During my permanent stay in Chile, I visited the city of Antofagasta. It is a remote and mysterious city, known as the "Pearl of the North" of Chile. Although it was a short trip, it still feels endlessly evocative.
Chile is divided into thirteen regions, arranged in order from north to south. Antofagasta, the capital of Chile's second largest region, is also a Pacific port. In November 2003, Chile had entered the summer season. I took a bus from Santiago and arrived in the city about ten hours later.
It is both an important town in the north of Chile and a famous desert city, with a tropical desert climate. On one side is the famous Atacama Desert, and on the other side is the endless Gulf of Moreno. Due to climate change, it's best to visit in summer.
After arranging the hotel, I walked to the nearby Trocadero Square, which has a pleasant climate and is in the best season of the year. Many local citizens take a leisurely walk here. Out of curiosity, I spoke to a local middle-aged woman in her thirties.
I said to the middle-aged woman, how can people here speak Spanish so well? In particular, girls talk like the breeze in the forest. Because I think that among Spanish-speaking countries, Peru and Bolivians speak best, Chileans speak Spanish more urgently, often eating tail notes, and outsiders sound more difficult.
The middle-aged woman looked up at me and asked me where I was from and where I learned Spanish. When she knew I was Chinese, she was extra enthusiastic. I told her I was learning Spanish in Peru. She said she was also Bolivian, at least her predecessors were Bolivians, only to have turned them all into Chileans because of a nasty war.
She was talking about a nasty war in The Pacific War that took place in South America from 1879 to 1883. It is mainly to compete for saltpeter and guano resources, so it is also called "saltpeter war" or "bird dropping war".
Chile was on one side of the war, a coalition of Peru and Bolivia on the other side, and finally Chile won. In the end, Tarapacá and Arica in Peru and Antofagasta in Bolivia were owned by Chile, and Chile embarked on the road to great power. More than a hundred years have passed, and the People of Antofagasta have never forgotten their homeland.
Antofagasta is also famous because it has a super large copper mine called Chuquicamata, which is one of the four largest copper mines in Chile, accounting for 40% of the country's production. The highest income among Chilean copper miners is said to be higher than the president's salary.
Chile is famous for its copper reserves of about 180 million tons, ranking first in the world and having the title of "Copper Mine Country". Chilean copper is of a very high grade, with exports accounting for about 50% of Chile's total export value. Rich in copper resources, Chile has become a medium-developed country in South America. The price of copper on the London Exchange depends on Chile's face.
Chile's four major super copper mines are the Escondida open-pit mine in the Atacama Desert, the collahuasi open-pit mine near Iquique, the el teniente underground copper mine near the capital Santiago, and the chuquicamata open-pit mine in Antofagasta.
Antofagasta has a tropical desert climate, the climate is dry, and like the Peruvian capital Lima, it does not rain almost all year round, and residents do not have to consider the problem of roof leakage when building houses, and even some houses in slums do not have decent roofs. They mainly rely on the rich ice and snow resources of the Andes, and use pipes to divert melted water to the city, becoming the main source of domestic water in the city.
The local toilets are also unique, the men's toilet they do not write the men's toilet, but write Ellos, the word is the positive "they" meaning, representing the men's toilet. The women's toilet does not write the women's toilet, but writes ellas, which means negative "they", which stands for women's toilet. It is really big in the world, there are no surprises, and the toilet culture has its own characteristics.
There are many tourist attractions in Antofagasta. In the Chinba Family Nature Reserve, there are more than 90 species of flora and fauna, and visitors can watch the large-scale migration of animals. In addition, there are llullaillaco Home Park, Moreno National Park, etc., which cannot be visited and appreciated one by one due to time constraints.
Leaving Antofagasta, I boarded a Mercedes-Benz bus and crossed the Atacama Desert to the northern border city of Chile. As people say, the Atacama Desert environment is comparable to Mars. The difference is that the Mercedes-Benz bus runs faster than the Zhu rong rover.