Chile

In November of 2014 I set off for Chile to meet my friend Graham and shoot some trains. Southwest took me from Tucson to LAX, where I had a nice long wait for the LAN flight to Santiago via Lima. After the plane got to what had to be the remotest gate at LAX, a couple of federal cops escorted a man on to the aircraft. when I finally boarded, he was in the seat next to me. He had just gotten out of the Orange County Jail and was being deported back to Peru. No possessions, no money and a wife and children back in LA. When I got to Santiago I had to line up and pay $160 to get in to the country, as Chile, it seems, doesn't like the US's immigration policies. Graham's flight was unfortunately late, which let three other international flights in before it. The upshot was that we missed our Sky flight to La Serena. Sky didn't care, and we had to pay full fare for the next flight. The drive from La Serena to Vallenor was somewhat tedious, we were both pretty tired by then. I drove first, then Graham. Vallenor was full of one way streets, with tiny little signs, so we got flashed at a lot. Since we had no idea where the hotel was, Graham did a pretty amazing job of finding it in short order. It was basic, but clean and reasonably priced. We had several days of chasing the ore trains with new power before moving in to the Porterillos line to chase older power with trains to the big mill there.

Our hotel at Vallenor, quite colorful.

The rental car, a reasonably new Toyota 4x4 pickup.

This part of Ferronor has new locomotives, an export version of the SD70ACe. This one is still in demonstrator colors.

The mill at Porterillos. We weren't sure trains would be running, as the pollution here was so bad that the workers village had to be moved. The trains ran through some pretty spectacular canyons, were easy to chase and had older power. At the end of a canyon the tracks made a u-turn and climbed up an astonishing grade to get to the mill.

Power lines across the desert not too long after sunrise.

We drove down to La Serena, where we had a pleasantly idle afternoon and a good dinner before flying to Antofagasta for the FCAB over Cumbre Pass and the Atacama desert.

Beach and lighthouse at La Serena.

The view from our hotel window in Antofagasta.

A Nissan 4x4 rental truck. This had been given a good beating, then they let me drive it. We wandered all over Cumbre Pass, which hasn't seen rain in hundreds of years. When we moved on, the road up to the Bolivian border was, to be kind, a bit dismal, and I didn't do the truck any good at all. The scenery was spectacular though.

Helper service over Cumbre Pass, which was totally lacking in vegetation.

Former Newfoundland units with copper ingots chug up the pass, past our truck and Graham.

A concentrate train winds down Cumbre Pass.

We went to Tocopllla to see the elderly GE boxcars. Sadly they were out of service, and new(ish) Chile built electrics were in charge of the trains.

FCAB across the Atacama desert, a spectacular and colorful place.

After Graham left, my wife flew in to Santiago, and we flew down to Punta Arenas, almost at the bottom of South America. Didn't care much for Punta Arenas, and the weather was fairly dismal, which is usual for that part of the world.

The Porta Potty at the end of the world!

From Punta Arenas we drove up to Torres del Pine National Park, which was spectacular.

After Torres we had a couple of days at Puerto Mott in the Lake District. It rained! From there we went to Santiago. We stayed in the San Francisco, an excellent and expensive hotel. We were greeted with Champaign at check in, and when I mentioned at dinner that it was my wife's 65th birthday, they came up with more wine and dessert, neither of which we really needed by that point! We didn't care that much for Santiago, so we went off to Valpairaso on the train and bus. A cop saw my Canon and warned us not to go up in to the hilly part of the city because we would surely be mugged. So we didn't. Our flight home was at 10:30pm, a bit of a tedious time, but all in all I really enjoyed Chile, especially Cumbre Pass and the Atacama.

Valpairaso.

Wall art in Valpairaso.