Travel Blog August 5 to November 8, 2024

Towel creation of the day: Bull. Today some of us got into four small planes holding a maximum of 12 passengers (and two pilots) to fly to the Nazca lines from Pisco airport, a distance the internet reports as approximately 115 miles. First we arrived at Paracas, a short distance from Callao, and the capital of the Paracas District in Peru's Ica Region, a port town which also serves as the jumping off point for tours to Islas Ballestas and to Paracas National Reserve (covered by two other ship's tours today). As the Nazca Lines had long been on my bucket list of things to see, I had signed up for this tour as soon as possible since I knew space was limited. This is also the most expensive optional excursion on this Pole-to-Pole voyage. Luckily, my seat was confirmed, but I then had to provide the onboard Excursions office with my approximate weight so they could plan who would sit where on the planes, since the first concern for these tiny plans is balance. On this same sheet, we read that the maximum age for this flight was 80, and the maximum weight was 90 kg or 200 lbs. More about this later - but rest assured, I was under this maximum (including the three bottles of emergency water I was carrying with me). On leaving the ship at 10:00 a.m., as we were among the second of two groups flying, the first two having left at 8:00, I was delighted to see more vendors with local stuff for sale for when we returned, because our tour time did not allow us the possibility of taking the offered shuttle into Paracas town itself for shopping, or otherwise photographing or exploring Paracas. Last night's presentation of all three tours mentioned that the weather was going to be misty from 12:00, so I wondered if our flight would be cancelled as a consequence. Nevertheless, I decided to be optimistic as usual and cross my fingers.

In any case, we got into two small vans, seemingly divided arbitrarily, though the other van contained one very large German man, the other large German man on board clearly having been allocated one of the earlier flights. During our 30-minute drive through the Ica desert, I admired (and photographed) the varying colours of the sand as our guide talked about the Nazca Lines but then he added that we would have time to read all about them at the small exhibition inside the airport. Finding out that there were also a couple of souvenir shops at the airport, I asked if we would have time for shopping for Nazca souvenirs after our flight - no point, I thought, in buying anything before our flight as that would only make me heavier! - he assured me we would. We were given, I think, about half an hour to visit the exhibit and use the toilets before we were to meet back at the check-in desk, after showing the desk our passports and getting weighed with our various bags, cameras, bottles of water, etc. that we would be carrying onto the plane.

  

  

The airport itself was huge ... and practically empty. It appeared to be one of those projects called “build it and they will come,” foreseeing an explosion of the tourism industry, although we were told by our guide that tourism is about fifth in importance in Peru after agriculture (despite the desert), fishing (given the cool Humbolt Current, which encourages fish production), mining (Peru is the world's second-largest copper producer, and an important producer of gold, zinc and lithium, not to forget natural gas) and manufacturing (anchovy flour was mentioned as a source of feed for farmstock). We climbed the stairs up to the second floor for the exhibition, which ended up being quite large. Not only did it talk about the Nazca Lines, and the fauna found in the Paracas Reserve, but also a history of Afro-peruvian culture: approximately 95 thousand slaves were brought to Peru between the 16th and 19th centuries. Thankfully, in 1854 President Ramón Castilla abolished slavery, thus ending the cultural repression exerted against this group that contributed to the mestizo identity among Peruvian people, although the last slaves were not released until 1855. It is to be noted that Spain prohibited the trafficking of slaves in 1829. Last but not least, we found a section dedicated to Peruvian Pisco, a local alcohol made from fresh musts of pisco grapes, which already contain a high concentration of sugar so no additional additives are necessary during the 4-hour distillation process at a maximum temperature of 78 °C (173°F), which is the boiling point of must/grape juice; it is aged in copper, glass, ceramic or stainless steel containers and never in wood. Pisco Sour is a mixture made from pisco, egg white and Angostura bitter. One wall contained a collection of 55 bottles of different varieties of Pisco divided into 4 categories: Pure, Green Must, Acholado and Aromatic. I believe all the display bottles were empty but did not take a closer look to check.

