Chile has always been an intriguing country, so long and so thin, stretching for over 4270kms from its border with Bolivia in the north to its tip on the bottom of the Americas and, on average, only 177kms east to west. For its entire length the mountain range of The Andes defines its geography and ecosystems. But the geo-political entirety of the country only came together in the 1880s, when Chile triumphed in the War of the Pacific and annexed Peru’s southern shoreline and Bolivia’s entire Pacific coast, so land-locking the latter country. At the same time, its troops conquered the indigenous Mapuche people and their land south of Santiago was subsumed into modern Chile.

Down south, the region known as Patagonia is shared with Argentina, the Chilean side characterised by glacial fjords and temperate rainforest whilst it’s the Argentinian side of the Andes that has arid steppes and deserts. North of the squeezed middle with the cities of Santiago (See PC 89 Franco’s Santiago 2017) and Valparaiso lies one of the driest places on earth, the Atacama desert and to its north east lies the tourist town of San Pedro de Atacama.

Main Street, San Pedro

Distinguished by the reddish colour of its clay buildings, it’s …. “a town set on a high plateau in the Andes mountains of north-eastern Chile. Its dramatic surrounding landscape incorporates desert, salt flats, volcanoes, geysers and hot springs. The Valle de la Luna nearby is a lunar-like depression.”

Enough of a basic geography lesson, or reminder (?) Why, you might ask, is this postcard seemingly from Latin America? As Covid travel restrictions eased, in November last year we planned to return to Rio de Janeiro and thought about ‘doing the Atacama and Patagonia’, such is the success of Chile’s tourism advertising; these two, plus Easter Island, have become the go-to destinations. 

Luckily one of my Godsons is married to the co-founder of a UK travel agent who specialises in Latin America (www.latinroutes.co.uk). The first draft suggestions from Latin Routes covered both the Atacama and Patagonia. Scrutiny of the journey from the Atacama to Patagonia revealed an early start, two interconnecting flights and, after arriving in Punta Arenas Airport late in the day, a six hour trip in a 4×4 to the lodge. This would not have been a holiday so Patagonia will have to wait for another time!

San Pedro in the centre, mountain lakes bottom right and Rainbow Valley due north

I hadn’t realised how much one might be affected by a change of altitude. Rio de Janeiro is, obviously, at sea level (doh!) and Santiago at 570m. We arrived in northern Chile and drove into San Pedro de Atacama, which lies at 2450m. Someone mentioned we might feel its effects but I can only describe it as walking across a swinging rope bridge, not quite sure where my next step would be and whether my legs were moving independently! On our first excursion we ended up at the mountain lakes of Miscanti and Miniques at 4150 metres.

Fortunately I was wearing a T shirt from the Dutch ‘Iceman’ Wim Hof with ‘Breathe …. Motherf***kers’ emblazoned across the chest! You needed to consciously breathe full breathes and take short steps.

For our first excursion our Trekana guide Mauricio had met us at our Noi Casa hotel and we joined Andrea and Andreas from Berlin and another couple from Madrid. We were staying in the same hotel as Andrea & Andreas and got to know them; we hope to keep in touch. We drove out to the large salt flats of Laguana Chaxa, the ‘Salar de Atacamas’, lying some 30 minutes south of San Pedro in the Los Flamencos National Reserve.

Actually ‘large’ is an inadequate word, as they extend some 150kms south, are 65kms wide and over a kilometre and a half deep. ‘Deep’ as in salt minerals; the surface water is only about 3 feet deep. (Note 2) The attraction here is the three species of flamingos, the Chilean, the Andean and the James’.

From there we went up into the mountains (see map), to those charming lakes of Miscanti and Miniques. It freezes hard up here in the winter but we were lucky with some sun, before a shower of rain. (Note 3)

We drove back towards San Pedro de Atacama and stopped for a picnic lunch at the junction of an old Inca trail and the Tropic of Capricorn (Note 4). Just a line on a map, this latitude of the ‘Tropic of Capricorn’, but walking out down the dusty Inca trail, away from everyone else, lovely to let one’s mind imagine the traffic this path had experienced thousands of years ago; footprints, sandal impressions, the hoof  tracks of donkeys and llamas, but now simply dust.

