Visitante Minera Escondida

Early in July I took a business trip to northern Chile to visit a mine site and meet with some customers. It was quite a trip.

We flew into Santiago first, which is located roughly in the center of Chile, the tall, skinny country that borders the western side of South America. Santiago is nestled at the foot of the Andes mountains and the view from the airplane was spectacular.

Then we flew north for a couple of hours to the edge of the Atacama desert, to the city of Antofagasta which is squeezed between the ocean and mountains of dirt. Not so spectacular.

Antofagasta is a bustling city of over 200,000, mainly supported by mining and mine-related industry. I stayed in the Holiday Inn Express of all places and had a great view of the bay and the rocky waterfront. One of the most fascinating things to me about the area was that even though the city is right on the coast they get almost no rain. The desert literally starts at the surf line, with some places further inland not seeing measurable precipitation for over seven years. Amazing.

Here's what we went to see. The Escondida mine is one of the largest copper mines in the world and the hole in the ground is mind-boggling.

The requisite selfie.

On our last night there joined a group of our sales and marketing colleagues who happened to be in town for some other meetings and who were hosting a social event (supper) for a few mining customer higher-ups and our local dealer. I guess that means they were working. We engineers just sat back and enjoyed the food and tried to catch a few snatches of conversation, all of which was happening at full volume and in rapid-fire Spanish.

We ate at a fantastic steakhouse called Mu (pronounced Moo), which translates to "Yummy" in any language. The menu said "Solo para Expertos" (only for Experts), but I ordered the Bife Chorizo Angus anyway. Afterwards, I converted the metric weight of 750 grams to something a little more familiar: 26.5 ounces! No wonder I was stuffed.