Day 3: Pisagua

Pisagua is a tiny town with a very interesting landscape and brutal history. Originally, it was built as a port town for all the minerals that were mined in the area. It´s nestled in between the Cordillera and the Pacific on a tiny ledge, making Micah shake with fear at the thought of an earthquake, or worse off, a tsunami. It´s a claustrophobe´s nightmare! We decided to make the trip short for her frazzled nerves and went straight for the graveyard.

It´s an amazing graveyard overlooking the coast. All the gravesites had a wooden crib. We don´t know exactly what that´s about... Is it a chilean custom or just a Pisagua custom? Maybe it´s their way of protecting the dead from falling out of their coffin into the rocky coast?

The real reason we went to the graveyard wasn´t to explore the cribs, despite it´s intrigue. Pisagua´s more recent history of brutality is due to its isolation, which provided Pinochet a perfect location for one of his torture camps. Recently, a memorial was erected paying tribute to bodies found in an unmarked mass grave and to political prisoners of the area who were ¨disappeared¨.

After the memorial we went to the town and were almost immediately bombarded by a group of tiny superheroes. I wonder what it´s like to grow up next to a memorial reminding you of tortures... I was so happy to leave Pisagua on a note of laughter and youth...thanks niños.