Antofagasta Region

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(Oct 22..Sorry guys....this was written, as was the Peru-pre tour, but not published so if you're interested here it is)


Being on holidays we lost track of days and dates and thinking that we had only one more day before we flew to Lima we took off early in the morning to Iquique.

On the way we stopped off to see the geoglyphs at Los Pintados which are truly fabulous.
Pintados is located west off of the PanAmericana Hwy and south of Iquique. Here are found literally hundreds of 'glyphs on several hillsides. About 350 figures are scratched into the hills. No one seems to know what they all mean.

Another drive through, yet more desert. Iquique is founded at the base of huge mountain range and a huge sand dune and if you look down as you descend…well you just don’t want to look down… it’s scary stuff, it’s just a sheer drop off. Actually as a tourist, when you first arrive, you wonder how anybody could comfortably live there… Just one natural disaster and the whole town would be completely covered…not to mention the signs on all the street corners…’Tsunami warnings’ and which way to go in case of a tsunami!! As the town is bound by the ocean and the high mountains. a layer of fog covers it so combine that with the dark and the town didn’t look like much and even though it came recommended as a really nice place to stay we were beginning to have our doubts as to why we came.

Once again it was a matter of looking for a hotel in the dark. We eventually found a hotel called Hotel Barras Arana. We are becoming quite accomplished at finding hotels now…check out beds, the pillows and make sure there is 'agua caliente' 24/7. Found Zofri…a big duty free shopping centre that sells just about anything and everything…well what was I to do…one has to do what one has to do….Interestingly enough, knowing that I would have to cart it all around was a real dampener to shopping. I didn’t buy a thing. Dinner at the hotel…now I am not sure whether it’s the Chilean food or just what we order but so far we seem to have lucked out.

Thursday 14th

It was now that I realized that we were a day ahead of schedule and we had an extra day to make it to Arica, so we spent the morning wandering around Iquique. Iquique has a lovely street called Baquedano St lined with Georgian houses. Visited Casino Espanol which was rather spectacular with its Moorish influences and the Croation club, more egs of 19th century architecture.

In the surrounding desert, there are many things of interest that should not be missed. El Gigante de Atacama is one of the ‘must see’ geoglyphs. It is located east of Huara in the middle of nothing. This desert area is totally devoid of anything living except for a few tourists and the occasional bus going down a dusty dirt road and this is the one that Malcolm reaaly wanted to see.
El Gigante is a human figure over 80 meters tall. It's constructed on the side of a low hill by outlining the figure in stone and removing many of the rocks within the depiction. This is really interesting to see. This is not commercialized like you might expect. There is nothing there except for the 'glyph’. No admission fee. No directions once you come to a fork in the road. No help if you get bogged in the sand! This was supposed to be a little half hour detour that turned into a two hour detour. At the fork in the road, we turned right and kept on driving thinking that we would soon see the glyph. I mean, at 80metre tall you are not going to miss it. We kept on driving and driving and Malcolm decided that it must be just around the next bend and before we knew it we were bogged in sand. After much digging and reversing, digging and reversing and with shoes full of sand, clothes full of sand and burnt hands from pushing on the blistering bonnet of the car and with Jackie driving we managed to get the car unbogged and 2 hours later we finally got to see the largest glyph in the world. I am sure that due to our circumstances I didn't give the glyph all the attention it really deserved.

With enough excitement for one day we kept on driving to Arica thinking that we would be in nice and early and we would be able to relax. This part of the drive was the most spectacular…the drive was up and down very steep and fairly arid mountain sides with surprisingly lush green gullies. These canyons were around 3km deep. The most interesting thing was that whilst the mountain gradients were steep it felt like an easy drive....long stretches of roads climbing slowly .

As we had to return the car the next day we thought that we should look for the Budget location so that we knew where we had to go the next day. As it turned out it was just as well that we made this decision because it took us an hour of driving around before we twigged to the fact that they had relocated....we never would have found them. We eventually found it only to be told that the next day was a public holiday and that if we hadn’t dropped in today, nobody would have been there tomorrow to take the car…another crisis avoided!
We were recommended to stay at Hotel Savona which was supposed to be OK…by this stage the criteria for an OK hotel was, hot water 24/7, good mattresses and a good pillow.
We realized people have different ideas of hot water. In most places hot water consisted of turning on the hot water tap and getting anywhere from lukewarm, and that’s without even using the cold water to scalding hot water. Even so it had a good location and we were able to take a stroll down town to a lovely pedestrian mall. After walking up and down we finally found a little place to dine… restaurants passed muster if they had fresh natural fruit juice on the menu.

Friday 15th

Had the morning in Arica. Thought I would take the morning to update our blog. It’s been almost 2 weeks since we left OZ and I know you think that I haven’t written anything but I have been slowly adding to it….just haven’t gotten around to adding it to the blog site. Also I am finding that we are doing so much in a day that I am having trouble remembering what we have done. Four days later and I am having , trouble remembering where we stayed, what it was like, where we ate, what we did….you know…all the important things. Guess if it was what shops we shopped at, then I wouldn’t have any problems. Had a quick lunch in town as we were heading over the border today to catch the plane to Lima. Took a taxi from Arica across the border to Tacna. The taxi drivers are very helpful with getting you through the border checkpoints…the first to depart Chile, the second to arrive in Peru.

WOW…what a difference we noticed coming into Tacna. Somebody( I think it was LP) said it was just a dusty little border town but after having driven from Santiago to Arica this dusty little border town was like a breath of fresh air. First thing we noticed as we came into town was green grass, the flowers and all the palm trees.

6 hours to kill before we flew out. The airport isn’t very far from town but as there is only one flight out of Tacna there are no taxis at the airport so we had to take our Chilean taxi into town after negotiating to leave our baggage at the airport. They weren’t totally happy about doing it

Tacna was really busy as it was public holiday in Arica and all the Chileans go across the border to go shopping. One of the Chilean locals said it wasn’t very good because all the money from Arica is going across the border and making Tacna rich.

Tacna reminded us of being in China. I don’t know whether all Chileans and Peruvians have bad eyesight or what but there seemed to be optical dispensers in every second shop. The glasses were cheap and you could get them done in 2 hours. After wandering the streets for a couple of hours we took a taxi back to the airport and reclaimed our luggage before the hordes arrived to book in.

Arrived in Lima at 1030pm, no taxi as ordered, hassled by taxi touts as soon as we stepped out of the airport, light rain mist falling…bit of a tense moment trying to find a taxi to take us to our hotel. We had no idea of where we were going, had been warned to only taking registered taxis…but which were the registered taxis… we start driving through lonely little streets, then down by the waters edge where there were dump trucks dumping rubbish…the moments were definitely getter tenser finally we burst into high rise and street lights ….. Then to find the hotel which was in some little street that was no longer a drive through road due to some bombing in the past. We were so glad when we arrived that I think we ended being over generous with our taxi tip. When we got to the hotel all was in darkness and we were beginning to wonder if we in fact had a booking at all. I think we got the owner out of bed. All in all I think we managed to be in bed by 12.30

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Photos

Red trucks
all the workers at the mines drive these trucks. They have flags on them so that they can be seen by the drivers of the huge mining machines

Electrical wiring in Baquenado st
not connected

Tacna airport
this is the customs counter