While it is certainly easier to express myself in English, there are some great Spanish words. For example, trámites describes all those bureaucratic procedures you have to go through to get something done. The Department of Motor Vehicles survives on trámites. There's also the two verbs most often translated "to know": conocer and saber. Saber means to know something intellectually, such as a subject you studied in school. Conocer is to know something through experiencing it.
You'll notice I get more reflective as my journeys come to an end, but why am I on this tangent of different ways of knowing? Because Tuesday we saw Chuquicamata, the largest open pit mine in the world, a hole in the ground kilometers wide and almost a kilometer deep. This copper mine is owned and operated by the government of Chile. Near the mine is the company town of the same name that is essentially a ghost town. The government decided the town was too contaminated so they have moved the workers to Calama, a town about 15 km away. A good decision, but it leaves houses, an auditorium, a theater, schools, parks and playgrounds eerily empty. The hospital has already been covered by mountains of rock from the pit and houses are soon to follow. The town of Chuquicamata reminds me of the Ukrainian town of Prypiat near the Chernobyl nucelar plant. Prypiat was also abandoned due to contamination, but in a matter of hours instead of years.
There is a scene in The Motorcycle Diaries, a film about Che Guevara's travels with a friend through South America, where they are at Chuquicamata and a foreman tells them the mine is not a tourist site. I agree; however, I think the point of visiting places like Chuqui and Chernobyl isn't to pasear (another great Spanish word), but to conocer, to know somewhere or something or someone personally and to learn from them.
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