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I'm ILL!
My stomach has literally been doing somersaults, thanks (I think?) to some bus chicken yesterday. Never eat food that hasn't been prepared before your eyes.
Despite that, today's still been great.
I gave myself a bit of a lie-in before heading into the centre of town. Iquique is a bizarre place. It's basically a dead beach resort, but unlike Arica has a fair chunk of history meaning as well as empty condos, there's also colonial architecture.
Iquique has one street with rather pretty looking buildings, and a fairly decent beach lined with surfers and joggers but that's about it. The city isn't that great to be honest. It feels a bit sketchy, lots of druggies in the street (a lot more than in La Paz) and the restauranteurs etc. feel a bit desperate to cling onto any available tourist revenue.
Luckily, I spent very little of my day here.
I decided to go to the Ghost towns of Humberstone and Santa Laura.
Back in the late 1800s/early 1900s this area of Chile (Peru and Bolivia until the War of the Pacific when Chile invaded in the 1880s) was rich with Nitrate, the key ingredient in fertilizer. This was largely because of the Atacama's rich supply of bird poo.
Humberstone and Santa Laura were two large saltpeter processing plants that had their own villages - accommodation for the workers. The workforce would migrate from across Chile to work relentless twelve hour shifts in the factories harvesting Nitrate.
Things really got going once the Chileans seized control of the Nitrate-rich lands as the Chileans were much more open to foreign investment than the Peruvians or Bolivians (a fact that is still largely true). The villages not only housed workers in appallingly basic conditions, but also had accommodation for the mine owners, often German or English. There was even a theatre, a church and a school. The community, isolated in the desert, was isolated from the rest of the world.
The Great Depression, and the invention of the Haber Process, which helped produce fertilizers more efficiently, helped destroy the Chilean fertilizer industry leaving the towns desolate by the 1960s. Work has, however, been done since to restore the towns to what they were in the Nitrate hayday, as a historical monument to Chile's past.
A tour is unnecessary as there are information boards in English around the site, and although the site is quite touristy for what it is, it was easy to get away from the tourists and lose yourself in the terraces of worker's houses or amongst ancient industrial equipment in the dilapidated factories.
The only health and safety present was a sign saying 'please don't take unnecessary risks'. You could have walked away with a spanner if you wanted to. I liked that though, presuming people would be intelligent enough not to put themselves in danger as oppose to wrapping them up in cotton wool.
I really enjoyed just exploring the ghost towns. There was just something special about being in an old factory, made of corrugated iron, wrattling in the buffetting winds. It felt eerie, spooky, well, apart from the selfie-taking Chilean tourists. But they were only really in the centre, it was easy to lose the (modest) crowds and appreciate just how utterly remote this place is, and especially was, despite being once critical to feeding the entire world.
Then, something amazing happened. It rained. I've come to the driest desert in the world. And it's rained. This really is Fuerteventura in February!
It may not be 400 years since it last rained in the Atacama afterall. Morelike - there's parts of the Atacama where it hasn't rained in 400 years.
Still, it didn't rain too heavily, only really a light drizzle, but for this place that's basically a flood. Getting back from the ghost towns took an age, having to wait in a little bus stop by the highway for a colectivo (minibus) with spare seats to pass. Maybe had to wait an hour. Well, it felt like it with, you know...(ill)...
I've basically been sat in bed resting because although it's not really been that bad in terms of (I think you get what I'm implying) it's still been rather energy draining. I do think it's time to risk some food as my stomach has finished gymnastics lessons and I think it good to brave them restarting as otherwise I will be very, very hungry.
Anyway...
Vamos!
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