Mud bath

Wednesday 26th December

Today we drove up to the hilly oasis of Mamina, which is about 120 km from Iquique. It is reknowned throughout Chile for its spring waters which are alleged to have all sorts of curative properties. At first inspection, the village looks a bit like a shanty town and on second inspection that doesn’t change. There are plenty of signs advertising hotels with their own, private baths, but they all seemed to be closed or hidden away.

Our destination was the Barros Chino, which must have been as far from where we parked as it could be. Walking through the village we came across some llamas and sheep who we fed grass. The valley was green but no one seemed to be cultivating the land. Quite a few of the houses were half built or falling down. It is difficult to know if anyone was living there.

There is a bottling factory where they bottle the local waters, which seemed to be the only source of employment, unless some of the people work at the local mineral mines.

Barros Chino was an experience. It was a small piece of land with a couple of natural springs. You pay $1,500 pesos (about £1.50) and an old man brings you a bucket of mud from one of the pools. You then cover yourself with said mud and lie on wooden benches and bake in the sun.

The pool where the mud is from

Once it is all dry and cracking, you wash off all the mud in a surprisingly warm pool.

The facility was simple, had seen better days, but was very clean. We seemed to be the only visitors, which would mean that the old couple who run the facility made £3.

This is meant to be a tourist attraction in Chile, and yet there is no one there.

This might be the last blog for a few days as we are heading off into the hills, and are not sure where we will be staying.