Labour Day

Sunday 1st May 1988 Labour Day

Once again, we stayed comfortably tucked up in bed for most of the morning. Today was Labour Day in Chile and every radio station was broadcasting speeches from Union Leaders and politicians. Labor Day is also known as International Workers’ Day and May Day is a public holiday in many countries worldwide. It usually occurs around May 1, but several countries observe it on other dates. Labor Day / May Day is a public holiday. It is a day off for the general population, and schools and most businesses are closed.

In the course of my conversation with Gerrard last night I discovered that there was a mad Scottish cyclist staying at the Hotel Caribe so I went there to visit Jackie. He was still in bed at noon recovering from three days of frenetic sexual activity with an American dancing girl who had just left for Buenos Aires. Jackie came back to the Hotel Nuevo to meet the others and we all went out to see what Labour Day activities were going on in town.

There was a band playing in the Plaza de Armas which we watched as we munched hot dogs and slurped ice cream. The rest of the town was very quiet with no sign of the rumoured marches or demonstrations by left-wingers and students.

Our walkabout took us back to the Bellavista area and the Parque Forestal. Jackie and I returned to the main plaza for a beer and watched the nutters and the religious nuts who raved and sang around the outdoor tables.

At 16:30 hrs. we went to the cinema to see “Platoon” and “In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro”. The latter was a 1986 low budget version of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” with baboons instead of winged menace. The government and a mine owner (John Rhys-Davies) ignore a ranger's (Timothy Bottoms) warning about 90,000 starving baboons in Kenya.

In Oliver Stone’s epic 1986 film “Platoon” Chris Taylor, a neophyte recruit in Vietnam, finds himself caught in a battle of wills between two sergeants, one good and the other evil. A shrewd examination of the brutality of war and the duality of man in conflict.

We wandered down the pedestrian precinct passing clowns performing in the plaza and ended up in a small café close to our hotel. Here we had the Cubierto (set meal) while the geezer on the next table stood up for the Chilean National Anthem and told us what a good chap Pinochet was as he gave the presidential Labor Day speech on the black and white television. The other diners seemed less impressed.

Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean general who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being declared President of the Republic by the junta in 1974 and becoming the de facto dictator of Chile, and from 1981 to 1990 as de jure President after a new Constitution, which confirmed him in the office, was approved by a referendum in 1980.

Augusto Pinochet rose through the ranks of the Chilean Army to become General Chief of Staff in early 1972 before being appointed its Commander-in-Chief on 23 August 1973 by President Salvador Allende. On 11th September 1973, Pinochet seized power in Chile in a coup d'état, with the support of the U.S., that toppled Allende's democratically elected left-wing Unidad Popular government and ended civilian rule.

In December 1974, the ruling military junta appointed Pinochet Supreme Head of the nation by joint decree, although without the support of one of the coup's instigators, Air Force General Gustavo Leigh. After his rise to power, Pinochet persecuted leftists, socialists, and political critics, resulting in the executions of 1,200 to 3,200 people, the internment of as many as 80,000 people, and the torture of tens of thousands. According to the Chilean government, the number of executions and forced disappearances was 3,095. Operation Condor, a U.S.-supported terror operation focusing on South America, was founded at the behest of the Pinochet regime in late November 1975, his 60th birthday.

We went on to a seedy bar with the Texan hippy Robert and drank beer in the company of alcoholics and prostitutes until midnight. Back in our room I found another drinking party going on. We sat on the floor and drank wine until it ran out at 02:00 hrs. before getting into bed.

Cerro San Cristobal

Saturday 30th April 1988

None of us were conscious until about noon. We used the hot shower – brilliant! and lazed about listening to the radio. At about 14:00 hrs. we overcame our hangovers and apathy and set off in search of the artisan market area.

We found a display of modern art in a magnificent old building with a glass domed roof. This was probably The Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art which was created in 1947 and is run by the University of Chile Faculty of Arts.

There were some pretty bizarre exhibits and we met up with a few more travellers, including Gerrard from Dublin. He had a horror story to tell about Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. He and the eight others who had shared a rented apartment in Copacabana had been robbed at gunpoint by five drug-crazed men posing as policemen.

