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Published: January 8th 2007
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Flew in to Iquique in northern Chile. Expecting great things. Were going to spend a week or so here surfing and soaking up the beach life. What a let down. In short - a kip. Interesting flight in though. The coastline is vast and dramitacally deserted, and the really strange thing is that at some stage Chile had a war with Bolivia and took all their coast as well, which they´ve also left deserted! How much deserted coastline does one country need??!!
The highlight of our first day in Chile was having a drunk in the street shout at us while we had lunch! He was shouting “Beautiful lady…Charles Chaplin…Manchester United... England....NO, NO"! Moved straight on from there and headed down to San Pedro de Atacama, a little town in the world´s driest desert - beautiful. A quaint little town made of mud brick and adobe buildings. Went on a trip to see an area that has geysers. Was there for sunrise - absolutely stunning, 85 degree water boiling and fuming from holes in the ground - steam rising up about 30 feet. On the way home passed through a desert full of monstrous lava rocks that were spat from
the nearby volcano. You would not believe the scale and distance of these GIGANTIC rocks - 40 miles at least. Photos can´t do it justice, it´s mind blowing. Also went to a huge canyon made entirely of chrystallised salt. Very strange, in the evening when the temperature was dropping, the walls of the canyon were cracking and popping as they contracted. There was so much salt on the ground that it looked like a snowy christmas scene.
From there went on to Santiago (Chilean capital). Expected nothing as everyone said it was a kip (including the Lonely Planet) and were very surprised to find a big, bustling, clean, vibrant, friendly modern city with one of the best metro systems in the world (second only to Dublin´s very own Dart!). The city has different areas all with a different feel, loads of lovely resaurants cafes and bars. Sunny plazas with artists and musicians and traffic that actually stops at red lights! There is also a spectacular funicular & cable car ride on a huge hill overlooking the city. Oh, and the backdrop to all this is the spectacular snow capped Andies. (Lonely Planet, did you actually visit Santiago at all?
Or did you just ask some bloke in a pub about it one night while you were pissed and there was loud music playing?)
Because we had heard that Santiago was so horrible we had already planned to move on and not stay there for xmas. Really regretted that, especially as a couple of mates from the Amazon trip were arriving to spend xmas there.
How and ever, headed on down the coast to the place where we would be boarding the Navimag ship on xmas day for a spectacular 3 day trip down the Chilean coast, checking out whales, dolphins, chopping a piece off a green glacier to pop into our drinks, landing at beautiful Puerto Eden for a few hours and other great things. The reality was very different. We sailed out in sunshine but within about half an hour it started lashing rain and became really cold. This continued for the three days until about an hour before the end of the trip. The sea was so rough that tables and furniture were being thrown about. We couldn´t go out on deck cos of the weather and the only recreation area was the bar which
was too small for all the passengers to congregate in and had seating arranged like a waiting room. All in all it was like having a holiday on a North Sea trawler!
Because the sea was so rough we lost a lot of time and so couldn´t visit the glacier or do the stopoff at Puerto Eden (the main reasons for doing the trip). The captain said it was the worst storm they had experienced in 3 years... bet they say that on every trip!
We did however catch a glimpse of a whale in the distance and we saw another glacier in passing and the scenery was pretty spactacular when the sun finally did come out at the end of the trip.
(PS - We've since found out that the Navimag has been taken out of commission because of damage sustained to it on our trip. God knows what that means!)
From there headed down to Ushuaia in southern Argentina for New Years.
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Dodgy Doug
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How dare they call you Charles Chaplin Tash, you must be mortified!! Never believe what the lonely planet says eh.....when Becks and I did Cambodia, all the best places weren't even in it! XX