Northern Chile: Not Like Southern Peru

Crossing the border from Tacna, Peru to Arica, Chile, we could definitely sense that we were in a different country.  While the language and the desert landscape remained the same, the Chilean side is less chaotic, has nicer cars and fewer taxis, is cleaner and seems less likely to try to rip us off.  Then it happened: for the first time in nearly three months, we got ripped off.

Once we got to Arica, we went to a local market to get lunch.  I like eating lunch in markets because it's a good way to sample the local food, we're usually the only tourists there, and it's cheap.  We sat down in a food stall that had a menu without prices, which I didn't think was a big deal.  When we got the check, it was 9,300 pesos (over $18).  We were used to paying $4-6 for lunches in Ecuador and Peru, and even though I knew Chile was more expensive, this seemed too expensive.  I looked at Magge, my personal Spanish negotiator, but she said it was fine.  Not knowing what else to do, I paid the bill.  As we walked around the market afterwards, we noticed that the other restaurants were advertising meals that would have cost us a third of what we had paid.  Even though it wasn't that much money, I was still really irritated that we were fleeced.  We had just arrived via an overnight bus and hour car ride across the border without getting more than an hour of sleep, so I'm going to blame that.

Besides getting cheated, we did not do much in Arica.  We tried to catch up on sleep before heading into town to get dinner.  The city has a pleasant, but not exceptionally beautiful or exciting, pedestrian center and little else.  The guidebook gushed about a church designed by Gustave Eiffel to the point we were almost expecting it to be better than the Eiffel Tower, but it didn't look like much from the outside.  The next day, we walked down to the beach before had had to catch our bus.  The water was really cold, and the beachfront smelled putrid thanks to huge piles of dead crabs.  I don't know what caused that, but the only other time I've seen that many crab shells piled like that was when we went to my friend Brett's place in Maryland and caught and ate seven dozen blue crabs.

Upon leaving Arica, we rode a bus for four hours (very short trip by Chilean standards) through the Atacama Desert to Iquique.  It's strange traveling through such a desolate environment (the Atacama is the world's driest desert) and come upon a city all of a sudden.  How and why are there cities here?  Mining.  First nitrate mining, and more recently copper mining.  Iquique is an interesting city on a narrow strip of land sandwiched between the Pacific and desert mountains.  Its late 19th century nitrate mining heyday is evident along the pedestrian boulevard running the middle of the city; the wood planked sidewalks fronted by wood Georgian buildings made it look like a Wild West town, and one of the more unique cities we've visited.

Wild West-esque wood buildings and sidewalk

Today, Magge and I got some rare alone time as we each had errands to run.  Despite my terrible Spanish (as well as the Chileans' terrible Spanish - sorry Gonzalo), I was able to secure bus tickets to San Pedro to Atacama, plane tickets to Patagonia, and a decent lunch.  I also discovered that I love banana juice with milk, which I've been reluctant to try over the past few months.  If there's one thing I'll miss about South America, it's the fruit juice.  I walked down the beach, and the water is even colder than it was in Arica (if you're wondering why water so close to the equator is frigid, it's due to the Humboldt Current).  That didn't stop the hundreds of vacationers from playing in the water, though.

We haven't done much our first few days in Chile (at least relatively to our frenetic pace the last month in Peru), but it has been nice to take it easy before we race to the southern tip of the continent.

Iquique beach at sunset