Day 59 - 02 Feb.2012 - Caldera

In the morning we were sitting on the terrace again and having some breakfast. If we only could have afforded to stay here a bit longer, we would have done so with pleasure but we had to stick to our schedule and leave midday. After breakfast we walked down to the lowest terrace of the building, which accommodates a small swimming pool and a peer with a bronze owl to scare seagulls, so we guessed. As it cools down a lot here over night the water in the pool was quite refreshing. Having splashed in the water for about an hour, we went to pack our stuff and drove away.
Yesterday the landscape looked like it was getting ‘bold’ but today we could already see Earth’s bare scalp, with maybe one or two hair-thin like survivors. And as we drove further towards Atacama there were places where life totally gave up on trying or at least so it seemed to the naked eye.
Again we could not believe how good the roads are in this region of Chile. Taking the extremely harsh environmental conditions to work in, the infrastructure is superb. They even have so called ‘estacionamentos’ along the road with toilet and shower facilities, which mainly serve truck drivers. If we were to rank the road conditions in all the countries we have been to so far then Chile would get the gold medal!
We reached Cladera around 6 pm. Caldera is a small, seaside town, which in the last decades of the nineteenth century become the country’s second biggest port and was chosen as the terminus of Chile’s first railway. It was due to the silver boom in the region. The ports of Caldera are still in operation but nowadays they export table grape and copper.
We went to have a walk along the bay where Olav must have been mistaken to be a camera man from a local TV and some girls splashing in the bay sang for him some local ‘summer hit’ waving their hands in the air - quite hilarious to look at. They will probably follow the regional news now to see their performance.
The town’s only landmark is the Iglesia de San Vincente built in 1862. On the outside walls some of the render fell off and we could see the structure behind it. It looked like as if it was clay with straw on lath with the core of the walls being timber. After all the church was built by English carpenters.
Then in a bit more scruffy-looking part of the town behind the fish market we saw some drunken heads sitting in a circle and playing music on just anything they had at hand, including some empty plastic bottles. They doubled the efforts when they saw us and so we tipped them for their gig.
Then dinner, ice cream, typing up the diary and ‘night, night’.