Chacabuco, Chile

In northern Chile lies the Atacama Desert, 100 times more arid than Death Valley.

I'm not a big fan of heat. Perhaps it's where I grew up, but I've always felt that it's better to need layering up than stripping down, as once you reach nude, you've hit the wall. Freezing to death certainly seems to be preferrable to heat exhaustion; I've experienced Stage 2 hypothermia before on a few occasions and I would certainly prefer it to the convulsions, vomiting, and blindness which result from hyperpyrexia and dehydration (see William Langewiesche's delightful descriptions of death by hyperthermia in Sahara Unveiled).

Nevertheless, within this desert lies the abandoned ruins of several silver nitrate mining towns, abandoned in the 1930s after the invention of synthetic silver nitrate. Of them, Chacaburo is probably the most famous; repurposed under Pinochet as a concentration camp, it now lies surrounded by mines. A former prisoner of the camp, Pedro Barreda, became a self-appointed caretaker to prevent the ghost town from vandals and people from landmines. He died in 2006, at which time he was replaced by Roberto Saldívar.

Short of going to an abandoned scientific research base on Antarctica, I would dare say that Chacaburo would probably be the ultimate ghost town exploration.

Photosets of Chacabuco: 1 / 2


Trackback Notes:

Found Cacabuco from Wikipedia: Atacama Desert
Followed Atacama Desert from Wikipedia: Extremophile
Extremophile searched because of article on a liquid lake beneath Antarctica.