They took practically everything that they had, packing it into a couple of their rucksacks. They almost raped a Swiss bloke, pulling down his trousers and greasing up his arse, but presumably couldn’t get it up and didn’t manage to complete the homosexual act. “I thanked my lucky stars that I am ugly and they left me alone!” quipped Gerrard.

We walked through the Parque Forestal which is a large, narrow park with a wealth of statues dotted with numerous allegedly must-see locations in downtown Santiago. It borders the Mapocho River from Plaza Baquedano, also known as Plaza Italia, all the way to Estación Mapocho, a historical building and cultural centre near the Puente Cal y Canto metro station. Mercado Central, La Vega, and the Bellas Artes museum are some of the other major destinations located in or adjacent to Parque Forestal.

We continued up the Pío Nono to the funicular railway station at the base of the massive Cerro San Cristobal (San Cristobal Hill) which rises up from the centre of Santiago and houses the city’s largest public park. At the top of the hill are several spacious terraces and lookouts from which one can take in the breadth of the capital from the peace of the hill’s greenery, high above the hustle and bustle of downtown.

The hill is accessed from its base in Barrio Bellavista, from which one can reach the top either by car, via the road that winds up the hill, or the ascensor (elevator or funicular), which carries visitors up the length of the hill and offers a variety of views along the way. One can also opt to walk up the hill via the auto-access road, though this is not recommended as the road is not geared toward pedestrians and several points along the road are quite isolated.

The girls took the train up while the rest of us walked up the winding dirt track to the statue of the Virgin Mary on top. Once at the top of the hill, one can explore the many different vantage points for viewing the city and the Andes from the Terraza Bellavista, as well see the 14-metre-high Virgin Mary statue and adjacent outdoor church up close.

The city spread out into the distance below us, dimly seen through the haze of smog. At the base of the statue was a caged collection of memorabilia from Pope John Paul II’s visit in April 1987. Lower down there was a statue of the crucifixion scene.

We sat on the steps as the light faded and the temperature dropped. The city lights winked on as we walked briskly down and back through the evening crowds along the Avenida O’Higgins. A huge picture of Arnold Schwarzeneggar stares down from one of the cinemas which was showing “The Running Man”.

When we got back to our room we just lolled around until Gerrard, Robert from Texas and I decided to go out and get something to eat. It was practically impossible to find somewhere that did something other than hot dogs, hamburgers, fried chicken or mini pizzas.

In the end we gave up and took the special offer hot dog and beer package offered by all of the cafés. We walked on down to the Bella Vista area (Pío Nono) and after a perusal of the jewellery stalls, we sat at a pavement bar drinking pints of lager while a folk group hammered out local music on flutes, guitars and drums. Gerrard hopefully bought some chocolate for a Chilean bird (girl) on the next table but she wasn’t interested.

At 02:00 hrs. the bars closed, which was a relief as we were beginning to shiver with the cold. On our walk back we came across a crumpled car smashed into a shuttered shop front. A trail of blood drips meandered down the road away from the wreckage.

Back at the hotel I expected to find the others asleep but they were sitting around a candle surrounded by empty pisour and wine bottles, reciting Swedish nursery rhymes about frogs jumping through windows.

I nipped out and bought a bottle of red wine from a 24-hour café bar down the road and sat down to join them. Karin was giggling and babbling in Swedish for much of the time. We chatted and laughed into the small hours. The hotel staff seem to be up for “business as usual” all night long.

Hotel Nuevo

Friday 29th April 1988

Karin and I had a good long lie in while Bill packed and set off for Valparaíso on the coast. Eventually we got up and packed up our gear and moved to the cheaper Hotel Nuevo that Karin had found on San Pablo y Morandé. Karin had a mountain of gear with her, and I carried a carrier bag full of books for her, changing hands frequently because of the weight.

The Hotel Nuevo was a fairly dilapidated but friendly hotel which cost us 600 Chilean Pesos each. We joined American Preston Clarke Edwards and New Zealand Kathy McQuillan in a big room with five beds overlooking the street outside.

