CHAPTER 



6 



S The west coast of South America offers the most 

 perplexing set of extremes Lou and I have found any- 

 where in the world. The Andes Mountains, which rise 

 close behind Iquique, loom treeless and barren, but be- 

 neath their yellow surface fortunes in copper and iron 

 lie waiting to be mined. The southern tip of Peru is 

 often drenched by furious coastal downpours, but 

 Iquique, almost adjoining in the northern tip of Chile, 

 has felt only a few drops of rain since 1941. The Hum- 

 boldt Current beckons as the finest fishing grounds in 

 the entire world, but last spring the bright blue waters 

 suddenly vanished. Instead, a huge red tide covered the 

 ocean for eighty miles straight out from shore, and some 

 unknown poison in that scarlet blanket killed hundreds 

 of thousands of fish. The paradoxical world around 



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