In the Very Olden Days, as Jasmine might say, Roman soldiers were paid their salary in salt. Hence "salary". It was clearly among the most valuable commodities, and in a somewhat different form still is for this region of Chile. San Pedro de Atacama is a pretty ramshackle town, but has seen a boom in population and perhaps prosperity with tourism and especially the lithium that's mined, along with copper in the surrounding hillsides by the likes of Codelco and Antofagasta.
Coincidentally, I've just finished "Nostromo", by Joseph Conrad. Writing at the start of the C20th, Conrad invented fictional but entirely realistic South American country rich in silver deposits and wracked with political intrigue.
The various protagonists were made vivid for me by the many places we've visited on this trip. Chief among them is the Capataz de Cargadores, Nostromo. What a dude. And central to the revolution that devastates the frontier town of Sulaco in the country of Costaguana. Colonialism, capitalism and the curse of natural resources all figure prominently in this tale. In the end, a bit lengthy and melodramatic for my taste, but isn't that a feature of Latin American history, after all?
In the Valle de la Luna, Jas and Iris resume the work they began in Patagonia as amateur geologists, collecting quartz, obsidian and rock salt. Jasmine will be throwing a banquet on return to London for friends of St. George's, as the desert salt "is so much better than anything in London".
We pour water on the desert floor and you can see through it like ice, or layers of glass. Everywhere we go in Atacama Jasmine is eating rocks.
The landscapes are other-worldly, and it's a strange sensation to be baking in the heat of the desert, in plain view of snowcapped volcanoes on the horizon.
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