The ceiling paint was peeling, the wallpaper held on with masking tape and we had an in-house bathroom suite comprising of a washbasin and a bidet in a hardboard closet with a grubby curtain. The big double-windows with broken panes allowed the sun to shine into our room for most of the day. It was shabby but comfortable enough for four rough and ready travellers.

We had lunch in a posh restaurant which offered a cheap set lunch which was tasty enough but in tiny portions. We visited the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art looking at the usual collection of old pots and crude clay statues. A background tape played tribal chants and rhythmic grunts and there was an impressive collection of figures in mystic ceremonial costume and body paint.

The museum was founded by the Chilean architect and antiquities collector Sergio Larraín García-Moreno, who had sought premises for the display and preservation of his private collection of pre-Columbian artefacts acquired over the course of nearly fifty years. With the support of Santiago's municipal government at the time, García-Moreno secured the building and established the museum's curatorial institution. The museum first opened in December 1981.

The museum is housed in the Palacio de la Real Aduana that was constructed between 1805 and 1807. It is located a block west of the Plaza de Armas and close to the Palacio de los Tribunales de Justicia de Santiago and the Former National Congress Building.

We then stocked up with comestibles in the supermarket and returned to our hotel room where we met up with Preston and Kathy. The four of us then set off with the intention of watching the sunset from Cerro San Cristóbal, but once again we left it too late and had to settle for the nearer Cerro Santa Lucia.

We took the super clean efficient Metro for 45 Chilean Pesos to the stop outside the hill and walked up through the fountains and arches to the plazas around the summit. The idea to build an underground railway network in Santiago dates back to 1944, when new ways to improve the chaotic transport system were sought after the rapid population growth the city was experiencing since the early 1930s.

However, ideas would begin to take shape in the 1960s, when the government released an international tender for the development of an urban transport system. On 24 October 1968, the government of Eduardo Frei Montalva approved the draft submitted by the Franco-Chilean consortium BCEOM SOFRETU CADE, in which the construction of five lines with an extension of approximately 60 kilometres by 1990 was proposed.

On 29 May 1969, works finally began for the construction of the first line, which would link the Civil District and the area of Barrancas (current-day Lo Prado). On 15 September 1975, the first line of the metro was opened by Augusto Pinochet during the military regime.

We sat on the wall of the fort at the top of the Cerro Santa Lucia as it got dark. Several shady characters were loitering amongst the rocks around us. On the way back we visited David and Tony at the Hotel Londres. David was in bed with a cold, but Tony joined us for a visit to the cinema to see “9½ Weeks”.

9½ Weeks is a 1986 American erotic romantic drama film directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke. Basinger portrays a New York City art gallery employee who has a brief yet intense affair with a mysterious Wall Street broker, played by Rourke.

The title of the film refers to the duration of a relationship between Wall Street arbitrageur John Gray and SoHo art gallery employee Elizabeth McGraw. John initiates and controls the various experimental sexual practices of this abusive relationship to push Elizabeth's boundaries. In doing so, Elizabeth experiences a gradual downward spiral toward an emotional breakdown.

After the film we walked along the River Mapocho to the artisan area around the Puente Pío Nono. Several centuries ago the Spaniards led by the conquistador Pedro de Valdivia arrived in the valley of the river Mapocho. In 1541 they were given the order to found a new city in this place and thus appeared Santiago.

Here there are pavement cafés street musicians, venders of jewellery and hippy regalia plus a selection of clubs and bars. We walked around this lively area before finally settling at one of the umbrella-shaded tables for a bottle of wine.

Live music came from musicians on the surrounding tables with Tom Tom drums and guitars. At 03:00 hrs. we headed back swigging from a take-away carton of red wine as we walked.

Cerro Santa Lucia

Thursday 28th April 1988

We awoke after a good night’s rest for a change and had breakfast in the museum/stately home-like lobby outside our room. I sat down with the transistor radio playing to try once more to bring my diary up to date. I scribbled for a couple of hours while Karin debated what to do with her mass of excess baggage.

At 11:45 hrs. I went to meet Bill at the Argentine Consulate and collect our passports. We met another English chap at the Consulate, and he came with us to pick up Karin and change up some travellers cheques.

