JB+C

Charles Darwin July 12, 2010 I have taken a plane from my home in England to the city of Iquique, Chile. It used to be in Peru. The climate is extremely dry, as in my last visit. The major landform is still the immense sea of emptiness [the Atacama], but the Cordillera River is much less important because they have many other water sources. The natural resources of salt, silver, and nitrate of soda are not really needed anymore. On the whole, the people here are less poor. There are no more estates and most of these people are middle-class, but there is a homeless population. The per capita GDP is $14,700, which is a middling number. The Human Development Index (HDI) ranking is 44th out of 187. The United Nations assigns this number based on many different statistics. The Literacy Rate is 95.7% and the Life Expectancy is 77.53 years at birth. The ruins of the indian village are still a landmark, but much more widely used for giving directions are large buildings in the city of Iquique. The city of Callao is much nicer than it was in my last visit. I had called it a "filthy, ill-built, small seaport". Now it is a small city bustling with activity. Travel eastward, and you will still find heck on earth- the Atacama Desert.