Chile

---

We flew into Santiago to join the cruise the next day in Valparaiso, a couple of hours drive away. There were some initial problems, the people at the Sheraton Hotel and those on the Cruise Liner were not expecting us, pleased that we had the documents with us. Two and a half hours later it was all sorted and we were in our room just in time to take a couple of shots of the sun setting over the Andes.







The next morning we were taken to Valparaiso by charabanc. Honestly, there is not a lot to see in Valparaiso, it is just a large port near to an International Airport allowing some passengers to get off the boat and others to get on. Here’s a picture of one of their high tech shops along with some shots of the houses in the area.












The harbour is quite pleasant and does have some modern building around it.








A few colourful small working boats in the harbour.






Our next port of call was Bahia Coquimbo, another uninspiring destination. The ships newspaper normally gives a description of the next port but instead they filled the space with profiles of the captain and other senior members of the crew. As with many South American town and cities the first noticeable thing is a large cross on the hillside.





We had paid for a shore excursion that turned out to be a tour of a very ordinary town. We drove round many streets like these.






The most exciting thing that we saw in Bahia Coquimbo was probably this statue from Easter Island. This had been presented to the museum as a reward for some preservation work that had been carried out on Easter Island. This statue is from the quarry and had never been installed in the island.




The thing that I enjoyed the most was this flower that was growing in someone’s front garden.





A very pleasant surprise on returning to the boat was a display by these folkloric dancers from a local society. Seems that they greet all cruise ships this way just because they enjoy it.











The next port of call was Arica a port city in Northern Chile not far from the border with Peru and until 1880 was actually part of Bolivia until it was captured by Chile during the War of the Pacific. Arica is one of the driest places on earth and has less than one millimetre of rain each year. We found lots of reddish brown dust that was as dry as talc. It is an important port for Chilean iron ore and two railway lines connecting with Bolivia. There is a fertile valley not far away that provides fruit and vegetables; there is also a large spring that supplies the population of 200,000 with water.


The cruise terminal is only a short walk from the town and the first thing that we saw was these hieroglyphs.








They are only copies that appear in the paving slabs of the main street.



The town centre is modern and well laid out.








One of the local churches was designed by Monsieur Eiffel, not sure but this might be it.










EL CONDOR PASSA (The Condor Passes)







A spread out city with not too many high rises.







This had us puzzled for a while; it looked like a frozen waterfall, unlikely when the temperature was around 30C. We eventually discovered that it is an overflowing lime pit.






Plenty of war hero statues.






At first we though this was Spike Milligan.






A genuine yellow top taxi, used to call 3171, guess that number has changed.






Looking for a testing company to get this certified.

---