Between Extremes Page 12

  ‘Have you visited all these countries?’ Brian asks.

  ‘No, not yet. I want to set up my own tour company, run trips all over South America. Then, when I’ve made my fortune I’ll go everywhere!’

  As we drive on Enzo talks about the Atacameño Indians and how their language, Cunza, has all but disappeared.

  ‘There are very few pure Indians left here and those who are pure, or nearly, see everyone else as outsiders. They don’t trust the other locals so they can’t build any political strength to fight for their culture and homes. It’s the same all over, no-one gets together to make things happen.’

  ‘Do you think people are sort of scared of making a noise – a hangover from Pinochet?’

  ‘No, it’s not that, there’s no fear, just too many selfish groups. This area is turning to desert more and more as the mines take the water from the Andes. One day it will all be dead.’

  He points to a plantation of trees.

  ‘Those are tamarugo, native trees, very tough. There was a project to replant a whole forest. This is all there is. First Allende stopped investment and then Pinochet abandoned it too.’

  ‘But with the area’s mining doing so much for the national economy, can’t you demand more investment and support?’ asks Brian.

  ‘The north takes up a third of the country, but has only about eight per cent of the population. No-one in Santiago listens. The northerners tend to be more reserved than the outgoing southerners. Anyway it’s still the same problem. The Indians don’t trust anyone. The descendants of the Spanish don’t like the descendants of the other immigrants and the Catholics hate the Protestants and vice versa.’

  ‘But I thought people were proud of their country,’ I say. ‘I mean, ultimately you’re all Chilean.’

  ‘Oh sure, we tell you gringos that,’ Enzo replies, laughing.

  The minibus stops at the little town of Toconao and Enzo gets the key to the old Roman Catholic church. As we walk around inside Brian asks, ‘We’ve seen a lot of churches for other denominations – Baptists, Mormons. I thought Chile was very Catholic?’

  ‘Many are, but the people of Indian descent still resent the old church as being part of the conquistadors’ work. Also it’s a way for them to get education. The Baptists, the Mormons, the Adventists all provide free schools, clothes and sometimes medical facilities.’

  We enter the Salar de Atacama at the very heart of the world’s driest zone and it is raining. With windscreen wipers going the driver slows down to avoid the huge puddles. No-one seems that put out. Yet rain is meant to be so rare here. Or is it one of those things that, while uncommon, is not unheard of? I visited the West Indies once and it poured with rain. Everyone kept saying, ‘What bad luck – it’s never like this,’ before I realized that it often was, particularly at that time of year, and that they wanted me to feel unlucky rather than cheated.

  Unlike my Caribbean experience, the rain and water now vanish in seconds. Soon we leave the van to walk to the middle of the flats, where there is a nature reserve. An almost totally evaporated saline lake, the Salar is a vast white plain, one of the world’s largest salt flats and surrounded by three mountain ranges: the Andes, the Cordillera de Sal and the Cordillera de Domeyko. A surreal terrain of salt-encrusted earth and solid salt rock extends dead level as far as the eye can see before the world leaps up to the mountains and to the perfect volcanic cones.

  Away across the flat we catch the occasional flash of pink as a flamingo wheels up and returns to the ground. It seems odd that such a delicate-looking creature should nest and thrive in such an alien landscape. However, there are shallow saline pools which provide tiny fish and crustacea that the flamingos and other, smaller birds feed on. Squatting down beside one of these pools I see the minute creatures wriggling. Their appearance is not appetizing and the stench from the water is foul. This landscape is somehow imaginary, too freakish and barren to warrant so much space. Save for the few creatures the only things that grow here are salt crystals which rear up grotesquely a foot or more in places.

  Near me Enzo is arguing with a woman about Chile’s economy. They are speaking in English though I learned earlier that she comes originally from the town of Antofagasta. Anyway she reckons that Chile is doing fine and does not want to hear Enzo’s more gloomy view that while the economy sounds good according to the reports of the IMF and the World Bank, the national debt is still vast.

  ‘A third of the people are living in poverty. Health care and schools are going downhill,’ he argues.

  ‘No, no. You are wrong . . .’

