Coquimbo, Chile

March 19^th, 2024

Back to back ports again, and our last port in Chile.

When I went to download the photos Brian had taken today with his camera, I discovered that there were no photos from today on the disk. I had seen him take a multitude of photos during the day, but none had survived to be downloaded. Not a single photo describing our tour. Nothing. Very strange. It was as if today had never happened.

This reminded me of our wedding. We had a very low key wedding, and my grandfather was our designated photographer.

He thought he had a roll of 24 photos in the camera, but when he got to 25 photos he decided that he must have a roll of 36 photos. However, when he got to 38 photos, and everyone was getting ready to go home (isn’t it amazing how few photos we took back in those 35mm days?), the reality dawned on him. He had forgotten to put a film in the camera. As we were waving goodbye to the last guests he had to break the news to us. There were no wedding photos.

Well, I thought the same thing had happened to Brian today. However, apparently the cameras today are much smarter than those of the 70s, and they let you know if there isn’t a disk in the camera, so the issue my grandfather had could not happen today. Brian said he had a disk in, and he could see from the camera screen that it was taking photos.

So what happened to the photos? Where did they go? The bottom line is that although Brian took loads of photos with his camera today, all we have are a few photos taken with our cell phones. These really do not describe the sights we saw, but they are all we have unfortunately. It’s all a bit annoying. Still, I didn’t let it spoil our day.

Due to the fact that we had been late leaving San Antonio yesterday, and problems with docking the ship (we never worked out what the issue was), it took a while before we could get off the ship. That was OK, we should still be in good time for our tour. However, then the announcement came that there would be a shuttle bus from the ship to the cruise terminal. We are getting used to that. However, you had to stop by the Crooners Lounge to get tickets for the shuttle. We are quite used to getting tickets for the tenders in anchor ports, but the need for tickets to get on the shuttle bus is a first for us.

We made our way to get our tickets by 9:30, thinking this would give us plenty of time to get to the port entrance to meet our tour bus by 10:00. Well there was a delay getting on to the bus, but then the so called 7 minute ride to the cruise terminal ended up taking much longer due to traffic congestion on the dock, and we finally got to the terminal at 10:30.

At the entrance to the terminal our bags were X rayed. There were a few chairs in the terminal and free wifi, but not much else. We headed straight to the exit. Before we could leave the port we had to sign ourselves out, which seemed to be a bit strange. We dutifully signed our names in the big book. The man guarding the book could not tell us why we had to sign out.

Our tour guide was waiting for us as we left the port, and showed us to our bus. We tried to get into the seats on the bus. The bus was actually designed for 4 foot tall stick figures so we struggled getting into our seats. After some interesting moves the 15 of us on the bus managed to settle in, and we were off.

Our first stop was the lighthouse in the neighboring city of La Serena. Jorge, our guide, told us that La Serena was so named because it was so quiet and serene, no hustle or bustle. Well, that must’ve been many years ago, La Serena did not live up to its name, it seemed as chaotic as any Chilean city we had visited.

The lighthouse doesn’t actually function as a lighthouse, but it was still an interesting building. It was built in 1950 and serves as “the most representative monument of the city”. It just seems to be a tourist attraction now.

Next stop was the Japanese garden.

It was a pleasant interlude after the chaos of the city outside the walls.

All too soon we were back on the bus and headed to the main square in town. We admired the art nouveau buildings around the square and then walked along the main street looking at the shops. It was a bit of a forced march towards our goal, the museum, no time even for window shopping, and there were some cute children’s clothing stores. Grrrr!

One interesting thing was that there was no elevation difference between the road and the side walk. This must make accessibility issues easier, also you have no risk of twisting your ankle when you miscalculate the edge of the sidewalk, and end up in the road. However, it is disconcerting when you don’t know if you are actually about to get run over because you have strayed slightly into the very busy road, and how do the drivers know when the pedestrians have a right of way. All in all, I don’t think it is a good idea. Then it must be working for them because as we passed each cross street to the main street, they were all lacking raised sidewalks.

