Old Residence, Tacna
Street in Tacna
To Tarata I went. Don Santiago Carmona, a rich haciendero of Tarata, was in Tacna with a caravan of thirty-one mules and six horses. Accompanying him were five muleteers. One of the horses he himself rode. Several times a year he made these trips. He would drive a herd of cattle the two days' trip into Tacna, sell them, and return with his mules laden with flour, oil stoves, kerosene, beans, onions, beds, and blankets. On the narrow streets of Tacna his caravan made a picturesque sight. I expressed a desire to see Tarata, and the man to whom I expressed it, a resident of Tacna but a stranger to me whom I stopped in front of his residence to inquire into the history of the unfinished cathedral and with whom I entered into a general conversation, said that he would speak to Señor Carmona asking his permission for me to accompany him on his return trip. He would let me know the result later at my hotel. True to his word, late in the afternoon he appeared at the hotel bar (the place where most business is transacted in Chilean small towns) bringing with him a tall, wind-tanned, thin man of about fifty-five years of age who wore a straggling grayish beard and a moustache of the Don Quixote type. This man was Don Santiago Carmona. He said that he was returning home the next morning and with great politeness and dignity invited me to accompany him as his guest. This invitation I gladly accepted and for their kindness I treated both gentlemen to as much Fernet Branca and vermouth as they could handle, and then some.
