathways at the base of the cliffs are now closed to the public. This monument is outstanding and despite the fairly strong breeze blowing from the ocean, we walked to all the viewing platforms to get photographs from different angles. The highest one and which also happens to be the closest to the restaurant is built out over the rocks and ocean, giving the sensation of being suspended but the views were incredible. After taking numerous photos, we headed into the restaurant which is actually a step above the regular café style places that is found at most park services. We found a window table and our waiter obliged us by taking our photo with the arch in the background. The beef empanadas we ordered were good and the pisco sours were excellent. We both agreed that this was a wonderful place to relax and enjoy this unique monument. As we were eating, a tour bus arrived and disgorged a couple of dozen people who proceeded to crowd the platforms and take photos so it seems as though we arrived at just the right time since it was around the time we were paying and leaving that they noisily descended on the restaurant. We left to check out the small ranger station and collected a couple of park stickers to go on our ever-growing collection of stickers on the rear window. We also visited the small museum just a short walk along the cliff, which highlights the erosion process that created the arch and the local sea life that inhabit the waters. Although we had been told that the visit to La Portada would only be a couple of hours at most, we enjoyed the site so much that the almost four hours we spent there went quickly and still as we drove along the access road, we pulled over for one more look at this unique natural monument.