Desert Flooding

Chanaral, Chile

We are in Northern Chile in the Atacama desert, the place with the least rainfall on earth.   Ten days ago, an intense storm that would, in average temperatures, have dropped snow in the Andes, poured enough rain on the desert and mountains to cause 17 different river beds, which are usually dry, to fill up, spill their banks and flood the sparsely located desert communities here.  Officially, as of yesterday, 17 people are dead and 20 missing, though the government is accused of falsifying numbers to minimize the "Catastrofe en el norte."  Official figures also include 10,996 injured (damnificados), 4562 in shelters and an entire city 10 days without water.  In the town of Alto del Carmen, 200 people were rescued by a single private helicopter pilot who said people on the ground were waving clothes and lighting fires to get his attention.

Heading North

Chanaral

Chanaral

Chanaral

In this thin country, hemmed in by the Pacific to the west and the Andes to the east, there is often only one road that runs north-south.  In the north, it is Route 5, the PanAmerican highway.  Route 5 intersects with Route 7 in the southern city of Puerto Montt.  (Indications of "north" or "south" are in relation to the capital of Santiago here.)  Route 7, the Carretera Austral, continues south almost to Mount Fitzroy, though ferry rides are required to connect the dots.  To reach the south of Chile, including the magnificent Torres del Paine National Park and Tierra del Fuego, across the straights of Magellan, wheeled vehicles must drive through Argentina.  So the PanAmerican, (and almost all other highways in Chile) is shared by trucks of all shapes and sizes, cars, motorcycles, horses with riders or with carts, bicycles, people on foot, runners, and vendors of fruits, sweets, and headphones.

Ruta 5, Chanaral

We left Santiago a few days ago, not knowing how far north we would be able to drive, or if we'd be able to cross any of the northern passes into Argentina to visit our friend Roland as we head to Peru and, hopefully, Machu Picchu.  Roland (Argentina Solar Trike on Facebook) is pedaling the solar powered recumbent bike he designed around Argentina.  We met him in the south, now he is in the north (and just crossed a 4000 meter pass to get to the salt flats in Bolivia).

Puddle in the desert

Being a tourist (or traveller, whatever) in a disaster area is uncomfortable and humbling.  We read the papers every day and talk to the carabineros in gas stations about the roads.  Route 5 is now reported to be completely open, though there is a "4x4" section that we expect to hit tomorrow that bypasses the worst of the damaged route 5 around Chanaral.  On the PanAm, there are pick-ups driving north that are brimming over with supplies: blankets, wheelbarrows, containers of water, construction materials.  Many have Chilean flags on them that are spray painted "norte fuerte" or "atacama fuerza."  If we are parked on the roadside, they honk as they drive by. Driving south there are uniformly adobe colored mud-splattered vehicles brimming with people, mattresses, furniture and dirty bundles of all sizes.  The desert flows by on all sides.  Mottled hills with the now snow covered Andes in the distance.  Sometimes spotted with cacti, sometimes a rocky moonscape devoid of vegetation.  For kilometer after kilometer, it looks exactly the same as it did a month ago, then we cross a section marked off with rubber cones where men with brooms are sweeping silt off the road and the cracked, drying mud along the road still has vividly colored puddles.

Group headed to Diego de Almagro

This disaster has brought out a solidarity in the people of Chile.  The newspaper reports stories about heroes like Gianni Di Giammarino, a helicopter pilot who has singlehandedly rescued over 200 people in Alto del Carmen with his little helicopter.  In Chanaral, in his home next to the Zamora grocery store where Janique and I shopped for dinner exactly a month before the flooding, rescue workers were too late when they found the store manager, Oscar Guyana, buried in 3 meters of mud.  In a truck-stop restaurant, we watch together with the truckers and families at the other tables the newsreel images that replay over and over of cars and houses sweeping down, being swept into the river of mud.  Talk radio is full of shelter information, how to find or help pets, places that need water, a girl who needs a ride to the hospital for a regular appointment but her parents have no way to get her there, their car having been swept away.

Passing in the dust

Petrobras camping

Highway rockslide

Every gas station on the PanAm is also a truck stop. Last night we slept at a Petrobras gas station in Vallenar.  Today, we are parked in Caldera at another Petrobras, near the tourist resort of Bahia Inglesa where we had lunch with Janique a month ago.  This trip north, we just can't bring ourselves to seek out a tourist campground with this disaster all round us.  One kilometer up the road, at the Copec truck stop (no internet there either), the C-351 heads into the mountains.  It is now called the "Camino los 33" after the 33 miners that were trapped in the San José mine a few kilometers up the road in 2010.  On the way south, I read a fairly short piece called "Finding the Devil:  Darkness, Light and the Untold Story of the Chilean Mining Disaster"  by William Langewieshe, who was a reporter on site during many of the 69 days that the miners were trapped.  Now I am reading "The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that Set them Free" by Hector Tobar.  Both are well-told, and, with 4 months in Chile between them, I am glad to read both.  In fact, I had saved the Tobar for this trip north.  Since Tobar had exclusive access to the miners, his story comes across as untold too.  It makes a different connection to the landscape to read about things that happen as we drive through. To imagine these 33 men now living in Copiapo, Chanaral, Antofagasta as we drive through.

***

We are now in Arica, it is Easter day.  We will spend a few days here - changing air filters, running on the beach, rotating tires, finally watching Drew's winning SuperG run, getting rabies shots, updating the blog, and catching up on the outside world.  Our plan is to meet our friend Fiona in Cuzco around April 15, then visit Machu Picchu with her.  In the meantime, we hope to visit the Parque Nacional Lauca in northern Chile, then Lake Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia.

End of the Pisco in La Serena

Brazilian bikers at Mano del Desierto