that myself and Jorge somehow got onto the subject of Antarctica, I think there was a map of Chile there or something. It came as a great shock to me that Chilean people, Jorge included truly believe that they own a slice of Antarctica all the way to the South Pole which includes all of the Peninsular!! Jorge even thought that you needed permission from the Chilean government to go there!! Now I know that there are several claims to the same territory, including one by good old Blighty, but the Antarctic treaty of the 1950’s basically says that no claims are valid, and everyone else seems to respect that, but not Chile it seems. I’d had a feeling that this was the case for a while here, but Jorge confirmed my suspicions!!

Antofagasta was nothing special really, a port town which was once in Peru until the war of the Pacific between Chile, Peru and Bolivia in which Peru lost some of their

coastline and Bolivia lost all of its to Chile. This was a place which was short on cheap places to eat, so a few of us treated ourselves to a nice restaurant which Jorge recommended, which was really good it has to be said! The Chileans certainly have some very tasty mariscos, or shellfish!! After that it was early to bed to prepare for the next day’s drive across the Salar de Atacama, or salt flats.

The next morning’s first stop was at Baquedano train cemetery. There are a couple of these places in South America, they are relics of the sudden demise of the nitrate industry. No-one could afford to do anything with this huge old steam trains, and so they were just left where they stood. Because there is no moisture in the air they have resisted corrosion for over a hundred years and stand in pretty much the same condition they were abandoned in. It was quite a peculiar place, these giants just