Bahía Inglesa/Caldera

I spent the last weekend “camping” in Bahía Inglesa which is about an hour away from Copiapó. I went with two other volunteers from Copiapó and one of their Chilean cousins, Cristian. Bahía is normally full of tourists flocking to their beaches in the summer but as it’s still pretty chilly here it was pretty desolate. It’s kind of nice though. When we arrived in Caldera we visited “the first train station” in Chile. I put quotes around “the first” but I can’t be certain if it really was. I’ve been hearing conflicting stories. First, I heard the train station in Copiapó was the first, but then my source changed their story to say that they were built at the same time. The reason for the first train was to carry minerals from Copiapó to the port city of Caldera where they would be loaded onto a boat and shipped out to the rest of the world. The story was that the guy who was in charge of the train production was a little crazy. He insisted on moving the train kilometer by kilometer as each track was lain, instead of waiting until the end to make one trip from Copiapó to Caldera. You can’t forget the fact that this was in the middle of the desert, under the hot sun that these guys were working to lay the first train tracks, which is supposedly the first in South America. I don’t really know all the facts because a: I’m not sure I trust my understanding of Spanish and b: I’m almost certain I’ve been told conflicting stories. Regardless, we visited the “first train station” and they had converted it into a museum complete with some of the rocks and minerals of the region on display.
We saw a few churches as well. One was built by hand by the first priest in Caldera. He also happened to be black so they called him padre negro. The church was really impressive; he had painted all the walls and the ceiling with stories of the bible. We got some great empanadas there in Caldera too. I was told by a brother of Flavio’s that I needed to try an empanada ostion queso. It was some sort of crab/seafood that they stuck in the cheesy empanada. And it was tasty!
We spent the night in Bahía Inglesa in this “campsite” which had different levels of camping. From what I understood you could actually pitch a tent in some of the open areas, but there were also huts you could rent. Some of them seriously looked like they chopped the roof off of a house and made that the “cabin.” We had a more normal looking, rectangular cabin that we stayed in. At night we had an asado or Chilean bbq. I like to take credit for starting the fire because I did actually start the first set of newspaper, as well as, putting a terrific effort in swatting at the flames to get the coals started. Cristian is a great cook so with just lemon and salt he made a great asado complete with chorizo, steak and chicken. We had so much meat. And so much beer. It was a great night. The others ended up going to a discoteque but I stayed in because I was feeling a little under the weather. I woke up feeling a lot better tho, further proving my theory that sometimes a little alcohol is a good cure to the common cold. It was either that or the excess of meat. I don’t know. The world may never know.