  They are both getting heated and switch to Spanish. I turn back to the view.

  Great clouds are louring over the Andes — a strange and brooding sight against the white glare of the flats at our feet. We are waiting for the sunset, though apart from trying to get some shots of flying flamingos (which I know will be hopeless), there does not seem to be much point: we have seen all there is to see. This is not a place for relaxed contemplation, yet Brian has been sitting on his own for a while a little way off. I go over to him.

  ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘I’m fuming!’

  The vehemence of Brian’s reactions still takes me unawares sometimes and I can find myself rather scared of his emotion. This is not merely a phenomenon of my friendship with Bri but is, or has been, the way I often respond to strong reactions in others. It is a hindrance sometimes that in the face of another’s anger, instead of my own hackles rising, I become eager to placate. Perhaps this is due to being English, keeping one’s emotions in constant check, but I think it also arises from a fear of things getting out of control. Nowadays I am less anxious, largely because of witnessing Bri’s explosions over the years and realizing that they do not bring the world to an end. So after a moment of being startled I listen with keen interest as well as some amusement as he fumes on: ‘I’m raging about those guys, T. E. Lawrence and Saint-Exupéry and what-do-you-call-him Thesiger. All that stuff about religious experiences in the desert. My arse!’

  I cannot help laughing at his furious face and he scowls at me.

  ‘No, I’m not disagreeing with you,’ I say, becoming more sober. ‘At first I thought, wow! But now I’m just bored and I keep thinking of the long drive back in that packed bus.’

  He gives this a cursory nod but his sense of loathing is still running hot.

  ‘This place is an affront. It is useless. What is anyone doing coming to look at a place that is so dead?’

  The desert had not thus far impressed me. It had got under my skin and I was feeling discontented as if I had somehow missed something. With this in mind I had little expectation of the Salar. Well, what could one expect of a saline lake that has almost completely evaporated? Our arrival there confirmed me in my disappointment.

  The place was grim beyond belief. As I walked around it trying to get a sense of its caustic emptiness, words fell from me in despair. This environment was ugly and hostile, a lamentable land mass that would give no respite to my loathing of it. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why we, or anyone else, would wish to see it. This was a vista of total corruption.

  The salt earth under my foot was poisonous and I complained bitterly to John for bringing us here. I can’t remember everything I said. It was probably unrepeatable, but the overwhelming scenes of stagnation and lifelessness were too much for me. ‘Nothing could live here, if anything ever wanted to,’ I said. ‘There’s not even a rock or a hump or a hill you could shit or piss behind!’ This was my final rejection of it and to emphasize my feelings I jumped up and down, trying to break into its impenetrable and horrid surface. Nothing gave, it was dead and utterly petrified. I noticed John looking askance at me. His expression said everything. The desert had finally got to me.

  We were soon on our way back to San Pedro. I sat silently hating the place as we bumped over it. The sea of rock-salt stone that stretched for miles before us looked like nothing more than scabrous droppings from the
testicles of Satan. The place was drawing language out of me like pus. I closed my eyes and wished myself to be instantaneously away from it.

  Somewhere on our journey we passed a strange sight. Before us lay what seemed like acre upon acre of piled bags of cement. Here and there dotted among these were stacks of concrete block. Our guide explained that an American company had come to set up a factory to process the vast quantities of lithium and borax which could be drawn out of the Salar. They had abandoned the project before they even began building, had simply upped camp and left everything lying there. I didn’t need to ask why. I understood it in my bones.

  Beside me John and our guide were unaware of my seething, silent response. I listened half-heartedly to their conversation. The guide was explaining how the landscape keeps moving and changing. But I couldn’t or wouldn’t believe it. This place was eternal and execrable. I closed my ears, I didn’t want to know that there was more of it.

  A few miles further on he pointed out a small flock of flamingos ‘feeding’ off the Salar. I was incredulous. How could anything live, never mind feed here?

  ‘What are they feeding on?’ I demanded, almost barking at him.

