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Travels
Oct 15, 2007

Iquique to Arica  

August 27 | My GPS Route Data On the way north to Arica I took a detour to Pisagua, first famous as a landing site for Spanish conquistadores, then a key port for mining industry, then a prison and death camp under Pinochet. A hundred years ago this was a bustling town of several thousand that hosted touring opera companies from Milan and stage actress Sarah Bernhardt. Today, however, only about 150 residents remain and the buildings are largely deserted and decaying.   The descent from the Panamericana at 3,500 feet down to the water’s edge is a perilous ride […]

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Travels
Sep 30, 2007

Los Prisioneros  

My soundtrack while driving hundreds of kilometers along the flat, desolate Panamericana was the one CD I had purchased along the way, a tribute album to Los Prisioneros, arguably the most important band in Chilean rock history. The album contains 18 of their songs performed by a variety of contemporary bands, with styles ranging from ska to hip-hop to heavy metal. I was turned on to this album by the staff at Subterraneo record store in Iquique (Latorre 704). Here’s a classic Prisioneros video from the 1980s for the song We Are Sudamerican Rockers

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Travels
Sep 23, 2007

San Pedro to Iquique  

300 Miles, Saturday August 25 | My GPS Route Data After leaving San Pedro early, I stopped in Chiquicamata, site of the largest open mine pit on the planet and the last stop for gasoline for over 170 miles. From here a pockmarked road cuts across 40 miles of brown sandy earth to the Panamericana, the main highway connecting north and south. Unexpectedly, this major artery is a narrow two lane road, patchy in spots, and sometimes diverted onto an unpaved dirt road for miles at a time due to construction. The surrounding landscape is completely devoid of any vegetation […]

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