Camiña =D

I love to travel, for this reason I have gone to many places, but my favourite trips had been in Chile. Our country is a beatiful place, and the anthropology has allowed that I visited many interesting sites lately.
My last travel was at Camiña and I think that it had been my better experience. Camiña is a small town ubicated in the north of Chile, in the “Primera Región de Tarapacá”, it is about five hours away by bus from Iquique. This village is localized in a ravine at about 3000 meters of high.

I did this trip with my classmates and teacher for the Andean Etnology course and we camped in a place near of Camiña. We stayed seven days in Camiña and one day in Iquique, in where we enjoyed to much too =) (when we traveled to north is a “ritual” that we stayed at least one day in Iquique =P)

Well, I think that Camiña is a special place because has a wonderfull landscape. Besides it is caracterized by to be habited for indigenous communities that belonging to the aymará etnic group. Due to the above, Camiña has many archaeological sites like petroglyphs and inka´s huacas (sacred mountains); so it was very common to find pottery fragments of different periods.

The purpose of this travel was to realize about “Corpus Christi”ceremony. This is a party that syncretizes catholic and indigenous beliefs; one family of the community organizes the festival for one year, in which there are dances, bands, lots of free food and free liquor and animal sacrifices (llamas and lambs) in order to “pay” to saints and Pachamama.

Well, I hope that you can visit to Camiña someday too!