Bye Bye Chile

It seems just yesterday. when I had arrived at Antofagasta  - and now the assignment is about to come to an end. Final presentations due tomorrow, the fact that Alfredo, Matt and I have weathered it without strangling each other (though we were close a few times), is perhaps testimony to that something in our professional DNA, which makes us work towards completing the assigned goal, no matter how challenging it may be.

A quick recap of the intervening weeks, from the last update.

The square at San Pedro

Week 3 Highlights: Long weekend at San Pedro. A tiny desert town in the Atacama desert, flanked by the snow capped Andes, under the blue blue sky. A sunny city square, where you can sit with coffee for hours, and enjoy the pleasures of idleness. The moon valley with its craters and magnificent sunset, which was a bit of an uphill hike, but we made it. The salt water lakes, where apparently one could “walk” on water, only we couldn’t get to that particular one because the travel agent took us for a ride! The handcrafted copper jewellery, in the city square, that we kept going back for! But most of all, the best memory – the night sky like a dome and the stars right down to the horizon, the countless stars and the Milky Way above you, truly, it was not difficult to imagine oneself out in space!

The ghost town

At the copper mines

Week 4 – Heads down at work, closing the last mile. Helped along by opportunities to drown sorrows (a day without internet) at a wine tasting event. A Happy Four Hours at the Mexican place, lots of bonding. The long walk by the ocean boulevard, alone, and with colleagues. A Picasso exhibition with Tanya, quite a plus at Antofagasta!  A visit to the Chuquicamata mines, the world’s largest copper mine, set in an eerily deserted town, that almost seems like a ghost town.

My time in Chile is drawing to a close, time to say Adios , but who knows! #IBMCSC Chile 3