Our rather risky walk up the main road led to the archeological museum. Now I must admit I am not really a huge fan of museums any more. I used to be, and we have spent many an hour in exotic museums around the world, but now I am much happier to see a garden.

Well, this museum actually turned out to be a winner.

They had a small Moai which was donated to the people of La Serena as a gesture of appreciation because the first flight from the mainland to Easter Island originated in La Serena.

There were also some amazing ceramics from the period of the Molle culture in the region. They would be thought to be remarkable if made today, but the fact that they originated from the Molle culture over 1000 years ago is truly amazing.

This was my favorite piece.

I could have spent the whole day looking at the collection, but there was more to see.

An other interesting exhibit was a “leather raft” made from sea lion skins. I had never seen one of those before.

After the museum we drove around La Sirena. There was a lot of street art and graffiti everywhere – sometimes it was difficult to differentiate between the art and the graffiti.

I actually found La Serena to be a bit depressing. There were many abandoned and crumbling buildings, and all of the buildings had significant looking bars on the windows. When asked about this, Jorge said that this used to be a safe, prosperous area, but with the recent increase in drug use and crime, things have changed significantly.

We passed by the Guayacán church, which was situated in a location that once held the world’s largest copper smelting plant. The church is very unique metal building designed and made in 1889 at the Eiffel factory in France and shipped over to La Sirena.

Then it was time for lunch, and we went to a pretty fishing village called La Herradura (Horseshoe Bay) as it is shaped like a horseshoe.

The cleaning of today’s catch was nearly done

and the marine bird life delighted at the chance to eat the leftover scraps.

The nearby sea lions also enjoyed the spectacle.

We had empanadas and fruit juice for lunch at a local waterfront café.

Then we were off to see the Third Millennium Cross on the summit of Mount El Vigía.

The cross commemorates 2 millennia of the Christian faith. The base of the cross is made up of three leaning pillars which form a large tripod. These represent the Holy Trinity. Its height is 83 meters and it is 40 meters wide. Construction began in 1999 and it was completed in 2001. It sits 197 meters above sea level. You get a fabulous view of Coquimbo if you climb up the stairs.

Alas, the only photo we have is of the ship. The ship is quite attractive from the bow, but from the stern, not so much. My shippy friends say she looks like a shopping trolley.

Our next stop was at Fort Lambert where you get a great view of Coquimbo. Trust me it is a great view. Brian took loads of photos, so I didn’t bother to take any unfortunately.

Our final stop was at the Barrio Ingles, the English Neighborhood. This is where the British immigrants who came to make their fortunes on the nearby mines settled, and they clearly did very well as there are several beautifully restored mansions. This neighborhood is apparently the place to come in the evenings with great restaurants and pubs, but alas our ship sails at 7:30.

At the entrance to the neighborhood there are 2 statues, one of a woman with a suitcase and an umbrella (who I misidentified as Mary Poppins) representing the impoverished immigrants arriving with few possessions from a rainy damp country, and the other is of a man in a flashy convertible sports car, representing the wealth that they accumulated.

And there was the ubiquitous multi colored sign saying Barrio Ingles which the rest of our group monopolized in order to take their multitude of photos and selfies. I’m OK that we don’t have any photos of that.

Then we returned to the cruise terminal, signed back in in the same book, and caught the shuttle back to the ship. This was a much shorter ride thank goodness.

In no time we had applied sunscreen and spent the rest of the afternoon reading in the sun on deck 15, by Neptune’s Pool. There was an Adele concert going on on the movie screen, but I don’t think anyone was watching it. The movies under the stars screen seems to be a good idea, but it can be annoying if you just want to lie in the sun and read a book, and really don’t want to have to endure a very loud sound track being blasted out to the whole world. However, it was really good to be able to soak up the sun. Hopefully we are done with the bad weather, and it will be sunny days from here on. Fingers crossed.

We sailed at 7:30 and waved goodbye to Chile. We have enjoyed our time in this long thin country, but now it is time to discover Peru. Another whole new country for us 

I trust Brian will have sorted out the issue with his camera by then.