Days 6-10

On Monday we were headed out of the Huasco Valley (scene of the Pascua Lama project and conflict)to get some perspective from above. We´d met many locals - at their homes, in their small vineyard, lounging by the swimming holes, and we´d attended a few small community meetings. Everyone we approached listened intently as we explained our goals for the project and why we were wandering their dusty streets like freelance missionaries. Getting to know the people and the overall lifestyle of the valley is important and we had to do it in an informal manner. Luckily, it worked and we´ll go back for more in a week or so. But... we had to get into the high mountains and with every road in the Husaco Valley either ending at a Barrick gate (2) or at a horse trail that would take 50km of walking just to arrive at any elevation, we decided to drive south and enter the mountains via a maintained road that passes into Argentina. So on Monday we planned to leave early for the 6 hour drive.

However... planning for a project like this - rural villages without communication and a big corporation with too much communication (i.e. red tape) - requires the flexibility of silly putty. On our way out the valley Monday morning we stopped by Sergio´s house (community leader, initial contact). He said he would be in Vallenar the next day for the first meeting with the water commissioner of the region. He invited us to join and film it, leaving a copy for him.
So we rearranged and found a danky hostel in Vallenar for the night (apparently, the prices for dirty hostal rooms are twice that of other comparable cities because the miners have spiked demand during their off-days. Perfect.)

We met Sergio, the community lawyer, and one other Huascoaltino representative at the city hall on Vallenar Plaza. The meeting lasted an hour dominated mostly by the self-assured explanations of the water commissioner, a Latin American poor-man´s Indian Jones in dusty leather jacket, profesorial collared shirt, boots, scraggly hair, and a beard over weather-worn skin. He leaned back in his chair and confidently told Sergio and the lawyer that the private property of Barrick or anyone else could not be interfered with. I get a little confused with Spanish at this level, but it´s not that simple with different layers - surficial land, water vs subsurface water - belonging to different parties. We taped and recorded it and gave Sergio a copy. Off to the mountains.

Leaving one valley, driving south along the coast and then back east into the another valley sounds easy but this country is long and drawn out. We finally made it up to the bend-in-the-road campsite we´d picked out from a map at 10:30pm. Real dark and real starry. A creek ran by our pull-off and we could see the silhouette of some massive mountains up the creek´s valley. Some large patches of white reflected the lingering light in the sky. Snow, glaciers, snowfields, whatever you want to call them. We went to sleep at 13,500 feet and less than 10km from the Argentine border at the crest of the Andes.
For the next three days (until arriving this afternoon in La Serena) we explored the valleys extending up into the bank of mountains that held the most substantial water sources. The landscape is stark and harsh. At first glance it looks like massive piles of dirt with some snow on top and a few water-filled gulleys and a baking sun in blue sky. But as we adjust, slowly to the altitude and the lack of any shade, we find rich extremes. The crumbling gulleys of brown and gray slate rocks descend to little creeksides covered in carpets of thick grasses and rich soils. Up on the banks 50 feet above the waterways little pods of green, like rough, prickly mosses, grow every few feet. Climbing higher, the grasses diminish but the water keeps rushing out of the bases of dry slopes. Little springs pop out everywhere. We climb further, to the base of the snowfields/glaciers capping the mountains and find more water, now flooding out from mud-covered ice layers, running down in Yoohoo-colored torrents before disappearing into the loose rock surface of the mountainsides. The water will reappear out of the hillsides in various outlets, filtered clear of the original silt and mud. Water pours out of these desert mountains.

While the crumbly, steep mountains, high elevations, and 14-hours of sun had their way with us, the trip was necessary for the project. We saw first-hand the importance of water in these mountains and their valleys. Although it´s not the same mountains, snow, or rivers as those affected by Pascua Lama and Barrick´s other projects (Pachuy/Chollay, Valeriano) the climate, topography, and glaciology are similar