The Tropic of Capricorn crossing an ancient Inca trail moving off northwards

Part Two to follow next week.

Richard 27th January 2023

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS As an aside, some of you will have read my postcards from our trip to the north of South Island New Zealand in 2020 (PCs 169 and 170), when I wanted to visit the sand spit where, in August 1877, a seventeen year old girl, who later became my great grandmother, was shipwrecked and rescued some days later. I needed a travel agent with very local knowledge of the area, so went onto Google Earth, zoomed into the town of Nelson and located a travel agent on Trafalgar Street, World Travellers. Then it was a simple task to ask by email whether they could do the international stuff in addition to the local detail. The result was absolutely perfect.

Note 1 Chile is the most prominent example of an elongated type of territorial morphology; other examples include Norway and Vietnam.

Note 2 Compare with the Pantanal, (see PC 17 and 20 2014) the world’s biggest wetland, some 800kms north to south, 500kms east to west, with a height difference of some one metre over its whole length. The Pantanal lies east over The Andes from The Atacama, straddling the borders of Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. Oddly they are at about the same latitude, one of the driest places on earth and one of the wettest; separated by the great mountain range of the Andes!

Note 3.Despite it being summer in the southern hemisphere, the months of January and February mark the Altiplanic winter here, with occasional heavy rain storms. Bizarre huh?

Note 4 Simon Reeve, a British author and travel documentary maker, made a fascinating journey along the Tropic of Cancer and along the Tropic of Capricorn. Among his other programmes is one entitled The Americas; the part about Chile is intriguing.

Let me first acknowledge that I am aware Christmas 2022 is over, even for Orthodox Christians, otherwise you might think I am showing the early stages of dementia. Well I thought Christmas was over until we went through Terminal 5 at London’s Heathrow Airport last Wednesday morning, 11^th January, for our flight to Rio de Janeiro. Catching an opportunity to have a pee before going to the gate, I popped into the nearest loo, to be serenaded by “On The First Day of Christmas my true love sent to me …”. Fortunately this wasn’t in ‘Arrivals’, when it might have given those travellers coming to the UK for the first time the wrong impression of this great country!

   We’re now some days into 2023 and in previous years I have often wished people ….. “all of what you need and some of what you want” for the new year. The other morning, walking back in the dark from Rahmi the newsagent, I thought about what I might want this year. Of course the word ‘want’ and ‘Christmas’ bring to mind the song ‘All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth’, first recorded in 1948 by American bandleader Spike Jones and by others since, including Alvin &The Chipmunks and a group called the Platters; well, for those of us of a certain age. There’s another Christmas song that starts ‘All I want ….. ‘, ‘All I want for Christmas is you’ and the latest recording’s by Mariah Carey and Justin Bieber in 2009.

So what would be my idealistic wants of 2023?

We are beginning to accept, somewhat reluctantly, that societies need to do something to reduce the impact of climate change, whether man-made or simply in the cycles that define the universe. The mild climate of the United Kingdom is likely to experience more extremes, hot, cold, dry and wet. In the latter case there’s going to be more rain in shorter bursts. Already last year Shoreham, a harbour a few miles west of here, had more that 200% of its expected November rainfall. (Note 1) I want the Green council who run Brighton & Hove to ensure all the drainage systems in the city are cleared of debris and fit for purpose. Currently they are not and flooding occurs; it will only get worse.

And on that subject of our changing climate, I watched David Attenborough’s ‘Extinction: The Facts’, a 2020 documentary, on the flight out to Brazil. I want its message, that one million out of the eight million species on this planet, are at risk of extinction, to be part of mainstream education worldwide. In the west we recoil at the use of wild animals for traditional medicine in some parts of the world. I hope that education will convince current users that, for instance, the scales of the pangolin, made from keratin, the same material that makes up fingernails, hair and horn, have no proven medicinal value. Closer to home, you remember when driving, particularly in the summer, the windscreen became covered in squashed bugs and any attempt with some screen-clean often seemed to make it worse? The bugs have disappeared and that is extremely worrying given the vital role each species plays in natures’ food chain, from the smallest microbe to the largest mammal.  

