The Chilean bar owner in San Pedro de Atacama who gave us the tip to go and visit the petroglyphs at Yerbas Buenas and the nearby Rainbow Valley, added: “don’t tell the Chileans”.
When I asked him why, he just shrugged: “you will see why…”
At image center a 10.000-year-old petroglyph of a llama, covered with more recent updates by an unknown genius; I particularly like the sun drawn at the top left hand corner...
In Chile, if you don’t put a big fence around something, charge hefty entrance fees or place prohibition signs all over the place (see 0005), it can’t be worth much…
It’s like the story of two chilean students who went out to use their spray cans on the twelve-angle-stone in Cuzco, and thought they were defending themselves by saying that they did not know it was forbidden.
Unfortunately, this was not even close to the cuspid of ignorance in this episode.
The faux-pas by then chilean President Ricardo Lagos is legendary. He went out of his way to defend the morons: “they did not know that what they were doing was wrong...”. WHAT??????????????
As the French saying goes: "La bêtise humaine est la seule chose qui donne une idée de l’infini": Human stupidity is the only thing that gives an idea of the infinite.