  

  

Wikipedia has a clearer explanation about the Nazca lines: “a group of geoglyphs made in the soil of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were created between 500 BC and 500 AD by people making depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor, removing pebbles and leaving different-coloured dirt exposed. There are two major phases of the Nazca lines, the Paracas phase, from 400 to 200 BC, and the Nazca phase, from 200 BC to 500 AD. In the years leading up to 2020, between 80 and 100 new figures had been found with the use of drones, and archaeologists believe that there are more to be found. Most lines run straight across the landscape, but there are also figurative designs of animals and plants. The combined length of all the lines is more than 1,300 km (800 mi), and the group covers an area of about 50 km2 (19 sq mi). The lines are typically 10 to 15 cm (4-6 in) deep. They were made by removing the top layer of reddish-brown ferric oxide-coated pebbles to reveal a yellow-grey subsoil. The width of the lines varies considerably, but more than half are slightly more than 33 cm (13 in) wide. In some places, they may be only 30 cm (12 in) wide, [while] others reach 1.8 m (6 ft) wide. Some of the Nazca lines form shapes that are best seen from the air (at around 500 m [1,600 ft]), although they are also visible from the surrounding foothills and other high places. The shapes are usually made from one continuous line. The largest ones are about 370 m (400 yd) long. Because of its isolation and the dry, windless, stable climate of the plateau, the lines have mostly been preserved naturally. Extremely rare changes in weather may temporarily alter the general designs. As of 2012, the lines are said to have been deteriorating because of an influx of squatters inhabiting the lands. The figures vary in complexity. Hundreds are simple lines and geometric shapes; more than 70 are zoomorphic designs, including a hummingbird, arachnid, fish, condor, heron, monkey, lizard, dog, cat, and a human. Other shapes include trees and flowers. Scholars differ in interpreting the purpose of the designs, but in general, they ascribe religious significance to them. They were designated in 1994 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.”

  

  

However, to continue my account about our plane ride, after deciding on a Nazca shirt to buy, and finding the right size, although disappointed that the vendor I was dealing with did not have the particular colour I wanted, I said I would make a decision after the flight. We were then handed our boarding passes and asked to go through security with our bags and show our passports one last time. After that, our little group of 11 walked into a large area containing 6 gates at which there were 0 other passengers waiting. We sat there, watching one little plane arrive with a first group of guests from the ship, which was then refuelled, and then later on a second small plane arrived with another group from the ship and that plane was then driven around the corner of the building so we did not see it anymore. And we waited ... and we waited. Meanwhile, we were wondering why nobody else was at the gate, and more especially why was the other little group of 12 passengers not with us, the group that had taken a little van from the ship at the same time as us and whom we had seen arrive in the main hall where the two little shops were? Finally one of the British men went back to the security area to ask what was going on and we were told to wait but they would call someone to let them know we were still waiting at the departure gate. Then, after a little more waiting, we saw the second group of ship passengers arrive at our gate waiting area. I asked one of the German women the reason for the great delay and she told me they had been made to wait in the main hall and then had been reissued boarding passes, without the number of their flight. I then found a screen where the flights were listed. The flight numbers repeated so we realised the flight numbers referred to the small plane tail numbers. There were indeed two planes and two flights expected to depart, but the message column just said wait for news or something equivalent. The one after our two said cancelled. We started coming up with theories that there had been something wrong with the second plane and this is why it had been driven around the corner (for repairs perhaps?).

  

  

In any case, finally some local people in orange safety vests and passable English arrived at the gate and explained that they needed to divide up our two groups slightly due to a problem of balance. When they called out names, it ended up that we lost two Australians from our group and gained one man (but a small man not the very large one). This meant that their group - which now departed first (when we were the first to arrive) - had 13 passengers, while our group now included only 10 normal-size people! This larger group then left first to get into the plane that had previously disappeared round the corner, while ours was the one that had arrived at the airport first and which we had watched being refueled. We waved good bye to the Australian couple previously in our group and watched their plane roll down the tarmac for take-off, wondering if we'd see them again, given that their plane was clearly overloaded with 13 passengers! As the airport staff member checked my boarding pass and assigned me a new seat number, once again arbitrarily as per the way we had randomly lined up, I checked in Spanish that both planes were safe. I saw I was opposite a tall American and wondered how they thought I was the same weight as he was and she explained in Spanish once again, convinced, I am supposing, that I was a Spanish speaker, not an English speaker, and had therefore not understood her explanation in English previously, that they had had to distribute weight more evenly hence the change in passengers. I dropped my argument then, deciding they must know what they were doing, and hoping that both of our planes would arrive back safely. Then as we approached our plane. I was happily surprised to see that our pilot and co-pilot were both women.

