Graves of Caleta Buena – Chile

February 10, 2017 SouthAmerica

The coast north of Iquique is wild, undeveloped, and generally inaccessible. Life in this environment is harsh, as the graves in the ghost company town of Caleta Buena provides witness. Caleta Buena is a historic “port” located at the base of a 750-meter high escarpment along the northern Chilean coast. The town was founded in 1888 and once had enough population to require a police station, customs office, school, and theater (the latter burnt to the ground in 1929, taking the town with it). It is situated at some 39 km north of Iquique in a place that is mostly forgotten about.

The location once had a loading facility for nitrites that came 26 km to the east from the Santa Agua salitre office that was once operated by Campbell Outram and Company before the 1879-1883 War of the Pacific. Before this war Iquique and Caleta Buena were part of the Peruvian territory. From Santa Agua many rail spurs also connected to other nitrite (a.k.a. saltpeter, NaNO₃) processing facilities at Negreiros, Primitiva, Valparaiso, Constancia, Ramirez, and Mapocho, which are all scattered about the Atacama Desert near the modern town of Huara. Many old ghost operations dot the Salars of Chile for the production of fertilizer, and most have similar old cemeteries. The mixed ore of potassium and sodium nitrite is locally called “salitre.” To the north, Caleta Junin had a similar rail network snaking inland to the baking hot salt mines. Caleta Buena railway was initiated in 1889 to bypass the older existing rail network held in monopoly by Nitrite Railways company. Many of the salitre mining operations used their own company currencies, as did the Nitrite Railways with its own printed peso bills.

Little is left of shipping infrastructure that loaded Clipper and steamships at Caleta Buena. Several wood piers once jutted beyond the rocks, and inclined rail cars, moved by cables and winches, trucked product down from the town site perched on the Atacama Desert pediment. Now wild animals live freely at Caleta Buena. From high above you can hear the seals in the coves and flocks of birds. The wildlife continues as before Darwin’s boat bumped along the coast.

The surreal cemetery in the sterile desert plain has hundreds of weathered wooden grave markers. The place is constantly hammered by the sun and wind, making it remarkable that so many markers remain standing. One grave site was from 1921, the man was 19 years old. Most graves are now unmarked, the weather has erased all traces. In the surrounding desert are thousands of broken bottles, the glass turned purple from decades of sun exposure. The wooden grave markers are an anomaly because there are essentially no trees in the Atacama Desert. In the city of Iquique, in 1904, the Club Española, along with much of the other historic buildings, was built from imported timber shipped from Oregon. At Caleta Buena, who knows where the wood used in the grave markers came from?

Caleta Buena is eerily silent, the landscape desolate. The memories vanished from bygone generations. It is one more hidden secret of the Atacama Desert far removed from tourist trade routes. To get there from Iquique, drive out Highway 16, take a left onto spur A-610, and go 4 km then depart on a dirt road northward (GPS waypoint -20.232576, -70.055541) driving through the rather nasty informal widespread trash dumping area for Iquique. Continue northward along the dirt road some 45 km to the overlook on the coast (location at -19.887095, -70.116846). Bring plenty of water, and do not expect cell phone service. Depending on the time of the year, it may be hot, or the place can be swept by frigid winds. Caleta Buena makes for an interesting daytrip from Iquique, a place to ponder survival in harsh environments.