By
StanleySobari,
words original by
Gabriel O’rorke is a writer and former BBC TV producer now based in Chile.
#sheep and goats are
herded through Guatin Gorge by the septuagenarian Audina
# the princess begged
for forgiveness, for she had truly always loved her prince | The last light of
the day falls on the volcanic peaks of Licancabur and the ‘beheaded’ Juriques,
as seen from the monnscapes of the Valle de La Luna
All the remains
of the old village is a cemetery and scattering of ruins at the bottom of
Quebrada Kezala, a steep-sided canyon
once used as resting point – and canvas – for llama caravans. Herders would
spend starlit nights engraving the sheer red walls, carving flamingos and
jaguars from the Bolivian jungle. ‘The Atacamnos did not write,’ says Rosa, ‘so
petroglyphs were one way they could express something special in their life.’
But they knew the llamas best and captured their different characters: some
irritable with ears flat against their heads, others trotting forth willingly.
At the Salar de Atacama, the sun is beginning its downward
arc through a cloudless sky and there’s just a whisper of wind. The legend of
the volcanoes is about to reach a tender
denouement. ‘The princess begged for forgiveness,’ says Rosa, her eyes
trained on the ostracized mountain’s darkening outline. ‘For she had truly always
loved her prince. And so, one day every April, the shadow of Licancabur reaches
across the salt flat at sunrise and touches the foothills of Quimal.’
#tall cacti eke out
an existence in Guatin Gorge.
It’s just before sunset and a wave of black, white and tawny
particles weeps down the curved road into the valley, leaving a trail of
trodden soil and trimmed pasture in its wake. At its head is the shepherdess
Audina Vilca, tall against the ochre hillside, a wide-brimmed straw hat pulled
down over her circular face. The herd of goats and sheep homes in on the
circular corral as if pulled by gravity. ‘I learned everything I know from my
mother, of course,’ says Audina, with a chuckle that reveals pink gums and two
lone front teeth.
Each morning she rises at six, milks her goats, churns fresh
cheese, prepares bread for the day and then heads into the hills, returning
just before sunset to her home here in Guatin Gorge. Half an hour north of San
Pedro, this spot where the thermal springs of Puritama merge with the Andean
waters of the Purifica River was one of the first places settled by the early Atacamenos.
Long before people, giant cacti took
root here. Today, their spiky heads peek out of a gully floor specked with
small, shrub-like cacti known, mischievously, as ‘motherinlaw cushions’; the
tallest of the giants measure 15 metres and have witnessed 1,000 years on
Earth.
Guatin’s population consists of Audina and her fellow
septuagenarian sister Paulina. Theirs is a close, if not always harmonious
relationship, with a strict demarcation between their respective flocks. ‘My
sister has her side and I have my side,’ says Audina, explaining why she seldom
sees her younger sister despite living 100 metres apart. ‘We can’t mix the
animals,’ she says.
And there’s a definite feeling she doesn’t want to. A
businesswoman as well as a shepherdess, Audina sells her goat’s cheese to those
returning to Sand Pedro from dawn visits to El Tatio-these hissing, bubbling
geyser field and hour further north, 4,300m up in the Andean Altiplano.
Although shepherdesses following in the footsteps of
tradition are mainly longer in the tooth, they aren’t hard to come by. A few
miles north of Guatin, cousins Utildia and Teresa live in a small stone house
with tow corgi-like dogs. Their ageless altiplanic uniforms include dusty
woolen cardigans, billowing skirts and greyless Andean manes braided and tucked
under straw hats. Utildia’s toothless, talkative and deaf; Teresa has a full
set of teeth but rarely speaks. There’s a refreshing girlishness to them with
their blue ribbons and giggles. An understanding, although not gained my conventional
forms of communication, turns between the pair. They seem to live and content
companionship.
Atacameno tradition dictates that shepherding is woman’s
work, along with cooking and looking after children, whilst the men go out
hunting. Nowadays the men no longer need to hunt, but the customary order of
household tasks is not to be questioned by mere mortals. The majority of
mortals at least: Carlos Csquivel is an exception to the rule-in more ways that
one. In a land of ubiquitous knitwear, this 50-something shepherd is quite the
peacock in his silk neckerchief and leather sombrero.
His small plot of land outside San Pedro is covered in old
cars of various shapes, sizes and degrees of decrepitude. Tucked away at the
far end he keeps his livestock: a mini menageries of three pigs, one pony, two
donkeys and several goats and llamas. There’s no pasture on his plot, so most
days Carlos mounts his diminutive steed and takes to the mountain to find food
for the herd. Today he is on home turf. Leaning on the bonnet of one of his
wrecks, he opens a can of beer with a fizz, carefully pouring some on the dusty
ground before taking a sip. ‘It’s tradition here,’ he says. ‘I’ve done it since
I was young-it’s for respect. First some of Pachamama (Mother Earth), then some
for me.’