  

  

I was feeling somewhat less anxious now, and, as there was nowhere to store my two bags, I held them between my knees and feet. At least we all had a window seat, though I was somewhat unfortunately placed in seat 3 beneath the wing, and being a one-prop engine had to deal with the thick bar of metal holding up the wing, thus dividing my view in half. My original seat assignment had been 6, one row back on the left side. However, there was no chance of changing seats and at least I had a good camera with zoom and not just an iPhone as many other passengers were using (but probably more sophisticated versions than my iPhone). It took about 30 minutes to fly to where the lines started, during which the pilots said nothing to us after welcoming us on board and stating their names. I photographed the patchwork of agricultural crops beneath me, and then the relief of mountains, river valleys, oases, and finally I saw a small plane circulating and figured it was the other plane from our group. I now see from the photo I took of it that they were above the spiral figure of the Nazca Lines, although I hadn't noticed it at the time.

Then the co-pilot came on the crackly speaker again and told us what we would see and when it would be beneath the wing on our respective sides. Sometimes the pilot leaned the left side over first and sometimes the right side. I completely missed the first two figures - the whale and the astronaut - not knowing what to look for and expecting the figures to be a lot bigger than they were. Finally, when it came to the third figure, the monkey, I was lucky and from then on was better prepared for what to look for with the help of the map we had been issued by the airline on check-in. According to my map too, I missed seeing the spider and the heron, as well as the three in the corner, voyager, fertility and royal family, but perhaps time was up because the entire tour of geoglyphs had taken 30 minutes and we were now told we were returning to the airport. I photographed more of the land on our return, including what looked like strings of water holes, as well as sand dunes, and what was surely the Pan American highway, which clearly intersected the Lizard design, making me wonder why they didn't just deviate the highway around such an important architectural/geographical/geophysical element. Was the flight worth the money? Debatable. But I'm glad I did it, and got the certificate, too, not to mention the t-shirt! By the time we arrived in the airport building, used the toilets, and got to the shops, happy to see the Australian couple again, I tried the second of the two shops and found they had my size, my preferred colour, and were selling it for USD10 less than the first shop, so I quickly purchased it and rushed into the van, which was about to leave without me, not giving me the promised 15 to 20 minutes after all.

  

  

I photographed the colourful sands again on the way back to the port and after checking our back-on-board time, wandered through the 7 or 8 stalls here and I believe I ended up being literally the last customer of the day before they packed up everything. I certainly missed trying the local Pisco one stall was offering, but there was lots of jewellery to look at and I ended up getting a few things to help the locals survive another day. The ultimate shop contained wares by a very talented weaver, Victor, and his daughter, Flor. He did the weaving and she sold his creations. I was particularly attracted to the brighter coloured products and finally asking to photograph two of their many creative designs and sizes. At some point after leaving Paracas, we were told there was a geoglyph of a candelabra on the hillside. By the time we arrived on the back of deck 10, it was invisible to the naked eye, but thanks to my camera, I was able to capture it. Wikipedia says “The Paracas Candelabra, also called the Candelabra of the Andes, or El Candelabro (the Trident), is a well-known prehistoric geoglyph found on the northern face of the Paracas Peninsula at Pisco Bay in Peru. Pottery found nearby has been radio carbon dated to 200 BCE, the time of the Paracas culture. The design is cut two feet (0.61 m) into the soil, with stones possibly from a later date placed around it. The figure is 600 feet (180 meters) tall, large enough to be seen 12 miles (19.3 km) at sea. In 2016, it was designated as a national heritage site by Peru, with Peruvian law dictating a jail term of between three and six years for anyone damaging any archaeological monument ... The geoglyph is related to the Nazca lines.” During the rest of my evening before bedtime and changing our clocks forward one hour, I worked on my photos.

