Day 1

We´re in La Serena trying to coordinate who to meet, when, where, etc. La Serena is about 5.5 hours north of Santiago along the Panamerican Highway. It´s very dry up here with a rugged, salt-sprayed coastline, some long sweeps of beach with good surf and a few very local towns where Chilenos on summer vacation run across the street in bathing suits on their way to boogie board. It gets dark around 9pm.

Planning has been difficult as it is hard for our sole contact, the Black River First Nations representative, Don Clarke, to get in touch with Diaguita locals. We´re finally making headway after receiving the name and location of a man in El Perales, a small town in the Valle del Transito. Apparently we can drive into the town and just ask for him, it´s that small. So we´ll leave La Serena soon, drive north to Vallenar, then east into the valleys draining the Andes and the Pascua Lama site.

Also in the emails was a response from Ron Kettles, Barrick´s Project Manager at Pascua Lama. He asked which publications we represent and indicated he had only been aware of a tour for Huascoaltino (Diaguita) leaders to see the site and understand Barrick´s water protection intentions. He said he could only arrange a brief tour for us and that we wouldn´t see anything interesting, with no villages in the site. He said flatly that there would be no ¨treks¨ on the property because the requisite medical services could not accompany us. This is not good. We want to get into the site - there is no infrastructure currently, just Andean high country, a few roads, and a base camp. Physically, it should be no different than traveling in the adjacent, open high country. Only this part is not open. Hopefully, we will work something out.

So we´ll meet Sergio in Valle de Transito. We could spend a few days exploring the upper elevations of the concerned watersheds.