Near the centre our guide pointed out the rusting relic of what had been a fresh water plant. There had been two attempts to tap the energy for geothermal power and the fresh water plant was for the workers who came to earn a living here. But what was left of it looked like nothing more than a massive scaffold. I was convinced that nothing could purify this ulcerous water. Everything was toxic and repellent. It was as if the earth was groaning a bilious insult at us. I watched as the other visitors were drawn to the rim of the boiling geysers. Our guide warned us of the dangers of such activity. He told us the story of a Frenchman who had stood too near a geyser’s mouth. The surface had crumbled under his feet and he had fallen into the liquid. Though his friends had been able to pull him out, he died before a helicopter could reach him. I could imagine the salts and minerals of the superheated water eating into the raw burns in his flesh. The man had boiled to death in a cauldron of chemicals.
El Tatio is the highest geyser field in the world and there are said to be more than a hundred geysers here. Some are just bubbling pools in small surface fissures, others are little volcano-like cones which send up more impressive plumes of steam. As the sun begins warming the land, a light breeze develops and the figures of other visitors are revealed then concealed again by the spreading clouds. Every now and then Brian appears, shoulders hunched against the cold, looking less than happy. His dark clothes and greying beard and hair give him a wild, mountain-man look in the shifting miasmas of steam. Suddenly he is wearing a hood which I haven’t seen before.
‘Found it,’ he says, smiling slightly. ‘Good honest pruck!’
He stays close to the steam to get the best of the warmth. I can tell he is not enjoying himself.
‘Not really your kind of place,’ I suggest.
‘Well, you know! Up at the skrake of dawn, drive for hours in a crammed bus. For what? I’m freezing and there’s nothing but steam everywhere. What are we all doing here? Maybe it’s just because you’re supposed to come. Sure, it’s a strange experience, but so would be jumping in a freezing river!’
‘It’ll warm up with the sun. I guess I’d expected the geysers to be more dramatic – like Yellowstone Park or something – but I like it, I like making the effort to see a weird natural phenomenon. And the light on the way up here, it was worth it just for that.’
‘Maybe. I’m going to warm up in the truck for a bit.’
We gather back at our truck as the driver gives out cheese sandwiches and tea while boiling eggs in a geyser pool. Stupidly I smoke a cigarette and feel giddy for a minute. As the sun rises higher, I experience another form of giddiness – at the splendour of the snow-covered hillsides above us shining in the brightening light. Beams of sunshine appear among the higher mountain crags to act as searchlights sweeping the plateau and turning the banks of steam white for a few seconds.
We go to look at a large pool that bubbles at a temperature of 80° Fahrenheit. Brian, clearly happier with the warmth from sun and food, nudges me. ‘Going close to the edge, are you?’ He is teasing me about my slip in Lauca.
With the sun high up we head downhill, now able to enjoy the spectacular scenery in daylight. The road sweeps across the altiplano, high tundra, which, at around 12,000 feet, has a dusting of snow in places and in others is bare shingle. A little further down we see vicuñas grazing on short, wiry grass. We stop to take photographs. This huge space, overseen by the Putana Volcano and lesser mountains around the horizon, makes me laugh out loud: not amused laughter but simply an expression of joy. The promise of this stark but beautiful landscape and the crispness of the early morning light and the slight chill of the air give me a great burst of optimism.
‘There’s something you can relate to here, you know,’ murmurs Brian beside me. As ever his face is furrowed in concentration, but his eyes move rapidly, taking in the beauty around us, the expression now of welcome rather than rejection.
I was glad when our driver started up our minibus and began slowly to drive off. In the cold morning air the exhaust fumes from the diesel engine rose up in smoky drifts to blend with the sulphurous mists at El Tatio. I cupped my hands at my mouth and blew into them to warm them. The exhalation of my breath steamed into the air like the fumes. As I looked out on the wilderness beyond my window, I was reminded of a story about another of these dried-up lakes. It was called Salar de Pugsa. Legend has it that a village is buried in the salt sediments, punished like the biblical Sodom for its wickedness. Looking out on the bitterness beyond me, I could easily imagine this to be true.
As I tried to make notes by picturing again the Salar and El Tatio landscapes, I suddenly remembered those powerful religious paintings in the tiny church at Parinacota, with their naive illustrations of Hell. When I merged together my visions and El Tatio I felt for a moment that I had been one of those terrified figures in the magnificent apocalyptic paintings.
It was pointless trying to pen notes on the lurching bus, though McCarthy did so contentedly. This time I wasn’t jealous of his efficient machine. As the bus rolled on, I was somehow sure I would not forget these inimical desert places. I looked away from my notebook and watched the land pass outside. I wanted it to be Connemara. I wanted it to be home. I wasn’t sure what these desert days had done to me. Perhaps the emptiness and the desolation had made me lonely.
Outside it was as if the sky of the previous evening had dropped to earth. Those flamingo-hued clouds had surrendered and rolled over the gentle hills, lighting up the green and yellow tufted grass and softening the harsh white of the distant snow and frost. These mountains might be beautiful to some and I could see how that would be so, but in me they induced only a sense of despair and melancholy.
