BJJ News | I ssue 2 | M arch 2014
C. Galasko
Notes from the road
Travels of our Journal Charles Galasko, an inveterate traveller, made an unexpected discovery on a visit to Chile
uring a recent cruise from Costa Rica to Santiago, our ship stopped off at Iquique, a port city of about 250,000 inhabitants and capital of the Tarapaca region in northern Chile. I q u i q u e w a s v i s i t e d by C h a r l e s Darwin in July 1835 who described it as a town “Very much in want of everyday necessities, such as water and firewood”, these necessities having to be brought in from considerable distances. It suffered devastating earthquakes in 1868, 1877 and in 2005 an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale. Today it is a modern city, to the west of the Atacama Desert with sand dunes overlying the city, which make it a centre for paragliding. Its beach climate attracts North American and Australian immigrants, who currently comprise 9.2% of the population. It is one of the largest duty-free ports in South America. Its average rainfall is only a couple of millimetres per annum. From Iquique, we travelled 48 km east across one of the driest parts on earth to Humberstone, a ghost town and UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Atacama Desert (Figs 1 and 2). The town was built to serve the saltpetre works of Santa Palma which became one of largest in the Tarapaca region. Here lie the greatest deposits of sodium nitrate (aka Chile saltpetre or Peru saltpetre to distinguish it from ordinary saltpetre, or potassium nitrate) in the world. The region and works were originally in Peru, but became part of Chile after the War of the Pacific between Chile and a united Bolivia, during which the decisive Battle of Iquique was fought in the harbour in 1879. The war arose from disputes over the mineral-rich Peruvian provinces of Tarapaca, Tacna and Arica and the Bolivian province of Antofagasta. It lasted five years, ending in 1881 with Peru ceding
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Fig. 1
Fig. 2