Our visit to the Chiquicamata mine, the worlds largest open cut mine, was a little confused. We arrived late for the tour according to the faithful guide book for travellers, The Lonely Planet. It was the latest book for this area of the world, but was published back in 2003. It was wrong.
The size difference between our everyday cars and the mining trucks is incredible.
The mouth of the beast. 900m deep, 4.7kms long, 2.6kms wide.
Instead of having the tour in the morning as we were expecting, the tours of Chiqui mine had been changed to 2pm in the afternoon, changed only months after the Lonely Planet was printed. This gave us time to arrive there, but we also discovered that the tour times had been reduced from two hours to only one hour. It was only when we did the tour that we realised the significance of this.
We climb into a yellow taxi and wait for it to fill up with another person, then head out along the long and straight road that leads to Chuqui mine. Our taxi driver drops us off at the required place of the mine's tourist office.
Comparing the wheel of a smaller truck with my height.
Surprisingly, all around us were shops and buildings all still in use. Our understanding was that they had been moved to Calama. We find out later that only the industrial parts of this town can remain, while the residential parts still have to be moved. By 2007 everything has to have been moved to Calama.
During our tour we also hear about how the artificial hills are slowly burying the old part of town. These artificial hills are big dumping grounds for the unproductive loads of soil and rock that are removed from the mine to provide access to the better grade material.
Part of the group looking down into the pit of the mine from the barriers and not from the viewing platform.
Already a three story hospital and many other buildings had been buried. Large wire fences with razor wire at the top cut off the most dangerous sections of the old town. Soon it would all be gone.
Our tour, conducted by a bilingual lady, consisted in sitting on a big bus to arrive at a lookout platform over the great open pit of the mine. We then remained here for a little over half an hour, left to our own devices as we stared down into the abyss of the great open mouth of earth before us.
Our tour guide spoke very good English.
While here, we also had an old truck to play with as long as we did not climb it. When our time was up, we all climbed back on the bus to be returned to the mine's tourist office. Tour over. There was no more to it. We missed all of the processing part of the mining operations, although there were a couple of light touches on it during our briefing to and from the viewing platform.
There is no doubt that the view of the open pit is something quite spectacular, but I could not help but feel a little disappointed that the tour was left incomplete. The best part of it all was seeing those massive trucks driving along the roads next to the tiny cars chugging along slowly behind them and to see the comparison of sizes. That was something really incredible.
Comparing big trucks with little cars.
And so our mine tour finished. A quick snack at the local shop and we climbed back into a taxi for the ride back to Calama, and shortly after the bus back to San Pedro. This short tour had taken us then entire day because of the travel and confusion about starting times. Was it worth it? Yes, to see the size of that mine and the hundreds of people working in it was very worth it.
Travelling in taxi out to the mine.
The shops and industrial section of Chuqui township.
An old digger that has been decommissioned. New ones are significantly larger.
Everybody had to wear these safety hats before being allow to get off the bus.
When I stood next to this truck, I suddenly felt very small.
Hauling a huge load up the hill.
The power of these huge trucks is controlled from this little box.
A large truck dumping its load on one of the artificial hills.
Some of the few remains of the town that is being covered over by the growing artificial hills.