The next target on our journey south was Antofagasta, a large city back at the coast. When we read about the possibility to visit an active mine at the city of Calama, we decided to give this grim mining town a chance and have a little stop.
After reading and hearing from different sources about the low quality and inflated prices of Calama’s hotelery (thanks to all the rich miners) we decided, for the first time, to book ahead our next bus tickets out of Calama to Antofagasta. A decision we immediately regretted after arriving at our hotel…
While the night was not really cheap, it was significantly less than in San Pedro and came with a very comfortable and modern room and bath, a lovely outdoor area and excellent service.
The state-owned company Codelco runs all copper mines in Chile and is the largest copper producer in the world. Most of the mines were previously in private hands but have been nationalized in the 60s and 70s. A wise step considering Codelco makes a few billion USD of profit every year!
Their most prominent mine is Chuquicamata, an open pit mine which opened in 1882 and has been digging into the ground since then, becoming the largest open pit copper mine in the world.
We joined Codelco’s tour to Chuqui, which they offer daily and for free and includes a visit to the mine itself and to the neighbouring mining town, which turned ghost-town in 2007. Miners and their family have always lived very close to their workplace but the mining process emits a lot of toxic vapors, not creating the best living environment, which Codelco finally had to accept after tougher environmental laws were put into place. In addition, the excavation creates a lot of debris which takes up space. A typical copper mine has a grade of 1%, meaning that only 1% of the soil is pure copper and the rest is (mostly) waste which has to be stored somewhere. And as mining trucks are extremely fuel intensive and expensive, “somewhere” means right next to the pit. The “hills” you can see surrounding the city are just that – and these debris hills are just everywhere.
It took them more than 3 years to move the whole city of 18’000 inhabitants to the main town of Calama, building new homes, streets, schools, a hospital etc.
The tour bus takes a small ride through the mining operations, but access is naturally limited as the mine is in full operations and you don’t want to get a bus crushed by one of the many 7m high and 100t heavy trucks. They have nearly 100 such trucks running at any time and the roads are pretty busy.
The highlight of the tour is a viewpoint into the massive open pit – 4.5km long and 1km deep!
Its hard to really grasp the size of the thing, as everything seems scaled up from normal roads and cars. But once you remind yourself that those small dots in the background are 7m high trucks, driving in 20m high terraces, then you suddenly feel very small…
Here a close-up of the roads opposite:
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