  Seemingly oblivious to my tone, he explained that only flamingos exist here because they have a miraculous filter in their beak which enables them to clean and swallow the micro-organisms from the tiny salt pools. They then regurgitate the blood-soaked food and feed it to their young. This confirmation that there was some kind of life here, no matter how minuscule, should have soothed me. I thought about it for many miles. The image of the blood-soaked food seemed appropriate to the Salar for it was leaching all sense of life out of me, leaving me to stumble around with nothing but the language of revulsion as my response.

  After another hour or so, as we were approaching San Pedro I watched the evening light come up. It was as if it had been brushed with those pink flamingos’ feathers. The sky was filled with a soft fusion of blues and pinks and greys, but it looked to me like a massive bruise.

  As the sun goes down behind the hills a deep, blood red, I imagine some bloated beast returning to its lair after gorging on the flats all day, leaving the flamingos as sentinels at its bitter table.

  Everyone is tired on the drive back and it is a relief when it gets dark enough that you can look around and not worry about catching someone’s eye.

  Back in San Pedro we pad about on a small shopping expedition, buying some water and picnic makings for tomorrow. The shops have little to offer, just a few necessities and fruit, reminding me of the general store on the Isle of Eigg with its frontier feel. We have been here only a little over a day yet the place is very familiar.

  Having showered and changed for our supper, we strolled lazily through the narrow streets peering into the tiny bars. Most of them were as yet empty and I had had enough of empty spaces. To kill time John suggested visiting the museum. It was as if we were in some capital city instead of a village in a huge expanse of desert. We walked past the church and main square to the far end of the village. The museum had been built by a Belgian Jesuit and was reputedly one of the finest in South America. I must admit walking around it was surprising. Here the archaeologist, the anthropologist and the historian would all find something fascinating to study. But for me it was the mummies.

  There were several of them, each so perfectly preserved by the dry air that they looked like sleeping people rather than corpses thousands of years old. With their flesh, fingernails, glazed eyes, and hair neatly plaited and tied with colourful ribbons, they had a real presence. As I studied them I began to feel uncomfortable, as if I was a voyeur. Among the jewellery and the hand-woven textiles there was a selection of instruments used for the preparation of psychedelic plants and mushrooms. This caused me to ask questions. I could easily understand why anyone living in the sterile landscape I had suffered earlier would take mind-expanding drugs. I could understand how the wondrous deities of the Inca civilizations had evolved and sustained themselves in such an environment. But the mushroom was a fungal organism dependent on moisture, of which there was so little here. Was it the run-off from the distant vista of snow-capped volcanoes that sustained them? I suppose I was too weary of the desert to probe its quirky secrets.

  Before leaving I took a photo of the mummified remains of a young woman and immediately wished I hadn’t.

  Outside the village was beginning to come to life. Many of the travellers had returned from their expeditions and were milling about. Everywhere was humming with a mixture of accents and languages. Although it was evening it was still light and the light had the clarity of early morning. I was hungry and anxious to get away from the dead into the living village.

  ‘Come on, John, I could eat the leg of the lamb of God!’ I called out as he emerged from the museum.

  We had been advised, because we would be at high altitude the next morning, not to drink much and to eat only a light meal. Having put up with the endlessly dreary salt flats, I wanted to spoil myself and thought a feast of roast chicken, some beans and fresh bread washed down with a jug or two of red wine was the least I deserved, but John insisted on an early night as we needed to leave at 4 a.m. What’s the rush? I thought. The desert had been here for thousands of years and wasn’t going to disappear overnight.

  As we walked back to our hotel along the thronged main street, our ears were suddenly deafened by the blast of several car horns. Behind us a wedding procession of cars was inching its way through the crowd. An ancient, dilapidated Renault 4 with its roof hack-sawed off carried the bride and groom. The newly married couple were wearing the traditional black suit and white gown. The bride’s dress was heavy with lace and brocade and her face covered in a flimsy veil. Her outfit must have been an heirloom from her grandmother or her great-grandmother.