  

  

Wednesday, October 16, 2024: At Sea

Towel creation of the day: Koala bear, photographed here together with my cabin steward, Cris. I then worked on this travelogue all day merely to write up the last two days. To make the time change between Peru and Chile, we went forward two hours today, but the ship broke it up as one hour at 2:00 a.m. and one hour at 2:00 p.m. so it felt like we were having an early dinner as sunset had not come yet by 6:00 p.m. Both the shortened day and my attempt to catch up on my travelogue meant that I had to miss the knit-and-natter session. To make up for this, I have been knitting like crazy in my spare time, and have quite a bit more to add to the blanket I am putting together, aware that time is running down and that the last two trip weeks will soon be here. After dinner, we had a recap by the expedition team of the subtropic and topic regions we have sailed through in terms of biology, history, and culture, and were invited to share one photo per cabin from the trip since South Carolina. I submitted my photo of the leaf mantis from Colón, as I figured it was one that nobody else had. Tomorrow we enter Chile, our last country before Antarctica.

 

Thursday, October 17, 2024: Arica, Chile (18.4783° S, 70.3126° W)

Towel creation of the day: Whale. We arrived in port in the late morning with a view of a tall hill called the Morro on the top of which stood a huge Chilean flag. The optional tour I had booked today was called Man and Desert. The write-up said we would admire the renowned cathedral in Arica's main square and then head into the desert to marvel at the enigmatic geoglyphs etched into the hillside, explore San Miguel Archaeological Museum in Azapa, and visit Pampa Chaca, where Juan Diaz Fleming, one of the greatest sculptors in Chile, created the impressive Tutelar figures. It also said we would enjoy some refreshments and traditional Andean folk music before returning to the pier. Things didn't quite go in that order but still ... more or less. To recap, we had a noonish arrival in Arica, the capital of the northern-most region of Chile with a current population of 221,364. As the dining room wasn't open for lunch yet, I had ordered a couple of boiled eggs at breakfast and ate them in my room at the end of the morning together with an apple I had in my cabin fruit bowl. We then headed out to our busses after immigration clearance was complete, and, although we were given a glance at the main square from the bus, we did not stop and instead headed straight out to the Atacama Desert.

  

  

Here a couple of inhabited areas were pointed out to us, seen among my photos. One was an area where incoming Venezuelan refugees/immigrants were housed and another was an experimental agricultural area. In exchange for desert land, people were encouraged to grow crops - trying out various methods to see what worked and what didn't. We then arrived at Pampa Chaca and its five Tutelar figures, which we were told represented the sun and the moon, the earth, the universe, etc. according to Aymara beliefs. On arriving at the main three figures, two tall ones that looked like bottle openers and one shorter one that looked like half a cookie with a bite taken out of it, a group of young adults in elaborate costumes, said to be traditional, but a bit too brief for my comfort level (and in the hot sun I wondered about the girls' bare legs getting burned) danced a couple of numbers to music coming from a boombox of sorts. This was not my idea of traditional Andean folk music; I was prepared for pan-pipes, condors and llamas, but what do I know? We were then offered wine-glasses of Peruvian (despite now being in Chile) pisco sour as we strolled a short distance over to the other two figures of the set and took photos.

  

  

Back on the bus, we arrived at an oasis of agriculture across from which, on the hills, were some pictures of llamas and people. I am sure we were told these were ancient and created by ancient peoples, but curiously enough, I can find nothing about them online. I did find out that the Nazca lines are considered extractive geoglyphs while the ones seen among my photos for today would be considered additive geoglyphs, as they were built of stones and other natural materials, sorted and carefully placed. We got out of the bus on the side of the road briefly to photograph these as they were located in private land owned by a nursery. Our next stop was the San Miguel Archaeological Museum in Azapa, although the sign outside the gate said Museo Universidad de Tarapaca. One building housed displays of local indigenous culture, while the other was specific to Chinchorro culture and contained mummies older than the famous Egyptian ones. There was an explanation of the mummification process used, although all the explanations were in Spanish, making me wonder whether they needed a translator to translate everything into English to cater to a wider audience.

