On the road to Tocopilla, after passing the impressive mines Michilla, we come across small roads that lead to the sea. While I was looking for an open restaurant, I took one of these that led me to Cobija. It is often thus the dscoveries…

Formely Cobija was a rather active Bolivian city. Today Chilean, it has now become a village of almost nothing, pebble, sheets and nets, it has become the refuge of some fifty fischermen ans seaweed harvesters. Cobija preserves the ruins of adobe houses all destroyed by a violent eathquake and tsunami in 1870s. Cobija preserves the traces of en architecture of an activity of a time that does not go back so long but that the winds of the desert have worn away.