When it comes to the mountains, the recipients of reverence
are the Mallku-the word for the mountains gods in Kunza, the extinct Atacameno
language. ‘When I go to the mountains I always make a payment-sometimes the
blood of a white animal, sometimes llama fat mixed with white corn,’ says
Carlos. ‘We pay the mountains so that it rains, so that the animals remain healthy.’
WHAT LIES BENEATH
#When night falls over
Guatin Gorge, the Milky way stands out clearly in the desert sky
Five miles west San Pedro, the Atacama reaches a zenith of
other worldliness. Great drifts of sand mass around rock formations and saline
outcrops carved into improbable shapes by eons of wind. The valley floor is
littered with loose stones and mottled white with dried salt that resembles
mould growing on a slab of cheese. Wisps of sands swirl above the desert flats,
drifting like phantoms. The eye wanders, struggling to find either focal point
or familiarity. Colours seem equally fluid, the landscapes altering hue with
the changing light; at times a lifeless brown, at others fiery red. This is the
Valle de la Luna-the Valley of the Moon.
It’s somehow fitting that dinosaurs once roamed this
terrain, albeit 70 million years ago. A stage this strange and colossal demands
an appropriate cast. It’s a landscape that seems to resonate with mystery-and
not just on the surface. ‘There are lots of tunnels and caves around the Valle
de la Luna,’ says Rosa, as she struggles up a dune, ripples running up to its
sharp spine. “Some say mini people live underneath it – a foreigner once
disappeared here and said he found a city.” That great wealth lies underground
in the Atacama has never been in question. The mineral-rich earth has long
sustained Chile. It started with ‘white gold’-sodium nitrate, of which the
country had a world monopoly until the early 20 th century. When a synthetic
substitute was devised, attention switched to copper – and to gold.
A rumour ground from the local mill has it that Audina’s
late husband owned a secret goldmine but concealed it from all, even his
children. Whether Audina knows its whereabouts is unclear. Perhaps she herds
her sheep to the mine – and maybe gold lies at the root of her rivalry with
Paulina. Such stories contain fibres of truth. After Chile’s 1973 military
coup, dictator Augusto Pinochet ordered a map to be made of all the mines in
the Atacama. However, word goes that several coordinates were given incorrectly
in order to conceal hidden pockets of wealth from the national purse.
Another legend of hidden treasure dates from the death
throes of the Inca Empire, which at its peak comprised much of northern and
central Chile. While being pursued by the Spanish conquistador Francisco
Pizzaro in 1532, Atahualpa-the last sovereign emperor of the Incas – promised
to deliver much gold in exchange for his freedom. From every corner of
Tawantinsuyu, the Inca empire, gold started to be transferred to pay the
ransom. However, when they heard that Atahualpa had been executed anyway after
being adjudged too much of a liability by the invaders, the ATacameno people
hid the gold at the bottom of the lake on Quimal mountain. It’s said that on
certain days this treasure shines beneath the water, and those who seek the
riches never return.
# The Valley of the
Moon is aptly named – according to NASA, parts of the Atacama are perhaps the
only places on Earth where a Mars-type lander would fail to find any evidence
of life in the soil.
ONE HOUR NORTH OF SAN
PEDRO, the road winds down a canyon into the village of Rio Grande. Pass
through, and soon a lone house appears, its garden abloom with flowers, the
property shaded by leafy trees. A figure in a stripy shirt emerges from the
foliage. Secundino is his name, a man with a ready smile that forces his eyes
closed as it spreads across his face. As a male, he does not have the authority
to invite guests into the fold so, with a chuckle, he trots off ‘to ask the
boss’.
Margarita Ansa is the mistress of the house. Chaperoned by a
canine entourage she emerges from the stone-and-mortar house she shares with
Secundino, her pretty, elongated face exuding a sense of learnedness. The house
once belonged to her grandmother, but now she serves as warden of the plot,
tending to the gardens taking care of the goats and harvesting quinoa and
garlic. Secundino once worked in the copper mines further north, but the couple
returned to the place where margarita was born for peace and solitude.
They char readily until the sun disappears behind the
horizon in a haze of purples and pinks, and the air quickly cools. Soon the
night sky will emerge, the stars enhanced by the near-total absence of ambient
light, the Milky Way visible in their midst. From the tale of Licancabur and
Juriques to the hidden treasures at the bottom of Mount Quimal, legends bear a
moral about coveting what is not yours. As Margarita and Secundino retreat into
their modest house, arm in arm and
smiling, it seems clear there’s nothing on this Earth that they covet. Here, in
this most for bidding of places, they’ve found life’s true riches.