We went too a travel agent in an alley opposite the Burger Inn on Ahumada, which gave us 275 Chilean Pesos for cash and travellers cheques. We then went on to have a good set lunch in the “El Vegetariano”, a trendy vegetarian restaurant with modern décor.

I returned to the hotel after taking a few photographs and continued writing up my daily diary while listening to a radio station that played dreamy and romantic music all day long. Bill came back at 16:30 hrs., Karin had gone off in search of a cheaper hotel, and we set off to watch the sunrise at Cerro San Cristóbal (San Cristóbal Hill).

The sun seemed to be going down fast, so we settled for the lesser but closer Cerro Santa Lucia, which is a park built on a hill located in the centre of the city. At 69 meters high, this hill provides one of the loveliest views of the city and is a great place to spend an afternoon and watch the sunset.

This hill is actually quite the historical locale. First off, it is the remnant of a 15-million-year-old volcano. Secondly, the conquistadors used it as a lookout point when they were conquering Chile. It was atop this hill that Pedro de Valdivia declared the founding of Santiago in 1541.

In 1872 Governor Benjamin Vickuna Mackenna decided to turn the hill into a park to commemorate its significance in the city’s history. Since then, it has undergone many renovations. Today, it comprises 65,300 square meters, replete with bronze gates, metal stairways, and various fountains and statues.

Other than a few terrace areas, the park is essentially vertical. You’ll keep moving up and winding around the hill if you follow any of the various staircases. On each level, there is a place to pause, relax, and take in the view. However, to get the best shot of the city, you’ll have to head all the way up to the top.

A magnificent colonial building (arch) stood behind fountains and palm trees with stairs curling upwards on either side. At the top we watched the anti-climatic sinking of the sun amongst a group of school kids, amorous couples and people caught short. There were human turds and the stink of urine all over the place. A pall of grey smog masked the surrounding mountains.

We returned to our room in the Hotel Londres and Bill got dressed up for a night out with an old friend. I wrote some postcards and went out with David and another New Zealand yachtsman for a big meal in a Chinese restaurant and a couple of beers.

Above: Hotel Residencial Londres in Santiago de Chile.

We sauntered back via the Plaza de Armas, arriving back at the hotel as the pavement stalls were being dismantled at 22:30 hrs. Crowds gathered around clown acts playing in the main plaza and on the pedestrian precincts.

I got back to the room just before Karin who had been to the flicks (cinema). She hadn’t eaten so I went with her to one of the cafés on Avenida Santa Rosa. I had a couple of draft lagers while we chatted and watched one of the staff dismantling unsold pizzas to reuse the constituents tomorrow.

We dashed through the maniac buses across Avenida Libertador Bernado O’Higgins at midnight to get an ice cream on the way back to our room.

Santiago de Chile

Wednesday 27th April 1988

We arrived in Santiago de Chile just after dawn at 06:30 hrs. and walked out into the city through an eager mob of porters and taxicab drivers. Santiago, also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the centre of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region. The city is entirely in the country's central valley. Most of the city lies between 500–650 metres (1,640–2,133 feet) above mean sea level.

Founded in 1541 by the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia, Santiago has been the capital city of Chile since colonial times. The city has a downtown core of 19th-century neoclassical architecture and winding side-streets, dotted by art deco, neo-gothic, and other styles. Santiago's cityscape is shaped by several stand-alone hills and the fast-flowing Mapocho River, lined by parks such as Parque Forestal and Balmaceda Park.

The Andes Mountains can be seen from most points in the city. These mountains contribute to a considerable smog problem, particularly during winter, due to the lack of rain. The city outskirts are surrounded by vineyards and Santiago is within an hour of both the mountains and the Pacific Ocean.

Santiago is the cultural, political and financial centre of Chile and is home to the regional headquarters of many multinational corporations. The Chilean executive and judiciary are located in Santiago, but Congress meets mostly in nearby Valparaíso. Santiago is named after the biblical figure St. James.