I opened my copy of Neruda’s Love Sonnets as a consolation and read and slept on our way to the Valley of the Moon. The jarring bus could not withhold sleep from me. I was exhausted in every way.
As we descended the air became softer and the land greener and greener. I woke and sat for several hours soaking up the seclusion. I had withdrawn into the sonnets. The expression of erotic feeling and human affection conveyed a warmth and intimacy that I absorbed like a sponge. The poet’s effervescent lyricism was a much needed counter to the fierce scatology I was experiencing. In and out of his poignant lyrics I moved as I slept or stared at this vacant vista of his homeland.
I was sleeping and dreaming of pumas when the bus came to a stop. John nudged me gently and informed me we should take a walk. Outside it was bright and warm. But in the fresh air the sun did not have the same soothing effect as reading Neruda. Our guide had brought us to the top of a narrow gorge at the bottom of which there was a stream flowing with warm Andean mountain water. We could bathe if we wished. The idea was unbelievably attractive. He warned us that we would have to go down and climb up again on foot. We didn’t hesitate.
I noticed that someone had painted some words in bright red paint on the boulders lining the path. They read, ‘Dios Es Amor, Jesús Cristo Viene Por’, then the number ‘2’ was inscribed and followed by ‘A La Tierra’. Below this inscription in bigger letters the words ‘Jesus Te Ama’ blazed out.
I was amazed that someone should come so far into the hills to paint this evangelical inscription. But why not? Christianity was a desert religion, after all.
When we reached the valley floor, I immediately understood the appropriateness of the graffiti. The whole course of the stream was lined with people and the area was ablaze with colour. Here and there families were eating and pouring drinks. In places where the stream had cut a deep basin into the river bed, men, women and children were bathing contentedly. Small tents and makeshift shelters were everywhere. The scene before me was biblical and could have been lifted out of an illustrated version of the loaves and fishes parable. Jesus and his disciples could have been sitting behind a rock, somewhere out of sight.
Don John, as always, could not resist the water’s invitation. With unbelievable Quixotic foresight he had even brought a pair of swimming sho
rts into the desert. I laughed at his skinny white body with its brown forearms, topped by a well-weathered face. He stood out a mile from the desert people bathing beside him. But this was a place of welcome and respite and Patcha Mama and ‘Jesus Te Ama’ knew no distinction.
Off the high plateau we start the steep descent back to the Valley of the Moon and San Pedro, stopping to visit the Baños de Puritama. We have heard about the beauty of these thennal pools but the earth is brown again and as we park there is nothing to see except a few cacti. Yet after a brief walk we find ourselves at an oasis in a hidden gorge. Suddenly there are plants and grasses of rich green and a sense of peace and sanctuary. I cannot resist a bathe. The pool is about two feet deep with a gravel bottom and some plants among which tiny fish swim. The water is indeed hot and soothing. My skin is white as white in the water. Our fellow travellers are there too but somehow this is not a time to chat. We newcomers tend to sit and grin stupidly at the sheer pleasure of being in such an unusual place. Barely fifty feet away the harsh desert landscape reasserts itself but here we are safe in the balmy waters.
It is becoming clear to me that although we imagined great vistas, desert plains and mountains in captivity, the reality is far, far greater. What we are seeing could not be dreamed. One might conjure an oasis pool or distant salt flats flashing white in the sunlight but to put the two together and dream up the sensations of sitting in a volcanic spring while looking down to the bitter wastes of the Salar de Atacama, 3,000 feet below you and more than twenty miles away, is beyond anyone’s most fertile invention.
In the same way that the imagination has difficulty assembling the disparate parts of such scenery it also fails to prepare one for the range of emotional reactions it can provoke. Excitement, happiness, awe and even fear were likely enough but not that they should come all together and create a more profound feeling. From this soothing spot I am peering through a looking glass to that other world of the harsh salt lake and I feel at once secure and vulnerable – as if I am sailing along in safe waters while, on the horizon, a massive, black thunderhead looms continually.
While Don Quixote wallowed in the river, Sancho Panza lay back in the shade of one of those biblical stones and drank in the exuberance of the place with a grateful sense of wonder. I was glad I had brought Neruda’s love sonnets. There could have been no more appropriate place on earth to read them. But our respite was short-lived. We had to be in the Valley of the Moon before sunset, so we trudged up the hill and set out for our final destination before returning to San Pedro.
The stopover in the idyllic canyon placed the bleakness of the remainder of our journey in high relief. Once more we were submerged in this forlorn emptiness. For another several hours I sat stunned and almost smothered by this expansive abyss. I turned to John who was again rapidly tapping on his machine. I scribbled in my notebook, ‘This is the land of Ismael and of Cain.’ I closed my eyes and dreamed my puma dream again.
