Smoggy Santiago from Cerro San Cristóbal

Today I decided it was time to get up to Cerro San Cristobal for the first time this year. It had been raining all weekend and stopped late last night. Being Santiago is smog central during the winter and the only relief comes after rain, I knew I had to get up there while I had the chance.

Santiago suffers from thermal inversion which ensures there is almost always a heavy blanket of pollution just overhead. This sounds horrible, and in a way it is, but here in Santiago Centro I don't see it effecting my life like people in blogs all over the web complain about. Sure it's unsightly and probably doing some silent damage to my lungs, but if it's not in my face crappy, I just forget about it. I find it much easier that way than obsessing and worrying over something that isn't going to change and I certainly can't control.

A photo from 2009. The view was better today.

Anyway, I woke up nice and early and ran the approximately 8km from my apartment to the top of Cerro San Cristobal. For those who don't know, it is the hill in view from most of Northern Santiago with The Virgin Mary perched atop. Aside from spectacular views of the city, the mountains and miles and miles of smog, it also offers some decent hiking trails and momentary escapes into nature.

Heading up the dirt trails on the western side of the hill I almost felt like I was truly in nature, as long as I ignored the views of urban sprawl off to one side of the trail. Chile has an incredibly diverse number of trees and plants and even hiking up Cerro San Cristobal you are reminded of what is out there. The smells alone are overpowering (in an entirely good way). It reminded me of being in the hills of northern California during the spring. It was easy to temporarily forget about the pollution and grime of city life. Then you arrive to the top for expansive views and the slowly forming smog. Getting there quite early I did get to see farther and cleaner views than usual. But while sitting up there for about 30 minutes I did notice the smog forming over certain areas and thickening by the minute. It is less than ideal, but this is just how it is here in Santiago, so deal with it I say.


This photo is entirely unrelated to smog, but I just took it from my little balcony and figured I'd throw it in because a blog post with only one photo is a little boring eh?

An old man waiting for the bus

Random Photos

San Pedro de Atacama backroad

Rain drops on the sunroof

Tocopilla homes

Stray dogs in Antofagasta

The Atacama

San Pedro de Atacama VS. the Rain

The weather at high altitudes never ceases to amaze me. Don't get me wrong, weather anywhere can be unpredictable, unforgiving and stop you in your tracks. But once you get up to 7,000-16,000+ feet it seems to change instantly, be way more dramatic and it can even be snowing, raining and sunny all from one vantage point.

This was the case on my last trip to one of the most remote places I've ever been. Where the Atacama desert in Chile meets Bolivia, Argentina and Peru. The Andes reach up to 20,000+ feet which can create rapid shifts in the weather. Here, there are no radio stations, minimal electricity and only one gas station for hundreds of miles.

The Atacama Desert is the driest place on earth where certain areas have a history of 0 inches of rainfall. As in none, at all. It is so dry that the soil in certain areas that have no sign of life have been compared to that of Mars. NASA even does instrument testing for future Mars missions here. The town of San Pedro de Atacama and the surrounding area is certainly not one of those areas though. January and February are the rainiest seasons in Peru and Bolivia and some of the storms make their way down into the Atacama and deposit large amounts of precipitation in (usually) a small amount of time. Being a town that only receives rain several times a year they are never prepared and even the smallest amount can shut most things down.

Camila and I arrived on February 9th with intentions to stay for a month to work on a project documenting the hotels and restaurants in the area. The rain started around 6pm on the first day and didn't end until around midnight (which is very rare for this area). The rain was very heavy, especially for the driest desert in the world. It was heavy enough to shut down roads to all popular sites, all international border crossings, take out the power in the town, knock down some walls and flood at least half of the restaurants, stores and local homes. And this was just the first day. The rain would arrive in the early evening and do even more damage each day for the next 5 days. At night the rain would take over the town and then by the following afternoon the sun was so strong and the air so dry that a good part of the water would evaporate. We left after the third day due to the fact that most things I wanted to photograph were closed or damaged. The town is also very expensive and being the high season we had limited options for long-term stays (and even more limited now that half of the places were damaged).

Even though I didn't get to work on the project I had originally planned, it was wild (and sad) to see what nature could do so quickly to an area that isn't built to withstand what it throws at it.

Sun-baked footprints made the following night in the rain softened dirt

Storm clouds over the road to Laguna Miscanti

Small town farm

Llamas

Washed away road

Protecting the front door from rain

Dirt from the roof running down the walls

San Pedro de Atacama

Flooded street

Last year this was a road...

Ponds formed on the side of the roads