We walked south to the wide Avenida del Liberador General B. O’Higgins and then east to the red San Francisco church and the Residencial Londres hotel on Calle Londres. Bernardo O'Higgins Riquelme 20th August 1778 – 24th October 1842) was a Chilean independence leader who freed Chile from Spanish rule in the Chilean War of Independence. He was a wealthy landowner of Basque-Spanish and Irish ancestry.

Above: Inside the Residencial Londres hotel in Santiago.

Although he was the second Supreme Director of Chile (1817–1823), he is considered one of Chile's founding fathers, as he was the first holder of this title to head a fully independent Chilean state. He was Captain General of the Chilean Army, Brigadier of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, General Officer of Gran Colombia and Grand Marshal of Peru.

The city was a pleasant mixture of imposing colonial buildings and modern tower blocks. A multitude of buses sped along the wide Avenida turning the hazy air grey with their exhaust fumes. The Chilean people were of pale complexion, and it was difficult to believe that we had not been magically transported to Europe.

We left our bags at the Hotel Londres and were told to come back at 11:00 hrs. when our room would be ready for occupancy. It would cost us 1,100 Chilean Pesos per person. We had coffee on the pedestrian precinct of Paseo Ahumada, picked up a town plan at a Tourist Kiosk and sought out the main Post Office where I picked up a letter from Beatriz Dougal, a Chilean colleague from BP Research.

The Post Office was an impressive old pink building. The Central Post Office Building (Spanish: Correo Central de Santiago) is a historic post office building on the northern edge of the Plaza de Armas. It is adjacent to the Palacio de la Real Audiencia de Santiago and is located on what was the land lot originally owned by Pedro de Valdivia and where he built his house.

The site also was occupied by a building that served as Presidential Palace until 1846. Construction of the current building began in 1881 and was designed by Ricardo Brown. Its current appearance dates to 1908. It was designated a National Monument of Chile in 1976.

We then went on to the Argentine Consulate to apply for a visa for Argentina. We found it on Avenida Vicuña Mackenna (This avenue arose from the project of the mayor Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna to make a "waist road for the city".) and with a minimum of fuss we filled in a short form and paid 2,340 Chilean Pesos for a 10-day Transit Visa. A 90-day Tourist Visa cost twice as much.

We had to pick up our passports at noon the next day. We then went back to claim our room in the Hotel Londres. It is a fabulous, characterful heritage hotel with a wealth of dark polished hardwood and antique furniture. Today it would be badged a boutique hotel.

Our triple room had ornate wooden beds, a massive mirror-fronted wardrobe and a balcony overlooking the street which looked like one of the mews in Belgravia in London. We stocked up with goodies in the supermarket and had a picnic lunch in the Plaza de Armas. A pleasant bottle of Chilean red wine, with a cork that was reluctant to leave the bottle, cost only 119 Chilean Pesos.

The afternoon was spent in wandering the pleasant city streets between the Plaza de Armas and Avenida O’Higgins, changing money, buying camera film and enquiring at travel agents about internal flight costs in Argentina.

At 15:00 hrs. we went back to relax a bit at the hotel. I had a cold shower in the huge bathroom with its Victorian bathroom suite which included a bidet. In the evening we had chicken and chips on the busy Paseo Ahumada, washed down with a disgustingly sweet fruit drink before joining a massive queue at the cinema to see “Dirty Dancing”.

Wednesdays were half-price days at the flicks so the crowds rolled in. The film was an average “Saturday Night Fever” job, or could even be an update of an old Elvis film. Dirty Dancing is a 1987 American romantic drama dance film written by Eleanor Bergstein, produced by Linda Gottlieb, and directed by Emile Ardolino. Starring Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze, it tells the story of Frances "Baby" Houseman (Grey), a young woman who falls in love with dance instructor Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze) at a vacation resort in the summer of 1963.

After the film we walked through the still busy streets to a café for Coca Cola before returning to bed. People on the streets are well dressed in the latest Western fashions and the shops are all crammed with the latest consumer goods.

Antofagasta

Above: Our destination, Santiago de Chile.