  

  

One panel tells us that approximately 7,000 years ago, these fishers began to mummify their dead artificially. This practice lasted 3,500 years. They developed various types of mummification over time, classified as black, red, bandaged, and mud-patina. Another panel says that out of approximately 300 Chinchorro mummies documented by scientists, 47% correspond to mummies preserved naturally by the coastal desert, a region characterized by extreme dryness and high salinity, which rapidly dehydrates the bodies, avoiding decomposition. In such burials, the bodies are laid, stretched out, and wrapped in vegetable fibre matting and/or camelid skin, together with hunting and fishing implements. The remaining 53% of Chinchorro mummy studies correspond to bodies with artificial or pre-meditated processing. Most of the displays were of mummified babies and small children, due no doubt to high child death rates during those times. Interestingly enough, preserving them has allowed scientists to learn a great deal about this civilization, including how they died, what they ate. etc. One explanation in Spanish says that these people, of all ages, frequently died of pneumonia, anaemia or from ingesting raw or partially cooked food. They also noted hearing problems, chronic bone infections, especially in the feet, and a type of non-infectious syphilis (treponematosis) and general inflammation (periostitis and osteitis). They also noticed craneal and upper arm fractures associated with interpersonal violence, possible produced during confrontations over fresh water rights or fishing territory.

  

  

Once again, we were hurried to our next stop, the Morro de Arica, a hill with a height of 139 metres above sea level. It was the last bulwark of defence for the Peruvian troops, who garrisoned the city during the War of the Pacific. It also contains a large statue of Jesus, called Christ of Peace, but I was only able to photograph it from the back and from the side, being told by our guide that there was no time left for me to run up to the statue and photograph it from the front. Instead, we were encouraged to photograph the panorama of the city, from which we could, in fact, see the church we were next to visit (from the outside only as it was closed), the cathedral built and designed by Gustave Eiffel. We then got back in the bus which dropped us off at the main square so we could look at said church from the front, then we were free to leave the tour, finally, and permitted to discover the town for ourselves. We had been told that the 21 de Mayo street was the one we should visit, being full of traditional handicraft shops, but we soon found out this was not the case. Instead, it was filled with American shops such as McDonalds and KFC as well as local clothing, etc. shops. I did eventually come back to the tourist centre, which was closed, but where I found a neighbouring shop selling the wares of local artists, and bought a few more earrings and chatted to the vendor in Spanish. I also photographed some murals as I wandered along the streets and finally found the Peruvian handicrafts section of the town but found nothing there to my liking. I ended up at another Eiffel building, the Arica House of Culture, formerly the Arica Customs House, built by the Gustave Eiffel workshops in 1874. Photographing a few turkey vultures and pigeons in the area, I then crossed the square in front of it, which contained a fountain, and managed to find the letters of Arica that I had seen from the bus.

  

  

Arriving back at the main square, I found myself in front of the Ferrocarril de Arica a la Paz train station, also an Eiffel workshops building, funded by the Chilean government under the Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1904 between Chile and Bolivia. The railway line was inaugurated on 13 May 1913 and is the shortest line from the Pacific Coast to Bolivia. The instructions we were given by our tour guide to get the port shuttle bus were unclear, but by asking a few locals, I finally found the entrance to the port, where my bag was scanned, and got onto the waiting shuttle bus, which took me back to the ship. At the port, there were thankfully a few souvenir stores - mostly alpaca wool clothing but also bottles, glasses, bottle openers and magnets with the theme of the Chinchorro mummies. I only had a few small USD dollar bills, and the vendors were unable to break down twenty-dollar bills into USD, so the only thing I was able to buy was a very inexpensive magnet in the shape of a mummy. I chatted with the vendor for a while, and he ended up also giving me a bookmark of the black mommies, which contains an explanation in Spanish and English. The English text on it says: “According to B. Arriaza, this type of mummies [dates] from 5050 B.C. to 3000 B.C. Funeral prepar[ations] removed the brains and organs of the deceased, [and] reconstructed the body with clay and fibres. Likewise, the skull was filled with straw, ash, or clay. They used thin cords to tie ... the lower jaw to the cranium. They kept the spine straight and joined [it] to the head using sticks. Later, they restored the skin, sometimes using sea lion skin or another type of animal, a[nd] finally painted the body with manganese oxide. This gave the body a bright blue-black colour. The head was adorned with a facial mask and a short, black human hair wig.”

