Blogs from Coquimbo, Coquimbo Region, Chile, South America

So here it is, four nights away from boarding the B767 for that 9+ hr flt to Santiago. Sunday morning around 8AM local time we'll be landing @ SCL. Both of us have packed and are pretty much ready. Since the last time I was here we've gotten the passports, tickets and more goodies for the trip. We've also extended our trip to a full two week; 14 day stay. Looking forward to Kay meeting the family and the family meeting my wife. Play some golf, do a bit of hiking, visit different natural attractions. It's going to be a long awaited honeymoon for us. Can't wait! Will post on here and Fb throughout the trip! TICK TOCK...... read more

So we're roughly six weeks away from our trip to Chile. We will be there right now looking at 10-12 days witha total of 16 days off from work. saturday we went and applied for new passports. It was $130 each. There's also a visitors entry fee into Chile. It's $130 each also but issues you a card that is valid the life of the passport. We'll be able to return to Chile and enter fee free for the next ten years. So we're at $520 now on the costs. Our employer is a big deal cargo moving company and has perks with all major airlines. We can travel standby almost anywhere we want for a heavily discounted price. We were quoted earlier this week tickets prices for ATL-SCL-ATL at $342 + $18 process fee. so ... read more

So we are about two months from our trip to Chile... Just getting some prep time. Got this blog ready. tomorrow will submit paperwork for passport. Next week we will purchase our tickets. Before we leave we have to buy a new camera for detailed photos along as prep our point and shoot ones. Looking forward to this trip and excited for my wife, her first time going to Chile. We will be there 10 days and my sneak out to Easter Island for two of them if the price is right. Anyway, more to come soon. stay tuned. ... read more

We had major drama to clear the motos from customs in San Antonio, as the day we were to that, we had traveled with great expectations 120 south of Vina del Mar to the port of San Antonio. On arrival at the port we were informed that the container had been damaged in transit, so until an assessor has been we can't open the container, have you any idea how frustrating that is !!. The left hand door had a mighty whack and had been forced inwards. Now we were concerned about the state of the motos, as if the container had been dropped ????. We had to wait for the shipping company rep to arrive, but about then all decisions were taken from us as a 6.4 Teramoto (earthquake) rocked us about, power poles were ... read more

Español más abajo. A few days after our last trip to Coquimbo, we came back again as there were still a few landmarks I hadn't seen yet. The first was the brand new Coquimbo football stadium. This was the same stadium which Carla came to in December to watch the a Woman's Under-20 World Cup game. The Under-20 world cup was recently staged in Chile and Coquimbo had the stadium paid for them by just making an application to the Chilean Football Association who seem to be spending a lot on new stadiums with (I think) maybe a view to one day hosting the World Cup. It's certainly a beautiful stadium for a Chilean 2nd division side. Our 2nd stop was the Coquimbo Mohammed VI Mosque. This Mosque was built as the mayor of Coquimbo (at ... read more

Today Carla's family and we decided to go for another little trip just down the road about 35km south of La Serena to Guanaqueros, which is a little fisherman's town which has a lovely beach and camp sites. Even though it was quite a cloudy day, I still managed to get my legs burnt after falling asleep on the beach before putting the factor 40 on. Before heading home, we had some amazing seafood empanadas, I had an oyster/cheese one and a prawn/cheese and Carla had oyster/cheese and a crab/cheese one, we'll attempt doing empanadas in England (should be fun/disastrous!). ---------- SPANISH Hoy la familia de Carla y nosotros nos decidimos ir a otro paseo a Guanaqueros, que es un pueblito de pescadores con una playa bonita y sitios de camping. Aunque haya estado nublado, igual ... read more