Chinchorro Mummies

[Martin Hash]

Steel Church.jpg

Once a town has something to attract tourists, everybody tries to get in on the deal. To start, Arica, Chile has a church made of steel, St. Mark's Cathedral, built by the French in 1876, and not something I'd seen before; knocking on the walls produced the hollow clanking sound you'd expect from metal. That was in town but there was a lot of history to see out in the Atacama desert; for example, the famous Chinchorro mummies, oldest ever, four thousand years older than Egyptian mummies. There's a museum, modest by most standards, but adequate to the task of entertaining tourists. I was especially interested in a the penis hammock the men wore. It was bizarre looking to say the least, and totally inadequate for modern day men.

Penis Hammock.jpg

The bus we were in was loaded with tourists, and we headed further into the desert to witness some modern art and dancing of some kind. I hope the people in those heavy, hot costumes were recreating music and choreography from their long past because if it was just made for tourists, I was not impressed. In fact, I was more impressed with the odd rock formations I found on the ground, splatter from an old volcano, long ago and far away, than I was with the so-called art. At least we got free cucumber sandwiches and Pisco, and it was somewhat made up for by some ancient moutainside glyphs.



Like all things overly touristy, the bus broke down. Remarkably, the driver was able to coast a long way, turning corners and making lights, right into a service station for gas; but it wasn't gas. They had to call another bus. We thought we had held up our ship due to the delay but it turned out there was another bus that broke down after us, and yet another that had gotten delayed so that we 4 hours late on departure.

Stalled Bus.jpg