Christine's trip to Baquedaño y Chacabuco

What a fun past few days!

There is a town about 30 minutes away called Baquedaño. It's a one stoplight sort of town that got a lot of attention recently because the last James Bond 007 movie was partly filmed there at an old train station. It's a train station that the normal person would not know about or know where to find it. The sign "museo" is tiny and one has to walk over train tracks, behind buildings, and practically go through a maze to find it, but when you find it it is really neat!

I went with a friend who has a great eye for photography and it was a really neat experience. There are no museum attendants or historical information. It's just an abandoned area with old trains that they call a museum.

Very interesting!

Then we headed to Chacabuco, located about 1-1.5 hours away from Antofagasta. It's an old abandoned mining town in the middle of nowhere. It had an old hospital, maternity ward, theater, playgrounds/park, housing for the mining families and housing for everyone else that worked in the "city". In the 70s when Pinochet took over he sent approximately 1800 people that were against his overtake (which included many political figures) to this place to be held as prisoners.

There was hardly anyone at this historical site so we had the place to ourselves.

Above and below are just a few of the streets.

Inside one of the abandoned homes.

Above is inside the theater. We thought we were sneaking into the theater but the maintenance attendant came in with two French tourists and ended up showing us an interesting museum on the third floor and then took us up to the rooftop to have a beautiful view of the city.

This picture of a "General Electric Company" machine is a good representation of one reason why I am in Chile. Our world is an international business playground.

We found the public restrooms. Haha.

I love well kept secrets and this place was one. I saw a sign that i really liked on the premise. It said something like, "Este lugar no tiene cosas, tiene vivencias," meaning this place doesn't have things, it has personal experiences.

Chao,

Christine