Last Spike

On the rich fields of northern Argentina, sugar cane grows as high as an elephant's eye, and avocados are as big as coconuts. But the great world port of Buenos Aires is 1,000 miles to the south, and the towering Andes have always blocked the shortcut route west through Chile to the Pacific. For three-quarters of a century, the people of the region have loudly demanded a trans-Andean railway; for more than a quarter of a century they have been building it. Last week they had it. A coca-chewing Indian had slung a sledge, a last spike had bitten into an iron-hard quebracho tie, and Salta in Argentina was linked to Antofagasta in Chile (see map).

The Chileans had it easiest. Their shortend stretch--204 miles out of a total of 559--rises gently from the sea through nitrate fields to the border at Socompa. But the Argentines had to push up through the barren, eroded land that the early Spaniards called "the country of desperation and death." Through the red-rock canyon of Quebrada del Toro, a 14,000-foot-high waste of salt desert, and along windswept slopes the construction crews fought their way, cutting 23 tunnels through the Andean rock and throwing bridges across 36 chasms. In summer they battled thirst, in winter the dry snow wind (viento bianco) that blows day & night. Sometimes construction was halted for months on end because the Chilean and Argentine Congresses did not vote funds (total cost: $30 million).

Even though the track--standard gauge all the way--had been laid, no train had made the estimated 30-hour trip from Salta to Antofagasta. That would wait until next week, when, on the 27th anniversary of its first construction, the new Trans-Andean railway would be officially inaugurated. At the ceremony, no one would cheer louder than the desert miners of northern Chile, who want to swap their copper and nitrates for Argentina's grain, vegetables and beef.

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