  

  

I was back on the ship in time for dinner, and the ship left the port at sunset as a local band played some well-known songs, some with a female singer, such as those by ABBA and from Grease, or at least as much as I could make out from where I was in the indoor dining room. Later on, after transferring my photos, I attended a poetry reading of three or four of Chilean Pablo Neruda's poems, plus two from an American poet read by Expedition team members, and then, since passengers were invited to contribute, I recited two short poems, the second being Michael Flanders's The Sloth in honour of the three-toed sloth we had seen in Escudo de Veraguas.

Friday, October 18, 2024: Iquique, Humberstone and Santa Laura, Chile (20.2307° S, 70.1357° W)

Towel creation of the day: Stingray. Today may well have been my least favourite tour we have had from this ship, but perhaps my impression is based solely on the tour guide we had who was young (25) and although she told us she had been working as a tour guide in the area for four years, her English was exceptionally poor. I will give her the benefit of the doubt, due to the possibility that she has only given tours in Spanish before. To add to our discontent was the fact that the bus audio system she was using was also poor and although we kept on telling her to turn the volume down, nothing seemed to do the trick. One passenger also suggested she not hold her mouth so close to the microphone, but she did not change said distance by one iota, so we all ended up suffering acoustically. The other problem was that while there were two sites to visit, about a five-minute bus drive from each other, one could be walked around fairly quickly, while we could have done with a great deal more time at the other as there was lots to see and visit (and souvenir shops to visit), yet insufficient time provided. From my point of view, it was down to a fault of logistical planning. We were a total of four buses from the ship and they had divided up our buses in such a way that two busloads could visit one site while the other two visited the other site. However, as mentioned above, the two sites did not require an equal amount of visiting time.

  

Despite these problems, I did manage to photograph two bird species and one lizard species, more than I hoped to find in this very hot, very dry desert area. The guide had a very poor concept of numbers in English too, so I had to look up the population of Iquique (191,468) afterwards, after being told it was the largest city, and capital, of its region, Tarapacá, region I. It is consequently a slightly lower population than that of Arica, which is the capital of the Arica and Parinacota region, region XV. It certainly looked to be large from our panoramic view of it and its Cerro Dragon or Dragon Hill, an enormous sand dune about four km long, from the highway above. Putting things into perspective, the mid-year 2024 population of Chile is reported to be 19,764,771.

  

In any case, the included ship's tour today was to two ghost towns in the Atacama Desert of Chile, located 45 km east of the city of Iquique. The Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpetre Works are two former saltpetre refineries, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005, as a testament to the historical importance of saltpetre mining in Chile and the culture and social agenda that developed around it in the late 19th century. The works were placed on the World Heritage List in Danger that same year, due to the fragility of the derelict buildings, but was removed in 2019. They are also a Chilean National Monument.

  

  

Wikipedia provides a brief history as follows: “In 1872, the Guillermo Wendell Nitrate Extraction Company founded the saltpetre works of Santa Laura, while the region was still part of Peru. In the same year, James Thomas Humberstone founded the Peru Nitrate Company, establishing the works of La Palma. Both works grew quickly, becoming busy towns characterized by English-style buildings. While La Palma became one of the largest saltpetre extractors of the whole region, Santa Laura did not do well, as production was low. It was taken over in 1902 by the Tamarugal Nitrate Company. In 1913 Santa Laura halted its production until the Shanks extraction process was introduced, which enhanced productivity. However, the economic model collapsed during the Great Depression of 1929 because of the development of the synthesis of ammonia by the Germans Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, which led to the industrial production of fertilizers. Practically bankrupt, both works were acquired by COSATAN (Compañía Salitrera de Tarapacá y Antofagasta) in 1934. COSATAN renamed La Palma as Oficina Santiago Humberstone in honour of its founder. The company tried to produce a competitive natural saltpetre by modernizing Humberstone, which led to its becoming the most successful saltpetre works in 1940. Both works were abandoned in 1960 after the rapid decline that caused COSATAN to disappear in 1958. In 1970, after becoming ghost towns, they were declared national monuments and opened to tourism. In 2005 they were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.”

