This Year's Eclipse (and Next Year's?)

Chilean eclipse-chasers filled the beach at Caleta Los Hornos (photo by Marializ Maldonado)

I couldn’t attend last week’s solar eclipse in Chile but, indirectly at least, I had a sort of presence. When my longtime friend Marializ Maldonado, at whose house I often stay when in Santiago, asked to borrow my car to drive north to the Coquimbo region, I immediately said yes, and she was able to view the event at the beachside locale of Caleta Los Hornos, north of the city of La Serena.

In the minutes before totality, at Caleta Los Hornos (photo by Marializ Maldonado)

Partly, this was a favor to a friend, but it was also a favor to me, as it’s best not to leave a car unused for months, as I do by necessity in the outskirts of Santiago. Marializ also often does me the favor of paying my highway tolls as, for some incomprehensible reason, Chile’s online payment system does not want to accept my US credit cards (though I use them regularly when I visit Chile).

The Coquimbo region is home to major international observatories such as Cerro Tololo (CTIO), part of the US National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

Marializ arrived just five minutes before totality, which she described as “two intense and beautiful minutes” on the Pacific shoreline. The most vivid account I’ve read, though, came from the New York Times, whose “52 Places” columnist Sebastian Modak saw the event from the European Southern Observatory at La Silla—also pointing out that this was only the third eclipse to pass over a major international observatory in the last 50 years.

The eclipse turned out to be an economic bonanza for the region. According to the local daily El Observatodo, the event attracted more than 300,000 people over five days, and those visitors spent more than US$82 million. Many if not most arrived by private car, presumably from Santiago as Marializ did, but there were also numerous foreign eclipse-chasers. Plenty of people also witnessed it from the Argentine side of the border, though cloud cover obscured things in Buenos Aires.

Path of next year's eclipse

There's no guarantee of clear weather as next year's eclipse passes over Volcán Villarrica.

For Chileans and others who missed this year’s eclipse, there’ll be another chance soon enough. On December 14th of 2020, the moon will once again block the sun in the southern lakes resort district around Lago Villarrica and the town of Pucón, but that area’s marine West Coast climate—resembling Seattle’s—mean that clear skies are no sure thing. A few years ago, some friends and I planned to do a small plane flyover of Volcán Villarrica’s steaming crater but, after several days of fine clear weather, the clouds moved in the next morning and made the flight impossible. Across the Andes, where Argentina’s Patagonian steppe usually has clear skies, could be a better option.

Next year, the rain-shadow steppes of Argentina's Neuquén province might be a better place to observe totality.

Outside the Mine

Until today, I have refrained from writing anything about the miners rescued yesterday from Mina San José, on the outskirts of the northern Chilean city of Copiapó. That’s partly because the 24/7 international coverage of their plight and rescue has been so overwhelming but, on the other hand, much of that coverage hasn’t told us much about the region.

Coastal fog in the otherwise arid "Norte Chico" can support clusters of dense vegetation.

In reality, the “Norte Chico” (Lesser North), as the southern sector of the Atacama Desert is known, may be the least appreciated part of the entire country - in fact, it probably gets fewer foreign visitors than any other region. Actually, it probably gets fewer than the popular “Norte Grande” (Greater North) village of San Pedro de Atacama alone. That’s because the traditional description of “the Land of 10,000 Mines” - probably a quantitative understatement - isn’t exactly a slogan that pulls in tourists.

Nevertheless, it’s had its share of celebrity visitors, including Charles Darwin who, in the 1830s, remarked that “its produce is sufficient for only three months of the year,’ and that transportation problems raised the price of food to astonishing levels. To some degree, that’s still true, and one reason - along with risk of injury or death - why wages are often higher here than elsewhere in Chile.

The barren coastline at Parque Nacional Pan de Azúcar

Copiapó is the capital of the Third Region of Atacama, which comprises the northern half of the Norte Chico (the Fourth Region of Coquimbo, capital La Serena, gets many more visitors for its broad sandy beaches and greater proximity to Santiago). Its most appealing sight, in my opinion, is Parque Nacional Pan de Azúcar (pictured above), a seaside reserve near the mining port of Chañaral, which has abundant sandy beaches at the base of barren headlands, backed by impressive coastal mountains, but also surprisingly lush vegetations in areas where coastal fog condenses on their western slopes. It also features abundant bird life, including Humboldt penguins and brown pelicans.

