LIVING FOR NEXT TO NOTHING

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 221, 15 June 1936, Page 8

LIVING FOR NEXT TO NOTHING

Chilean Holiday AN AMAZING RAILWAY JOURNEY Dominion Special Service. Christchurch, June 14. “It is possible to live in Chile for next to nothing if the traveller took British money, such is the depreciation of the Chilean currency,” said Mr. R. A. Campbell, a Christchurch engineer, on his return from a holiday in South America. On one occasion, lie said, while travelling Ou the Trans-Andean railway from Buenos Aires to Santiago, lie reached the station of Los Andes, in Chile, iu a thirsty frame of mind. Ou the station he could find nothing to drink, but when he got back on the train a boy came along selling lager beer, and Mr. Campbell and his companion bought two bottles and two drinking cartons for a total sum of 4d. In the railway dining ear, a fourcourse dinner was served for 1/3, and a quart bottle of wine for 1/-. The cheapness of living held only so long as one did not buy imported goods. For instance, whisky, which was imported, cost 2/- a nip. Returning to the subject of railways, Mr. Campbell said that they were mainly built by British capital and owned by British companies. The Trans-Andean line provided a marvellous journey. The train left Buenos Aires at 11 a.m. and arrived at Men doza, at the foot of the mountains, at 6 a.m. next day. The whole of that section of the journey was made over plains that stretched away to the horizon, as flat at a calm sea and broken only by mobs of cattle and occasional trees. Railway Obliterated.

From Mendoza travellers went six I hours by motor-car up the Andes, that section of the railway having been destroyed some years ago. The line had been laid along the bottom of a terrific canyon and a glacier had dammed a valley iu the mountains above it, making a large lake. When the lake burst the glacier dam, the railway was obliterated by |he flood. After a hair-raising drive along the edges of precipices, the travellers rejoined the train at Las Vegas, from which the line ran through a series of snowsheds and tunnels. “How ever the line was built beats me,” Mr. Campbell. In places one could look down a sheer thousand feet and see another section of the line. Three weeks after he passed through, the whole system was blocked by snow, and the public could either stay at home or make the trip by the Tanagra air service. This snowing-in was an annual winter occurrence. After landing the traveller on the Chilean side of the mountains, the Trans-Andean line handed him over to the State electric railway for the twohour journey to Santiago, the trip being very comfortable and fast. Fares were cheap, a first-class journey of 40 miles costing only 2/3.