  

In its website, UNESCO describes these two towns in a bit more detail, as follows, although I have edited it slightly to improve the English: “Humberstone and Santa Laura works are the best preserved and most representative remains of a series of ... over 200 former saltpetre works interconnected by a specially built modern railway system, and constitute an exceptional testimony to technological progress and global exchanges, which were cornerstones of the industrial era. In this area, workers from Chile, Peru, and Bolivia came to this hostile environment, lived in company towns, and forged a distinctive communal Pampinos culture, manifest in their own rich language, creativity, and solidarity, and above all in pioneering struggles for social justice, that had a profound impact generally on social history. Situated in the remote Pampas, one of the driest deserts on Earth, thousands of pampinos lived and worked in this hostile environment for over sixty years, from 1880, to process the largest deposit of saltpetre in the world, producing the fertilizer sodium nitrate that was to transform agricultural lands in North and South America, and in Europe, and produce great wealth for Chile. Because of the vulnerability of the structures and the impact of a recent earthquake, the site was also placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger to help mobilize resources for its conservation.

  

“The industrial heritage site was developed from 1872 ... until [the] mid 20th century; it is located 45 km. from the port of Iquique in the midst of a desert landscape. The property covers a surface area of 573.48 hectares, with a buffer zone of 1,826.39 hectares [encompassing] the two main sites, which stand at a distance of approximately one km from each other. These complement each other, because the industrial area of Santa Laura is better conserved, while Humberstone has better preserved residential and service areas. The site of Santa Laura conserves the remains of the industrial installations that were used for saltpetre processing, such as industrial installations and equipment, including the only leaching shed and a saltpetre grinder that remain intact today, installations for manufacturing iodine for energy production, and buildings such as the administration house and the main square. The Humberstone site contains the attributes that express the quality of urban settlements, such as the living quarters, public spaces and the regular grid pattern of the Camp, with a main square around which communal buildings are clustered. Other relevant attributes are the remains of the railway line that linked Santa Laura and Humberstone, gravel heaps, construction techniques, architectural styles and materials, in particular, costrón and Pampa concrete, distinctive construction materials together with calamine and timber that were brought from other latitudes. The remains of saltpetre works are also present in the buffer zone, which is also significant for the conservation of the characteristics of the natural setting of the Pampa which illustrate the relationship between the built environment and the adaptation to the natural setting.

  

“The two saltpetre works are the most representative remaining vestiges of an industry that transformed the lives of a large proportion of the population of Chile, [and] brought great wealth to the country. The output of the industry, nitrate fertilisers, had indirectly a transforming influence on existing agricultural lands in Europe, and on newly cultivated land in other latitudes, and indirectly supported the agricultural revolution of the late 19th century in many parts of the world. The remaining buildings are testimony to the social order and technical processes that drove the industry. The pioneering social agenda of the saltpetre workers' unions had far-reaching effects on labour laws throughout Chile and further afield. The distinctive culture of the Pampinos that evolved in association with the industry, which expresses the language, the memory of the saltpetre culture, and its influence on social process, has resonance amongst the local population today and is another important attribute of the property. The place still has a strong symbolic and evocative association for the people from the Pampa, former workers and their families, who use the place for meetings and commemorations such as Saltpetre Week.”

  

Of the photos seen here, the first two after the towel creation are from the port, the lighthouse and two representatives from the region, while photos 4 to 20 are from Humberstone, representing the entrance way, various explanatory panels, houses converted to museum rooms, which I had no time to visit, the Catholic church (made of Douglas Fir), messages on the wall of the community centre (complaining about the fact that workers from the south had had to sell their horses to move up north so as to work here and the result was that they felt imprisoned there, unable to afford to travel back home); the community center kitchen, views from and of the community swimming pool, a bedroom, a school room, various displays with models in the haberdashery and bakery, and a train engine. Photos 21 to 27 are of Santa Laura, which felt richer as though it was here that the managers lived: drawing room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, as well as panels and shots of the leaching process factory. Photos 28 to 31 are of the aforementioned wildlife and the final two are of the desert and Iquique with dragon hill.