Back to the Atacama

Several years ago, I caught part of a BBC travel documentary about the most extreme locations on the planet – the hottest, the coldest, the highest, etc. My ears perked up when the host said he was going to Coya Sur, Chile. This place is only 78 km from Tocopilla....

Tocopilla Folklore

Ghosts and Elves The folklore of Tocopilla is much like that of other small towns in Chile and probably much like that of Latin America in general. For instance, there’s a mythical creature called ‘chupacabra’ – ‘goat sucker’ that kills animals by sucking their blood,...

The Dream

Still haunted She came to me in a dream. It probably wasn’t Mamacita at her best. I still wonder what motivated her. She had always seemed to be one of those people who would rather be right than happy. So apologizing was not her strong suit. But she had died the week...

Mamacita died in Tocopilla

Still haunted by her character I have yet to discover the many stories of my Chilean grandmother-in-law. Hopefully I’ll learn more before long but for now, suffice to say that she was a powerful woman who lived a full life. She died in Tocopilla more than 20 years...

Tocopilla – little town of stories

Riches behind the walls I’ve decided that the inital blogs will be about Tocopilla, the small town caught on a narrow ledge between the Pacific shores of northern Chile and the towering Andes. This is home to my Chilean family and it’s the inspiration for so many more...