10.06.2013
There is a copper mine near the town of Calama. One can read about it that it is ".... excavated by volume the biggest open pit copper mine"
The mine belongs to the state company of Codelco, which organizes free guided tours to the mine and to the adjacent derelict city of Chiquicamata.
On weekdays there is one trip per day , starting at 13:30. One could register by mail, but since I did not get any response to my mail sent in the morning, it was safer to drive half an hour earlier to the mining company 's office to investigate. There it turned out that the mail had arrived and there were were enough vacancies in the bus. And yet - as it still is a mine, it is required to have - tight shoes, long pants and long-sleeved shirt . And in the bus an orange vest and a red helmet were waiting.
First we visited the abandoned city of Chuquiamata. People are not allowed to visit it on their own. The town was abandoned in 2008, due to increasingly stringent health requirements, and the residents were resettled a few kilometers from the city of Calama .
Plaza Los Heroes.
Theatre.
Workers Houses
Further on towards the mine
The tour guide introduced some facts - at the same time there are more than 100 trucks in the mine, one truck will cost 5.000.000 USD, weights 100 tons, one tire will cost 40.000 USD and transport consumes 3 tons of fuel per day
Almost a kilometer-deep hole, 3 km wide and the lenght of it is 4,9 kilometers. Black dots are the same 100 ton trucks.
And looking down those big trucks seemed like toy cars.
Old tires have been used to make decent high fence.
We arrived back at the city Calama an hour before dark, and then was already too late to start mowing forward ...
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