En route to the Valley of the Moon Enzo detoured to show us an old salt mine. Some minutes before we came to a stop, he pointed out three huge salt pillars standing upright on the flat desert tundra. He called them the Tres Marias. There was nothing feminine about them. In fact there was nothing human at all. But I suppose in a place like the Atacama, the mind needs to believe in something more than this emptiness. I understood how this landscape would induce connections with the crucifixion. And equally I could imagine why someone would give the name Tres Marias to the landmark. Faith promises us something better than this boundless waste. The image conjured up by the name was one of maternal succour. I could well understand the necessity of it in such a wilderness.
The salt mine was nothing more than a few tumbledown stone huts and a hole in the ground, but as we returned to the bus a curious sight confronted us. There, as if he had appeared out of nowhere, was an old miner who apparently lived in a hut near the mine. He was ancient and his face was as dried up as the ground on which we stood. His shirt was sorely in need of a good wash and appeared several sizes too big. The sleeves seemed to have been torn off rather than tailored. His baggy trousers were tied below the knee with a string to make them fit. A piece of rope served as a belt and sandals completed his attire. He was selling gem salt. On a battered wooden box in front of him sat large chunks of exquisitely clear crystal. They shimmered with white fire in the light. I was too astounded by his sudden appearance to be much interested in his wares. I stood back a few feet from him and watched, entranced. He was passive and unmoved. He made no effort to cajole us into purchasing the fabulous crystals. He was completely dissociated from the world in which he sat, a Charon-like figure. I wandered off, thinking I had encountered the living image of Ismael and Cain whose land I felt this was. I didn’t purchase any of his gem crystals, but I took his image away with me in my memory, like a ghostly hologram.
We have seen some massive dunes which are much more attractive than arid plains. So perhaps the great desert writers were turned on by rolling dunes rather than the barren rocky, salty flats that have been the norm around here. Brian is calmer, though I thought he would blow a fuse when Enzo described another flat dull bit we had crossed earlier as the Plateau of Patience. Not Brian’s forte with deserts so far.
Now we are in another salty area, but it is quite unlike the Salar. Salt has been mined here for human consumption from early Indian times until quite recently. There is absolutely no vegetation and even an old, derelict building is constructed out of salt blocks. As we look at this scene we ask Enzo about the large number of army and police personnel we have seen in the area.
‘We are near the Bolivian border, so they watch for smugglers.’
‘But there seem to be police checkpoints at the edge of some of the towns,’ I observe. ‘What do people think of the police, since Pinochet?’
‘Since the coup and the horrors that followed, people haven’t felt the same about cops or pacos as we call them. Uniforms used to be respected, then they were feared. Now, well, people reckon they wear them off duty to get favours – you know, free drinks and cab rides. The Carabineros’ motto is Siempre Amigo, Always a Friend. It’ll be a while before you can say that without laughing!’
‘We’ve spoken to a few people about the Pinochet years and most don’t seem that bothered or just don’t want to talk about it,’ Brian tells him.
‘Yeah, I know,’ says Enzo. ‘For me it was a very bad time. Yes, Allende had really messed things up, but there was no need for what the military did. I was picked up once in Santiago, for nothing. Same thing happened to friends. It was bad. Everyone knows that but like I’ve said before, the country’s so spread out and there are so many views it all just gets passed over somehow.’
I awoke when the bus stopped. Imitating a station announcer John intoned in my ear, ‘All passengers wishing to visit the Valley of the Moon, please alight here. Next stop, San Pedro.’
It was a short walk into the valley proper. The landscape was as huge and lunar as any place called the Valley of the Moon should be. Everywhere around us crater-like walls of sediment rose up vertically, eroded by millennia of winds that gave the valley an eerie atmosphere. It didn’t repulse me in the way that other places had. I was drawn into it. There was something fantastical about it. It was sterile and barren and the whole valley seemed to be made up of endless sharp-crested hills. There was an extraordinary quality about it that I could not fathom. It seemed a place set apart from the Atacama. I thought I had run out of words and patience with expeditions to these hideous nowheres, but the Valley of the Moon was different. I was unsure what it was except that I sensed a kind of sorcery here, but one that was beneficent. The abuse I was ready to hurl at McCarthy for bringing me to another vale of malevolence dissolved in my mouth. But it wasn’t long before I found it again.
Enzo brought us to a halt, before what I thought might have been a cave, or a weathered fissure in the gnarled valley walls that towered over us. He politely asked if we were afraid of confined spaces. I
t was an unintentional irony – there was little about confined spaces we didn’t know and in any case I wanted to tell him I had been suffering from agoraphobia ever since we had arrived in the Atacama. Instead we quietly confirmed that neither of us was bothered and with that he led us into the mouth of the cave. As we walked into the passage he called back to us that the cave narrowed and that as we would have to crawl some distance, if we had some torches, we should use them. John was, as always, prepared for any eventuality and I became aware of the thin beam of light from his miniature pencil torch.
On and on we crawled and grunted, with Sancho Panza heaving great lungfuls of condemnation on our guide, McCarthy, this frigging cave in particular, the Atacama Desert in general, and God Almighty for inventing yaks which were the start of this fiasco.