  The groom’s suit was 1950s vintage, and here and there patches of dust mixed with the patches of confetti. Like a drunken dragon following them came a stream of Dodge and Chevrolet half-trucks, some of which were probably of the same era as the groom’s suit. Each of these vehicles was crammed with families all dressed in their Sunday best. As the procession passed, the shopkeepers and householders came out into the street and began laughing, clapping and whistling. Then everyone, stranger and neighbour alike, danced and ran after the cars. Obviously there was no such thing as ‘invited guests only’. The whole village was a guest and everyone was welcome. John and I looked at each other momentarily then, without a word, turned and walked into the nearest cantina where we ceremoniously toasted the bride and groom and then we toasted them again. The whole event was in such contrast to the day that had preceded it that we forgot about the early-to-bed ruling.

  It was 1 a.m. when I finally turned out my bedside light. In three hours we would be back on the road, bumping through the blackness into the mountains. I was not looking forward to it. Sleep was impossible. All night the wedding festivities and the band seemed to grow louder. I cursed them but was happy for this confirmation of life. The desert was, after all, fecund and fertile. There would be love-making in the night. I was glad of it and excused the revellers their noisy pleasure.

  At El Tatio geysers, the sun is still not up and it is freezing except where the ground steams. This is a strange and eerie place full of gurgling sounds and the smell of rotten eggs. The drive up took more than four hours. The van was packed and I was grateful once more for my earplugs that gave me some distance from the other bodies trying to sleep around me and deadened the grinding sounds as the vehicle rattled over ruts in the track. There was quite a sense of pilgrimage though as ahead up the mountain one could see the lights of other vehicles and at times, looking back down the hairpins, yet more glimmerings. I was anxious about the altitude and started puffing slightly but in the end it was just the cramped seating that got to me.

  The muscular pain was, however, massaged by the way the sky changed during the 90-kilometre drive. At the moment of first light the mountainsides were lit up pure white, like a negat
ive appearing in the darkroom. Then a star pattern emerged just above the line of the ridge. Later the outline sharpened and the mountaintops were silhouetted against the blueing sky. At dawn, I realized I was remembering Edward Fitzgerald’s lines from The Rubáaiyát of Omar Khayyám which my mother had loved to quote and I could hear her voice now:

  Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night

  Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:

  And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught

  The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light.

  There is an entry in my notebook which reads ‘Geysers – Fear and Loathing in North Chile’. I don’t remember when I physically wrote those notes but I remember that my encounter with those geysers was at odds with everything I had read about them. One guidebook declares, ‘The colours on the ground and the metal blue of the sky at the dawn, framed by the rising steam columns, make a simply breathtaking sight.’ Another claims, ‘The visible impact of the steaming Fumaroles at sunrise in the azure clarity of the altiplano is unforgettable, and the individual structures when the boiling water evaporates and leaves behind dissolved minerals are strikingly beautiful.’ After these descriptions I was anticipating something stunning and hugely impressive. Such was my expectation that I forgot my hangover and my lack of sleep.

  We reached our destination at about 6.30. Dawn had arrived but not with any azure clarity. The place was cold and overcast. The predominant colour was a murky endemic grey. Until now I could not have imagined anything worse than the Salar. This may have been the highest geyser field in the world, but for me it was the devil’s very own throne room, surrounded by the ice-covered surface of a desiccated earth.

  I had disregarded the advice to bring warm clothing and anyway I had posted home my heaviest sweater from Iquique. I shivered in the cool morning air and cursed McCarthy’s curiosity for bringing us to another oblivion. Several people had arrived before us and were wandering about aimlessly. They seemed to appear and disappear in and out of plumes of smoke. Everywhere around them funnels of steam hissed up like yellowing, bubbling contagion and seemed to turn the people into ghostly silhouettes of lost souls. The air was thin at this height and I took a short deep breath and retched. The air was filled with the sulphurous odour of ammonia. I couldn’t simply stand here, shivering and choking. As we walked forward into this putrid air, it seemed the earth beneath us was boiling and spewing forth huge calloused warts. We were standing in a massive basinlike structure. On the low hills above us gigantic boulders hung precariously like congealed blood clots. I felt I was standing in Hell’s own cauldron and watched the earth spitting forth, as from Satan’s lips, nothing but abomination and nausea. Whatever the guidebooks had said, I found no comfort here. The atmosphere of the place was filled with the incense of contempt.