In the United Kingdom we are in the middle of wide-scale industrial unrest, covering most of our public services. The Union movement have rightly been agitating for better pay and conditions for their members; after all, that’s their role! I have never belonged to a union, but so often it seems they resist change, fight modernisation and are not really, in their heart-of-hearts, interested in the success of the company or organisation their members are working in. I want them to have a rethink, to stop saying ‘No!’ and to start making positive suggestions.

We had a strike by the Refuse Collection service in Brighton & Hove for weeks last year; people continued to throw out stuff, then simply on top of the overflowing bins. I want individuals to be more aware of what they discard, how they discard it and if they’ve had a delivery contained in large boxes, for those boxes to be flattened and put in the biggest recycling bin they can find, even if it means walking a hundred metres. I want the council to ensure such a basic collection service is guaranteed.

In the newspaper recently was a review of a book called “Sensational – A New Story of Our Senses” by Ashley Ward. James McConnachie found it ‘a serious and thoughtful book’ with some trivia woven into good solid scientific information, like how decibels are named after their inventor Alexander Graham Bell. But I want to know why ‘when dogs defecate they line up in a roughly north-south direction’? My lovely Labrador Tom is no longer of this world otherwise I’d be out with a compass to check out this claim. But if it’s true, I want to know why?

The Prime Minister here has recently suggested all school children should study Mathematics until 18, in line with some other forward-thinking countries. One newspaper gave some examples from Mathematics examination questions; all I can say it was a long time ago since I passed A level Maths!! But a great idea of Rishi Sunak, our current Prime Minister! I want something even more basic than the ability to understand percentages and statistics. What I really want is a promise from the Department of Education that all our children leave school being able to read and write properly. It’s disgraceful that in 2023 some will not and their lives will be hugely disadvantaged by that deficiency. For those within our prisons who can’t, reaching a certain standard of proficiency could be a condition of early release.

More thoughts to come ……

Richard 20^th January 2023

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Somewhere on the Ghan railway line from Adelaide to Darwin in Australia had 200% monthly rainfall in five days sometime in 2022!

Earlier this month I was moved to write, again, to The Times. (see PC 292 Dear Sir (1) July 2022 for the first collection)

January 2023

“Sir ….. I read with interest the French post office’s ideas for future first-class letters, writing on their website your ‘letter’, which is then printed off in the appropriate local post office, put in an envelope and delivered.

Wedded as I am to cursive script, I have a different 2023 solution. I write my bread-and-butter Thank You letters as normal, photograph them with my mobile phone, and send them free via WhatsApp. This is an instant first class solution, although my local postie Steve might disagree!”

So for this week’s postcard I have reprinted some of my previous efforts to get published nationally! Where necessary I have added a little explanation if the relevance isn’t clear or the passage of time causes me to add my own comment!

9^th November 2020

“Sir …… At the abbreviated (Covid-constrained) Remembrance Sunday service yesterday, the Bishop of London, as part of her prayers, remembered those who had given their lives for their country. It struck me that this should have been changed to ‘our country’?”

Now I am in conflict! They died fighting for the United Kingdom but they might well have come from Commonwealth countries so maybe it’s correct?

Much newsprint was naturally given to the international fight against Covid.

21^st April 2020

“Sir ……. In yesterday’s edition you showed a bar chart indicating Covid 19 patient outcomes but it failed to have bar for the 70-74 age group. At 73, should I be worried by its omission?

14^th April 2020

“Sir ….. Ben Macintyre, in yesterday’s article ‘Virus reawakens class conflict ….’, highlights the divisions in global society but suggests that these divisions exposed by the disease are reinforced by race. His ’35 per cent of our critically ill people were from a BAME background, despite making up only 14% of the population’ stands as a fact and nothing more. You surely can’t draw any conclusion without knowing much more?

Time Zones often cause confusion!

13^th February 2020

“Sir ……..In an article about Sinn Fein’s Irish poll success (Times 11th Feb 2020) there was a little embedded box about changes to the EU Times Zones. It rightly stated that an EU Commission has proposed an end to the biannual changing of the clocks ……. but you confused the story by saying that the EU switches back to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) on the last Sunday of October. Currently the EU (less Portugal and Ireland) is on Central European Time (CET), adds an hour for Central European Summer Time and then reverts back to CET and not GMT. Here in the UK we move from GMT to British Summer Time and back to GMT. Clear as mud huh!”

