Blogs from Coquimbo, Coquimbo Region, Chile, South America - page 2

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

Today, as a last minute thing (as with everything in Chile) my uncle took us to the Women's under 20s World Cup was happening pretty much right at our doorstep (well, 20 minutes by car) when I was at La Serena. We left the house pretty much 10 minutes the match started and we got stuck in a traffic jam. With my uncle at the wheel, it was like adventure tourism, his driving is proper Chilean style driving to say the least.... the switching lanes 100 times in 5 minutes, the needless beeping, the badmouthing of other people’s bad driving, I nearly had a nervous breakdown! Anyhow, we went to the semifinal match, USA vs Germany (1:0) we actually missed the only goal, as we arrived about 30 minutes late.... Chilean style. This happened at the ... read more