From Antofagasta all roads lead into the heart of the Atacama desert, a trip to a mysterious abyss. Crossing the desert by bus, on foot and partly by bicycle, you come into contact with an incredibly dry earth, a lunar landscape wrought by a tropical and breath taking sun. Even here a few brave people still live, especially because the barren land hides an incredible richness of the subsoil. Along the way are oases of dust and 60 years old american cars, mining towns were abandoned to their infamous faith, swallowed by the sand and the passing of time. Pedro de Valdivia, Maria Elena, and then Quillagua.
The red earth hides, together with the minerals, the countless bodies of those who have come here to die by their own choice (open copper mine of Chuquicamata is the largest in the world), and many by constraint (the Pinochet’s regime jailed in these wastelands dissidents for forced labor). A lasting memory of these tragedies are the graves of Pisagua. The memory of these abuses spread the devotion to Saint Lawrence, considered by Chileans as the patron of the miners and celebrated on August 12 of each year. He hid the material goods of the church under the ground to protect them from the voracity of the Emperor Valerian. Similarly, the Chileans are struggling to maintain control over their natural resources (gold, silver, nickel, molybdenum, sulfur, etc..).
Maria Elena is a town hanging in the wind, the presence of ghosts fills the void of a community hidden underground. Everything disappears in the heat of the afternoon, but even in the evening when the heat loosens its grip, the community does not come alive. The resignation of a life of hardship covered with dusty scrub every house, every object. We stop at a playground where the swings have died of rust and neglect, each mechanism creaks, the children have left these amusements even before their birth.

• Where the atacama desert begins
• Arica and Azapa valley
• Andean highlands, desert and telescopes
• Santiago de Chile: poetry, recycling, arts
• Nomadic travel by bicycle

Santiago de Chile, a small hotel for travelers run by an indigenous Mapuche, skyscrapers and crumbling houses. From the hill overlooking the city, as a kind of ordeal, you can enjoy a 360 degree view of the capital city, long and endless. Sometimes hidden behind the clouds, the Andes are majestic and snow-capped, in the background you can see the white paradise of Tres Valles and Valle Nevado, the ski resorts that are located only 50 kilometers from Santiago de Chile. The bustling center takes attention away from the phenomena of creative and marginalized life of the vast majority of the population. In the north of Santiago is located a huge landfill where most of the waste of the city is collected. The people who live there have earned the nickname of moscas, in the evocative dialect of Chile. They brave daily fortune, rising with great agility on each garbage truck that arrives at the landfill and they recover valuable pieces such as iron, copper, aluminum, bicycles and any material that can then be recycled or sold on the black market. Another example of creative adaptation is represented here by Don Ignacio, an intelligent man of about fifty years, who completely dedicated to retrieve pieces of wood, glass and metal at the landfill over the last twenty ones. His only goal, brilliantly achieved, was to build a abusive house with the scraps, equipped with every comfort and a strong and personal sense of aesthetics. The city is alive and looks at arts and poetry. The birth of the murales in Chile as a mass phenomenon, dates back to the 1969, at the time of protests against the Vietnam war, From the port of Valparaíso to Santiago de Chile, a few guys repainted the entire pathway of the protests by stopping at each rock along the road  with an old Jeep. The Chilean group of murales is called the brigadas Ramona Parra and was born with the aim of achieving the candidacy of Salvador Allende in the propaganda of 1970. The urban murales are made of symbols and letters. The dove, hands, ears, the stars were a new language that has long been popular in the underground of the night.

• Where the atacama desert begins
• Through the window Brazil, Argentina, Chile
• Saint Lawrence, patron of the miners
• Travel, the landing place
• Time bank in Santiago de Chile

It is an incredible emotion to assist to the show of the giro d’Italia… Thousands of people labouring by foot or bicycle since early in the morning, in order to see, encourage and wheel their own favorites (Basso, Simoni, Cunego, Savoldelli). A contagious enthusiasm. At the end of a true battle the best, Ivan Basso, has won, leaving more or less nothing to the other pursuers. It is incredible to see how simply they faced the roughness of the Mortirolo, the same climbing road on which we were labouring so much during the morning!

12 years ago, when we saw you so fast and serene, we were just children… but the passion that you have left to us will never disappear, even if we don’t know all the truth… thank you, marco

Deleted for doping, hoping in a better and clearer future.

• Nomadic travel by bicycle
• In Livigno (Italy)
• Zacatecas
• Yucatan: from the highlands to caribe
• Washington DC

The synthesis of this experience is in his words: “La importancia de viajar es comprender con tus propios ojos la realidad, es decir observar de una manera crítica, sin que te lo cuente un tercero. Se trata de contemplar sin prejuicios” (the importance of traveling is to experience the reality with your own eyes, that is to observe in a critical way with no one telling you the story. It means contemplate without prejudgments).

• The fable of the giro d’Italia
• Nomadic people
• Zacatecas
• Yucatan: from the highlands to caribe
• Washington DC