19^th August 2019

“Sir …. A recent letter from HMRC was addressed to me as Mr RC Yates, but the salutation read “Dear Sir/Madam”. Maybe they had recognised that I live in the city of Brighton & Hove and were covering my future options!”

6^th October 2018

“Sir ……. Elizabeth Smith’s letter, ‘Useful First Words’ 4th October, mentioned a report that the first word the Queen Mother had learnt to spell was ptarmigan. It reminded me of the story from an Alaskan village called ‘Chicken’. The settlement, started during the Gold Rush years, grew to such an extent that it warranted a name. Everyone agreed it should be called after the local bird, the ptarmigan. When no one offered to spell it correctly, they opted for ‘Chicken’ instead!” (See PCs 44 and 45 about our trip to Alaska in 2015)

16^th May 2019

“Sir …… Helen Rumbelow’s piece on the osteopath Nick Potter, Times 2 15 May 19, was fascinating. His main assertion seems to be that pain in simply in the brain. I concur! If I stub my toe, my toe hurts. If I bend down to rub it and hit my head, it’s only my head that hurts! Mind you, being male, I can only concentrate on one thing at once.”

21^st September 2018

“Sir …… As a nation with as deep and rich naval heritage as ours, surely we can get the nomenclature right. The article in today’s Times concerning the death of an Australian on a Mexican billionaire’s yacht referred to the boat’s back and not its stern. And while we are at it, the pointy bit in the front is the bow.”

In a similar vein, two years earlier on 27th June 2016

“Sir …….. I do wish you would take more care with your descriptions of photographs. Back in May this year you captioned a photograph indicating that Putney was downriver of Tower Bridge, whereas of course by convention it is upriver. Today you show the yachts before the start of the Round The World Clipper Race up river of Tower Bridge, facing upriver, and yet the caption says “Approaching Tower Bridge” – backwards?”

17^th January 2018

“Sir ……. After Tom Whipple’s negative piece in Friday’s Times about Bikram/hot yoga being no better for you than ordinary yoga, now Kevin Mahler in today’s Times believes that everyone doing it farts all the time! So now it’s smelly and “frequently practised naked”! Really! What a load of rubbish and unbecoming of the standard expected of The Times. Why can’t they accept that millions of people around the world embrace yoga, in its many forms, on a daily basis and here in the UK the more we can encourage people to do some form of exercise, any form of exercise, the better?

Whilst I appreciate Mahler tried ordinary yoga, maybe they should both take a 90 minute hot yoga session, and then pass judgement”

 24^th November 2017

“Sir ……. Carol Midgley can’t see what’s wrong with spooning jam straight from the pot onto toast (Times 2 22 Nov). Then goes on to compound her problem by suggesting it’s better than ‘putting a disgusting butter-smeared knife into the jam’. No one wants butter in the jam or vice versa. The simple solution is to put the butter onto one’s plate with a ‘butter knife’ and the jam onto one’s plate with a spoon. Then you can lather your toast anyway you wish.”

Richard 13^th January 2023

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

When was the last time you used a bus? I am not asking about the one that takes you, in some airports, from the terminal to your aeroplane, or waiting, if you’re lucky, for you to deplane, but a public one? If you live in the country, I suspect not recently, as in not this decade; the paucity of a good timetable and routes means if you want to return the same day, you drive your car. Growing up in Balcombe, some 18 miles north of here, the only way to get into Haywards Heath, the nearest town about 5 miles away, was on a single-decker bus; unless you walked just under a mile to the railway station and caught a train. The bus took you past the Ouse Valley Viaduct and over a small hump-backed bridge that spanned the river. Sitting in the back gave you a lift!

Here in Brighton & Hove we have a good reliable bus service that uses both diesel and electric buses to cover the whole city. In addition there is a frequent service from the city west, via Littlehampton, Bognor Regis and Chichester, to Portsmouth, provided by Stagecoach and its Coastliner 700 buses.