Brown pelicans at Caleta Pan de Azúcar

Still, it’s the mines that have put the region on the global map, and it’s worth noting that Chile’s mines are divided between a large-scale sector with ample capital, partly but not exclusively state-run through the Codelco corporation, and a smaller sector that often cuts corners - as was the case with Mina San José. Still, it’s also a sector that pays higher wages to compensate for the dangers that working there involves. In an excellent GQ magazine article, Sean Flynn details those dangers, as well as the media frenzy that has surrounded the miners’ drama.

While there may be some quarrels with the media management of the miners’ story by the Chilean government - limiting direct access to the state-run TV Nacional and official photographers, for instance - at the end of the day, with the whole world watching, the Chileans did everything right. That’s whether or not, when the clamor dies down, the ephemeral “Campo Esperanza” (Camp Hope), which housed the miners’ families and friends just outside the mine, becomes a tourist attraction in its own right. According to the online Santiago Times, it's under consideration as a national monument.

Moon Handbooks Argentina on the Road, Again
This is a busy for digital slide presentations on the new edition of Moon Handbooks Argentina, with four events in five days. The fun starts Saturday afternoon October 16 at 5 p.m. at Travel Bug Books in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and continues Monday evening October 18 at 7 p.m. at Village Books in Bellingham, Washington. We then cross the border to Travel Bug Books (no relation) in Vancouver BC, Tuesday evening October 19 at 7 p.m., and return to Seattle, Washington for an event at Wide World Books, Wednesday October 20 at 7 p.m.

Diverting Dakar: San Pedro de Atacama Says No to Fossil Fuel "Sports"

Earlier this year, for the first time, the famous Paris Dakar Rally took place in Argentina and Chile, the first time it had been held outside Africa. The rationale for shifting the race was fear of terrorism along parts of the African route, while Argentina and Chile are countries with no recent terrorism problems.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t problems with Dakar, including at least three deaths: one French motorcyclist died in a remote part of the Argentine province of La Pampa, and an Argentine support vehicle killed two Peruvian motorists in a head-on collision on Ruta 43, just north of the Chilean city of Ovalle. That’s not to mention, of course, the environmental damage caused by Hummers and other massive machines kicking up dust and tearing up the fragile Atacama Desert.

The 2010 Dakar will once again race through Argentina and Chile, but it will not come anywhere close to San Pedro de Atacama, where the organizers had hoped to arrange a rest day. Chilean government officials, under pressure from archaeologists and conservationists, had expressed doubts about any such use (or abuse) of Chile’s archaeological capital and its spectacular surrounding countryside (pictured here). The organizers finally decided to seek alternatives.

Those alternatives include Antofagasta, Calama, Copiapó and Iquique. Except for Iquique, which has its own historical heritage in and around the town, all of these are industrial and mining towns where the environmental impact should be minimal. Calama, though, is a little too close to San Pedro for comfort.

No Sour Grapes Here

Chileans and Peruvians argue over whether the strong brandy known as pisco, usually distilled from Muscatel grapes, is of Chilean or Peruvian origins. In my opinion, it's a sterile argument: both produce very fine but slightly different versions of the beverage, and their signature pisco sour cocktails are also slightly different (Chile's best are tart, thanks to limes from the Atacama desert oasis of Pica; the Peruvian version has a stronger dash of Angostura bitters). Commonly served in a champagne glass, the frothy pisco sour is addictively tasty, and visitors to Chile and Peru often carry home bottles of pisco in lieu of wine (the bottle to the right is Chilean pisco, from the Elqui valley about 500 km north of Santiago).

Peru, of course, has a port named Pisco and the word is probably of Quechua origins. Chile, meanwhile, has marketed its pisco more aggressively and effectively ever since 1936, when the town of La Unión renamed itself Pisco Elqui, after the irrigated desert valley in which its vines are cultivated, in the present-day administrative region of Coquimbo. In Chile, Coquimbo (capital La Serena, the coastal gateway to the Elqui valley) and Atacama (immediately north, capital Copiapó) are the only two regions allowed to claim the name pisco for their brandy.

Chile will take its marketing to the next level tomorrow, as Pisco Elqui will host the first Día Nacional del Pisco (National Pisco Day). It's as good an excuse as any to indulge yourself in one of the great pleasures of any visit to Chile - the standard welcome drink at every hotel in the country.