La Serena to Antofagasta

Lonely Planet says there's not much to see as you travel through the desert between La Serena and Antofagasta, suggesting that a night bus is a good idea. The guidebook can be helpful but is so wrong on this account. The entire trip was fascinating as the vastness of the Atacama Desert, the driest place in the world, unrolled around us.

We spent the first night of our trip in La Serena, where we have visited twice before, a lovely town about seven hours north of Vina del Mar. The next day we climbed out of the city and watched the ocean fog lace the top of the hills. El Parque National Bosque de Fray Jorge is located south of La Serena and is the only rainforest on Earth where it never rains. The dense camanchaca provides enough moisture for unique trees and plants to grow. Fog is a common companion to the coast of northern Chile, modulating the heat and creating moderate temperatures along the edge of this desert.

Outside of La Serana, the hills are speckled with cactus which look like cousins to the Suroro in Arizona. They shrank as our bus went inland and away from the fog, until only mesquite was left.

Even these became more sparse and disappeared.




Memorials like this are seen every few miles.


Soon the desert was "empty." Sand stretched beneath mountains molded through geological ages. Volcanic ridges rippled at their feet.

Mining in the north of Chile, especially copper mines, is what makes the Chilean economy churn. Copper prices have dropped dramatically over the last year, but there still is profit in it. We passed several operations, the only human interruptions in hours of moonscapes, and then finally arrived late in Antofagasta. The city is huge, stretching for several kilometers along the coast. Antofagasta was founded in 1869 by Bolivia to serve as its main outlet for its mining industry. Chile seized it a decade or so later, and it's still referred to as "captive province" by Bolivians. According to Wikipedia, the city receives only 4 millimeters of rain a year on average, and for forty years it never rained at all.

It was close to midnight, but the bus station and the streets were thick with crowds, car alarms, diesel fumes and barkers selling you-name-it. We dragged our suitcase through the tumult and found a room at a hotel near the station with a collection of perfume bottles behind the clerk's counter.

The next morning we just had time for breakfast and a little CNN Espanol before our bus left for Iquique. Antofagasta has tourist sections, but we wanted to keep going north. There is a Japanese garden, and rock arch off shore called El Portada de Antogasta, a pretty Plaza de Armas, but most of the city seemed industrial gray and tired. I was glad to be on my way.