From home in Albany Villas we can simply walk up the road and have the option of two bus stops, each on a different route, giving us four buses to choose from; spoilt for choice one might say! So most week days we travel into Brighton’s Churchill Square and walk the few hundred metres to the Yoga-In-The-Lanes Studio in Middle Street. Those who travel by bus are an interesting cross section of the city’s inhabitants, although not equally representative!  

I notice some individuals queue for a few minutes before the bus comes along but seem surprised they have to pay, so fumble in their pocket or bag for a bus pass or card. It’s always interesting how the passengers on the lower deck accommodate the differing needs of the wheel chair users, the walking sticks of those needing support and the mums with push chairs. One young mother has twins and her double buggy takes up a great deal of room. Most passengers are lost in their own world, interacting with some form of social media, staring straight ahead to avoid eye contact, or using their phone to talk to someone. I love eavesdropping on anyone’s conversation but if they’re not using English I just get irritated!

And what do you do when someone plonks their feet, encased in their shoes, on the seat? Despite the sign asking them not to!

One chap had his whole leg on the seat and his facial expression suggested no one should challenge him, irrespective of whether his designer trainers have poo on them! Nice huh! And little dogs I understand, as they are often in a small pouch (pooch in a pouch?), but a Labrador??

There remains a lot of ‘Covid’ about, laid on top of the normal winter influenza viruses and you might think individuals would take some responsibility for their own health and be aware of those around them. A week or so before Christmas a non-mask-wearing woman came onto the bus with lots of shopping in plastic bags and, wheezing and sighing loudly, squeezed herself into a seat. Five minutes later she sneezed and tried to restrict the spread of the mucous by putting her hand over her nose! Well, that’s OK because we all sneeze sometimes – having a handkerchief or not is another matter. I later observed her, I assume completely subconsciously, grab a vertical handrail with the hand she had sneezed into ………. (and here I should insert one of those little emoji things).

There are few masks in evidence even though it’s flu season and why wouldn’t you wear one? Maybe I am being ridiculous? We have lived with everyone else’s germs for millennia and generally our immune system copes well, but on my birthday last October I baulked at blowing out the candles on my birthday cake!! Don’t think about it too long, but you can understand the dilemma?

The route takes us through Palmeira Square, where we looked at an apartment to buy back in 2012, before we found our gorgeous one here in Amber House, and along Western Road. There’s a new sculpture of bronze-looking fish by the bus stop in Norfolk Square.

It was created by local artist Steve Geliot and is made of three 180 year-old cast iron dolphins which used to form part of the Victoria Fountain in Old Steine in central Brighton. The fountain was renovated in 1990 and the dolphins removed; obviously they didn’t fit the new design brief! They had been stored in Stanmer Park in Brighton ever since.

Further along the bus stop is named ‘Waitrose’, as it’s outside a branch of the supermarket chain, although every other stop is named after a local road or square. After Clarence Square and the announcement we should alight here for the ‘Brighton i360’, we arrive in Churchill Square, a mishmash of architectural styles dominated on the north side by a 1960’s modern building and on the south side by a shopping centre. 

Some of the buses on the route are electric and have USB charging points everywhere; these are extremely popular! And the city has an ‘ultra-low emissions zone’ to encourage more environmentally friendly means of transport. Mentioning electric-powered buses reminds me of a great BBC series on television – “The Secret Genius of Modern Life” where Professor Hannah Fry uncovers the secrets behind some of the technologies we have come to rely on. She investigates the Fitbit, Alexa, trainers and electric cars. Did you know that Thomas Edison drove an electric car? It is still drivable today.

          But being a child at heart, I was completely taken in by her simplistic demonstration of how to build a basic electric motor! So, if you’re interested:

Take a power source, say an ordinary battery

Attach some bent paper clips to each end with some masking tape

Take a piece of copper wire and wind it around something circular, say a biro. If the wire has some insulation, strip that back using some sandpaper or wire-stripper.

If you don’t have any little magnets (?) go down to your hardware store and buy some. Place the magnets on the battery under the coiled wire and Hey! Ho! It’ll turn!

This is the first postcard of 2023; there will be more!

Richard 6^th January 2023

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk