DAY 22

The tick-list tourist

Location: San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

To say Oliver was different would be an understatement to beat all others. Charming yes, knowledgeable for sure, but his driving was not Abed’s. Slow and steady was his way, at times verging on stationary, but there was a chance I would be alive by nightfall. My insurers would have approved, and my adrenal glands will be forever grateful.

“Seen those before?” he asked, pointing to a group of locals sat by the road, as we crawled our way down a perfectly surfaced, winding highway towards San Pedro de Atacama from the chaos of the Hito Cajones border post. Gone the Bolivian dirt-track, gone the dust and stones, not a jackal anywhere in the distance, and plenty of hygiene and cleanliness. Chile was trying hard to make an impression, was on the road to success, and one glance showed it was in a different financial league to Bolivia.

I glanced to our right and spotted the group instantly. Four women, sitting on the ground, a huge pile of cloth bundles beside them. They were talking earnestly, as ladies sometimes do, clearly happy, arms waving like Italians and apparently unaware of the world around them. I guessed they would be waiting for a bus even if there was no sign of a bus stop in any direction.

“What about them?” I asked.

Oliver smiled and gave a let-me-tell-you glance. “Look at the colours,” he declared, his accent Liverpudlian, a twang that is unique to the English city and easily detectable by a native Brit. “And look at their hats.”

I looked again. Stupid. Me, the writer, trained to observe; I had missed what even the visually challenged might see. The women were dressed in so many colours they put shame on a rainbow, while on each head sat a hat. You should have seen those hats.

But there is a problem. I am the last to write about fashion, especially when it comes to headgear. I spend most of my life in easy-wash clothing, and neckties have gone by the way. When I tie one these days I have to keep open a book of instruction. And for my head, for the sun, my best offering is a blue, floppy thing, from Sweden, bought as an afterthought, and which I wear whenever I remember; rarely, if ever at all.

But Chile is different. Bolivia, too. They are nations with a sense of colour, an appreciation of style and fit. Head cover is de rigueur, most particularly in the country. Red hats, yellow hats, green and multicolour. Big hats, small hats and sizes undecided.

The form that seems most peculiar is the last I expected to see. Two of the roadside ladies were wearing them, one bright yellow, the hat that is, the other bright green. The hats were bobbing wildly as each lady stressed her point. I was a long way from home, I thought, to see a British bowler.

The bowler hat was first made in 19^th century London to protect gamekeepers from low-hanging trees. Then, or so the legend goes, in the early 20^th century a shipment of bowlers was sent to Chile from Europe for use by Europeans who had been asked to construct a railroad. There were certainly no low-hanging trees. The hats arrived, were way too small for Europeans, so appeared on the heads of locals. It did not take them long.

Rapidly, and certainly to the Aymara tribe, which has inhabited northern Chile, southern Peru and western Bolivia for more than a millennium, the bowler became an icon. How they wore them was important, too. Bowler dead centre and the wearer was married, to one side, widowed or divorced. And near the back of the head, perhaps perched on a bun? Relationship complicated. Best approach and ask.

But the bowler is just the beginning. There are stalls in local markets dedicated to hats, so many of the things you cannot count them - the traditional straw chupalla, the multicoloured bandana, the Trilby, Fedora and Homburg, not forgetting the Stetson and, for many today, a baseball cap with peak fore or aft. This is a region where hats multiply like rabbits. Ask a local to appear bare-headed is like a London banker not wearing a suit. Hats are the thing in rural Chile and Bolivia. It is simply how people are seen.

San Pedro de Atacama, which we reached ten minutes later, now has tourism to a tee. Home to 5000 locals, it welcomes roughly two million visitors every year and is a go-to location for Chile. For me, it was the end rather than the beginning. It was where, for the first time, I met with those for whom tick-list travelling was essential. Tick-listers make a list of sights at home, several weeks before departure, and then solemnly tick them off once in country, one by one by one; the look-where-I’ve-been approach to travel.

“I’ll pick you up in a couple of days. Same time, same place,” yelled Oliver through an open window, as his four-by-four drew slowly away. He had left me, dust-stained and grime-covered, outside the portico of a posh hotel, way better than any I had seen on my travels. My battered bags lay on the ground beside me, the one fellow countryman I had seen in more than a fortnight was disappearing into the distance and for the first time, I felt lonely and out of place. A wave of fear briefly grasped me. It was senseless, but I wanted to turn and run. Yet all around was desert, or sandy cliff, apart from directly before me, where lay the hotel.

“Grow up, man!” I inwardly screamed. “You’ve had it hard, now it is time for soft.” Anyway, I realised this was no way for a writer to behave, so with a deep breath to deliver courage, I picked up my bags, slung them over a shoulder, and took the few steps through the doors of luxury. Full length glass doors? Gentle music? Air conditioning? Smart and uniformed staff? There was my evidence. Our Maker must exist.

It did not take the Alto Atacama Hotel long to frighten me. I was gathered up, whisked to a patio, plied with ice-cold drink, and then the briefing began. She was in her early thirties, mid-length brunette, enthusiastic and bubbly. Her task was to be certain I saw everything there was to see, and she was a tick-lister through and through. Geysers, deserts, salt flats, graves, shops and dining by the ton. I remember little of her list, but I do remember horror, when somewhere in the monologue, albeit in perfect English, she stated, almost in passing, “You can cough up blood on occasion.”

“Blood?” I queried, incredulously.

“Sure.”

“Red blood?”

“Is there any other?”

“Doesn’t sound right to me,” I noted.

“It’s the altitude,” she added. “We are at 2400 metres, and some have a problem.” She hesitated for a moment, as if allowing time for her words to sink home and then she spoke further. “So which sights would you like to visit?”

Her question was a no-brainer, especially if you were me. Geysers, deserts, salt flats, shops and dining - well, I had done those by the zillion. But now that blood had entered the equation, there was only one thing a sane man would do.

“I’ll stay in the hotel for a couple of days and catch up on my writing,” I replied. Instantly I saw the disappointment, the doubt, the lack of understanding.

“Won’t you be bored?”

“Not a chance. There is excitement in your air. That is all I need,” I lied, and could see her waiting for me to continue. “The things I would like to see are probably not on your list of possibles anyway.”

I could see her shift in her seat, lean towards me, eyebrows raised, fight in her eyes. I had lain down a gauntlet and she knew she had to respond.

“Try us,” she said, her voice soft yet her tone assertive.

I shook my head. “Not a hope,” I replied. “You’ll not have them here.”

“Go on. Tell me.”

“OK,” I said. “Find me a cactus, show me a star and track down an alien. Then I will be more than happy.”

I had her. She was caught. The unexpected ball had been bowled. For a moment the girl looked deflated. I saw her look down at the parchment-like list of hotel jollies on her lap, fodder for the tick-list tourist. She let her finger run up and down the four columns of San Pedro sights, none of which I had requested. She bit her bottom lip, her forehead furrowed, as she glanced towards a fixed point on the quarry-tiled floor to her left, an almost aimless gaze. Although she was silent, I could sense her mind working fast.

Then it came, the sigh, the confident expression, and the smile as she looked back and held my inspection.

“Cactus? Stars? Aliens?” she repeated. “Not a problem. Give me a couple of hours and I’ll be back.”