Km 4270: Iquique

In a land without water, cities need a reason to exist. It’s something you don’t realize until you leave the comfort of Ontario, since we have an abundance of water and cities seem to spring up willy-nilly all over the place. But for so much of the rest of the world, geography and resources dictate the ability to sustain life. This struck me as I continued to journey across and along the Atacama Desert, seeing no signs of life because there were no necessities of life out there.

That’s why it was a relief to leave the desert behind and descend a beautiful sand dune into the coastal town of Iquique. The place grew as a regional centre and shipping stop for the mined minerals of the desert, but to a bus-weary traveler, it was like arriving in a resort town. The oceanfront is large and decently maintained and best of all, only steps away from the hostel. I watched the sunset from the hostel’s rooftop patio and was quite content.
Iquique was the second place I got brutally sick for no apparent reason (but I did confirm it wasn’t Dengue Fever!). It was a place where one of my British dormmates was so incomprehensible in speaking that it sounded as if he had a bunch of marbles in his mouth. In Iquique I also bumped into a girl at a grocery store who I had worked with for a few days at an engineering competition back home. But the reason to remember the place is for the parasailing.
Iquique isn’t just technically perfect for parasailing (parapente) but it is also a beautiful location to give it a try. When we jumped off the dune overlooking town, several kilometers from the beach we would land at, my first thought was that we’d start gliding down. Not at all. The thermals caused by the warm desert air and cool ocean breeze shot us up almost immediately, and within a few minutes we were looking down at the starting point. For a little while, we were one with the birds. It’s a sublime, natural experience, almost like being on a boat if not for the spectacular views.
The ride is long, almost 45 minutes. The first half is the absolute bliss of a new experience, the peace and exhilaration of floating above the city. We sail little by little northward, catching thermals here and there to shoot us back to high elevations. By the second half the seasickness that they had warned about starts to reach the point that I can’t pretend anymore. I start thinking about the vomit bag my guide gave me. Buoyancy in air is like buoyancy in the sea and in times of constant, unpredictable motion both tax your stomach. And strapped to a guy several hundred feet in the air, there’s not really anything you can do.

The final descent over the city and it’s azure blue waters, once we had left the stomach-churning thermals, was incredible. My guide told me he was a competitive parasail racer, number two in Chile. I would bet there are only six guys in the country who race competitive parasail but still a respectable claim. I asked if he had ever made love while parasailing. He said he was still working on it. Then he did some spinning and near-flip tricks.
And then all of a sudden the palm trees were next to us and we were landing. I don’t remember any sort of impact, I just remember lying on the soft grass and reminding myself that I was back to earth. My friend Eric, a once-Morgan Stanley investor who I had been travelling with since San Pedro, was already passed out on the ground.

Eric and I left Iquique at 5am, roughly the same time we had arrived only a few laid-back days earlier. In fact, we saw our “replacements”, pulling in from the overnight bus, go crash on the lobby couch until the front desk opened. We passed along the desert for a few more hours to Arica, the last Chilean frontier. Looking back, I couldn’t quite make out Patagonia and the southern tip of Chile some 4270 km to the south. But I knew they were there.

We said our final goodbyes to Chile and I gave my leftover coins to some gypsy lady. We stepped into a taxi to take us to the nearby border with Peru, and onward into a new unknown.