Tuesday 26th April 1988

We got to the Bus Station at 07:00 hrs. and found that Bill had to buy another bus ticket. He got 10% discount using Karin’s student card, but it still meant for an expensive ride to Santiago for him. We left Calama at 08:00 hrs. on a comfy bus which quickly and smoothly conveyed us to Antofagasta where we had to change coaches.

Antofagasta is a port city in northern Chile, about 1,100 kilometres (700 miles) north of Santiago. It is the capital of Antofagasta Province and Antofagasta Region. After the Spanish American wars of independence, Bolivia claimed Antofagasta as part its territory. Despite having an overwhelmingly ethnic Chilean population, Chile recognised Bolivian sovereignty of Antofagasta in 1866, but in 1879 Chile recanted its recognition of Bolivian sovereignty citing a Bolivian breach of the latest boundary treaty. Antofagasta was captured by Chile on 14th February 1879 triggering the War of the Pacific (1879–83). Chilean sovereignty was officially recognised by Bolivia under the terms of the 1904 Treaty of Peace and Friendship.

The city of Antofagasta is closely linked to mining activity, being a port and the chief service hub for one of Chile's major mining areas. While silver and saltpetre mining have been historically important for Antofagasta, since the mid-19th century copper mining is by far the most important mining activity for Antofagasta.

We had twenty minutes before the 11:00 hrs. coach to Santiago de Chile departed so I spent the time making a monster cheese, tomato and raw onion roll for lunch. The bus was more like an aeroplane inside with overhead lockers for our baggage.

I started to read “City of the Dead” by Herbert Lieberman, a morbidly absorbing novel about a Police Medical Examiner doing autopsies in New York City, first published 1976. In the gritty seventies, Manhattan is a dark, dangerous, and threatening place. One of the bright spots in this decaying metropolis is Paul Konig. As the city's chief medical examiner, he has developed an impressive reputation for his skills in forensic pathology skills that will be put to the ultimate test when a dangerous psychopath kidnaps Konig's daughter.

Awakened by phone calls featuring his daughter's desperate screams each night, Konig finds his life unravelling, not only personally but professionally. Between the case of a serial killer who leaves a trail of severed body parts in his wake, an investigation into the forensic work on an alleged prison suicide, and a nakedly ambitious deputy medical examiner, he is at the end of his rope, and it will take every ounce of his strength to save his own life as well as his family's.

The scenery was a relentless vista of brown sand and low rugged hills devoid of vegetation. We stopped at lunchtime and Bill, Karin and I walked across some sticky grey drying mud flats to the Pacific Ocean.

The sun was bright. We got back on the bus and hurtled on southwards, stopping at a fruit fly control checkpoint during the afternoon. Our bags were searched to ensure that we were not smuggling forbidden fruit.

Towards evening a few patches of green grass appeared and soon some cultivated plots of land. The few towns that we passed through were small and looked pleasant with many modern buildings. We were served a dry cheese sandwich and a very sweet cup of black coffee before the lights on the coach were extinguished at 19:30 hrs.

The coach was half empty so we each had a double seat to sprawl out over to doze through the night.

Chuquicamata

Monday 25th April 1988

We got up at 08:00 hrs. and paid our hotel bill with some argument as to whether there should have been a reduction for the lack of hot showers. We walked out into the main plaza and almost immediately Evelyn, the Chilean girl from Santiago, who spoke English and Dutch, secured us a lift in a jeep to Calama.

Bill, Karin and I bundled into the back of the small vehicle trying to integrate our bodies with our substantial collection of luggage. We moved about occasionally to try and restore circulation to dying limbs as we hurtled along the black tarmac ribbon through the featureless desert terrain.

Only occasional road signs gave us clues to our progress. At last we arrived in Calama where we painfully expanded to our proper sizes and massaged cramped legs back into life. We walked to the TRAMACA Bus Station, checked in our luggage and bought tickets for the next available bus to Santiago de Chile.

We then went into the town and after a brief survey of the available hotels, we booked a triple room in the “Los Andes” for 400 Chilean Pesos per person. There was no hot water, “solamente agua pura y fria” (only water pure and free).

