A couple of weekends ago we jetted up to Iquique in the north of Chile, two hours and a cheese and ham sandwich away from Santiago, courtesy of LAN and a couple of free flights (M works for LAN).
The city is by the sea, backed by the desert. They used to mine nitrates - it must have been hell on earth in that heat - and now there are these "ghost towns" out in the desert. They were abandoned in 1960.
I suppose, as one wanders around a place like this, you start to imagine what it would have been like to have lived there, although, to be honest, I was more concerned with whether or not my factor 60 sunblock was up to the job of protecting my lillywhite Brit skin. I could get burnt by the light in the fridge........
Anyway, this place Humberstone had a theatre, a hotel, square (Plaza de Armas), bakery. Up to 3000 people lived and worked there at one stage. It ws a model town, with a swimming pool made out of cast iron, pinched from a shipwreck in Iquique harbour.
The sunblock worked, although when we got back in the minivan my insides cooked.
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