Rain? In the Atacama? Again?

Early one morning a decade or so ago, I stepped outside my hotel in the northern Chilean port of Antofagasta (pictured above) to notice an unexpected scent – during the night, it had rained in the world’s driest desert. It was barely a sprinkle, with traces of moisture on the pavement, but it reinforced for me the rarity of rain in the Atacama Desert (note the utterly barren hills behind downtown).

There was a far more serious reminder of that last week, as unprecedented storms hit the mid-Atacama region in and around the city of Copiapó, where a normally dry river course overflowed its banks and forced thousands to evacuate. In the coastal city of Chañaral, things were even worse and, in total, there have been 25 deaths and another 125 persons unaccounted for.

It’s been too long since I last visited the Atacama but, three years ago, I did have my own encounter with the lower Río Copiapó and vicinity. That wasn’t nearly so severe as the recent floods, but it did remind me that lack of water is not the desert’s only danger – there's little or nothing to stop or even slow the rare rush down the hillsides and through intermittent streams, which overflow their banks and undercut hillsides to create landslides. Flash floods can wash away houses, let alone vehicles and people, in towns like Taltal (pictured below), which also suffered in the recent floods.

I hope to get back to the Atacama later this year but, in the meantime, I learned that the most heavily-touristed area was relatively unaffected. A Dutch friend who owns a travel agency in San Pedro de Atacama tells me that “The first rains fell in our part of the Atacama, roads disappeared as usual, we were all complaining because of lost business and some leaking roofs. But then images started to come through from [farther south], and [it] all became relative again. I guess in the end we were lucky here: the storm could have hit anywhere between Calama and Copiapó...”

For my part, after spending most of the last two months-plus in Patagonia, I boarded a Sunday-night flight from Santiago bound for Lima, Los Angeles and San Francisco. I arrived early enough at Aeropuerto Internacional Arturo Merino Benítez to enjoy a farewell pisco sour, a panino, and a glass of old-vine Carignan at Vinum (pictured above), a welcome new wine bar in the departure area.

By the time the flight left, though, it was dark and there was no possibility of viewing the flood area from the air. I also left behind the forest fires and plumes of volcanic ash I had seen in Argentina and Chile, but at least this time there were no earthquakes in this seismically lively area.

Fortunately, I did not have to change planes in Lima and my connection from LAX to SFO was quick enough that I got home in time to watch opening day of the baseball season. That night, though, we had an unexpected rainstorm in the drought-stricken Bay Area – no floods, fortunately, but at least it left our garden refreshed.

Here Comes the Sun: UV in the Atacama

Throughout the Southern Hemisphere, exposure to ultraviolet radiation, due partially to the ozone hole over the southern oceans, is a major concern. Australia, for instance, has one of the world’s highest skin cancer rates, and an Australian friend in Santiago recently told me that schoolchildren in his country cannot go out to play without a legionnaire-style baseball cap that covers the neck and ears as well as the face.

It’s an issue that concerns me, of course, ever since I had surgery to remove a melanoma about 18 months ago. The ozone hole over Argentine and Chilean Patagonia has long been notorious for its high UV index, but Chile’s Atacama desert is also a dangerous place for those of us with fair skin. At present, I’m in the city of Antofagasta, just south of the Tropic of Capricorn, and, as I head north, the sun’s rays are far more direct and, at high altitudes, the risk is even greater.

In that context, I recall an incident nearly 30 years ago, when I was doing M.A. thesis research in the village of Parinacota (pictured above), at an altitude of 4,392 meters (14,409 feet), in Parque Nacional Lauca. At roughly 18° 10’ South latitude, the sun was powerful and, though I didn’t always wear a cap, I was not reckless about exposure to the sun. Two Australian visitors were far less cautious than I was.

At that time, during the Pinochet dictatorship, foreign tourists were few, but the Aussies arrived one afternoon on the bus from the seaside city of Arica. The only place to stay was Conaf’s refugio, a sprawling structure originally built for a high Andean genetics research project by the University of Texas, if I recall correctly. It had two large dorms with reasonably comfortable bunks and, most of the time, I had one of those dorms to myself. The park rangers slept in the other one and, on this night, I shared mine with the two visitors.

At that altitude, it froze almost every night, even in summer (when it sometimes even snowed, as depicted above), but the next morning was gloriously warm and sunny. The two Aussies took that as an invitation to sunbathe and, before long, they seriously regretted it. That afternoon, they were literally scorched red as lobsters and, on top of that, they suffered a severe attack of soroche (altitude sickness). There were no buses that day but, fortunately, they managed to get a lift back down to sea level. Whether they learned a lesson from their experience, I have no idea.

All that came to mind yesterday when, in the old nitrate port of Taltal about three hours south of Antofagasta, I saw the most detailed public warning about solar exposure that I’ve ever seen, in Chile or elsewhere. In fact, it’s a chart that suggests, according to skin type and the prevailing UV index, what constitutes a “safe” exposure to the sun, and what level of protection is necessary.

Whether the chart in question has any scientific accuracy, I have no idea. But if it raises awareness of solar exposure among the population of Taltal – which also gets plenty of reflected rays off the Pacific Ocean – it should be for the better.