We bought bread, cheese and drinks and went for a picnic lunch in the main plaza by the bandstand. It was amazing how European the place was, after Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. Clean shops with a wealth of varied goods, orderly traffic, people with pale complexions and a cosmopolitan air. We could have been in a town square in Germany.

The Tourist Office told us how to get to “the world’s largest open-cast copper mine at Chuquicamata, owned by the state”. Chuquicamata (referred to as Chuqui for short) is the largest open pit copper mine in terms of excavated volume in the world. It is located in the north of Chile, just outside Calama, at 2,850 metres (9,350 feet) above sea level. It is 215 km (134 mi) northeast of Antofagasta and 1,240 kilometres (770 miles) north of the capital, Santiago.

Flotation and smelting facilities were installed in 1952, and expansion of the refining facilities in 1968 made 500,000 tons annual copper production possible in the late 1970s. Previously part of Anaconda Copper, the mine is now owned and operated by Codelco, a Chilean state enterprise, since the Chilean nationalization of copper in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Its depth of 850 metres (2,790 ft) makes it the second deepest open pit mine in the world, after Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah, United States.

Copper mining has long been the most consistent of Chilean exports, and in the current day, it still accounts for almost one-third of all foreign trade. Yet that 33% is down from a peak of almost 75% in earlier years.

Copper has been mined in the land area between central Chile and southern Peru since Colonial times. Yet it was not until the 20th century that copper reached the importance of other mining exports such as saltpetre or silver. Before the first world war, saltpetre, collected in Chile from abundant deposits of caliche in the Atacama Desert, was the primary source of nitrates in the world.

After the World War I, because of the production of artificial nitrates, synthesized first in Germany by the combination of the Haber process and the Ostwald process, the world market for saltpetre, which was Chile's main export, collapsed. In turn, Chile's economy became heavily dependent on the copper industry. From that period, copper became known as "Chile's salary."

We took a yellow fixed-route taxi to the town for 150 Chilean Pesos each, and then a black cab to the mine Public Relations Office for 70 Chilean Pesos each. Here we sat on the steps opposite a statue of a miner with a shovel, a tribute to the mine workers, and a huge crane.

A group of gringos slowly accumulated until 13:30 hrs. when the door open and we were ushered in to fill in forms and to be issued with a green hard hat. We were taken into the mine works on a yellow coach while our guide delivered facts and figures in a well-practiced Spanish monologue.

We stopped several times at panoramic viewpoints over the enormous, terraced mine working and the various processing plants. Mammoth dump trucks swarmed about the site like huge ants. The lasting impression was the huge scale of the operation.

It seemed to be very well organised. We stopped by a safety poster which proclaimed that although a cat has only seven(?!) lives you only have one, so take care of it. From here we were issued with goggles to go with our hard hats and we were shown the hot dark interior of the Pyrometallurgy Operations Building.

Protectively clad men tended roaring cylindrical furnaces which occasionally spat out sparks and cinders. Huge crucibles stood cooling with slag or copper solidifying in them. We then returned to the main gate where we handed in our safety headgear.

A load of us bundled into the back of a pick-up truck which had been hired by a tall Swiss guy. We raced back to Calama, being stopped once at a police checkpoint. The cop seemed reluctant to condemn or condone a truck load of gringos and allowed us to proceed to Calama.

Back in town we bought some goodies for tomorrows long bus trip. The distance between Calama to Santiago is 1,618 kilometres (1,005 miles) and takes approximately about 22 hours. We then returned for a shower, more of a trickle, bien fria at the Hotel Los Andes. Karin failed to get a shower, cold or otherwise and returned to our room with a stream of Swedish obscenities issuing from her lips.

We relaxed for a while in our room, which overlooked the main street with a ramshackle wooden balcony. At 19:30 hrs. we met a group of other travellers who had been on the copper mine tour with us. We went for dinner in the Restaurante El Rincon Hipico which we had virtually to ourselves.

A huge German with a strong Irish accent kept us amused with his anecdotes as we indulged in the Chilean red wine once again. Bill had lost his bus ticket during the day so after the meal I went with him to the Bus Station to see if anything could be done.

Sadly it was closed so we walked back through the now deserted streets to the hotel.