La Serena

This morning the ship pulled into Coquimbo. I have to admit that this is one of those towns that I have never heard of even though this is my third trip to Chile. Once again, it is extremely dry here and there are few trees in sight. Living in North America, particularly the Pacific Northwest, I always think of weather coming from west to east bringing lots of rain. But I now get the idea of the trade winds, the winds that blow weather from east to west in the latitudes north and south of the equator. Rain clouds come off the South Atlantic and the Caribbean and then slam into the Andes, one of the highest mountain ranges on earth. It is not surprising that the areas on the lee side of the mountains should be dry, even drier than those in the rain shadow of the Sierras and the Cascades. One of the values of traveling is that it makes dull facts that you once had to memorize become interesting, even compelling. 

There are lots of concrete houses as there are in most poor dry places. At least some of these are colorful. Concrete looks better painted, I think, a lesson lost on a generation of modernist architects. 

We noticed a big cross-like structure. I was not sure what it was.
 

I had once again booked a tour online, and at least that happened today. John was pretty sure we were going to be stood up again, and wanted to wait to that last minute before getting out of the ship. But once we were outside the security perimeter of the port, we found our guide and the minivan. There were about a half-dozen of us plus the guide and the drive. 

There are actually two towns here, I learned, though they have more or less merged into each other. La Serena is one of the oldest colonial settlements. Given the lack of resources in the area, I am not sure why the Spanish planted a town here. Today, it is flourishing as a beach resort. Most of the beaches on the Chilean coast are just rocks. This is one of the few places where there is sand, and Chileans who cannot get away to fancier places in other countries come here for summer holidays. Coquimbo, in contrast, is a mining town from the nineteenth century. Americans and Europeans wanted copper, and the Atacama desert is still a rich source of that metal. 

The tour bus began by taking us to a fake lighthouse. This is actually the most famous sight here and “El Faro” is the symbol of La Serena. The Chilean navy built it a few decades ago to promote tourism. 

Everything about this place is fake. The lighthouse has never had a light in it and is not located anywhere near maritime hazards. And all the turrets and battlements are as decorative as some Victorian castle in the highlands. This place even has a fake cannon. But tourists love it, and who can resist posing with a cannon? 

After this we went to La Recova, a handicraft market. This place came highly recommended by my guidebooks, but I didn’t think much of it. There were only a few things there that I didn’t think had come over in a container from some factory in China. 

Our next stop was supposed to be museum, but it was closed, probably because it was Sunday. This seemed to take our guide and driver by surprise, and I wondered how often they had actually done this trip or how much training that had. Not that they were not nice enough people. They just did not seem all that well-informed. 

They took us next to the Japanese Garden. It seemed odd that there was a Japanese garden in this provincial city. But our guide explained that much of the mining in the Atacama done by Japanese firms, and they created garden as good-will gesture to the community. It is actually surprisingly nice. In places, it reminded me more of a Chinese garden with the red bridge and large reflecting ponds.  

There was a small Zen Garden. 

There were a surprising number of birds in the gardens. Apparently many of these were also a gift from Japanese. 

Most of the birds were ducks, and while there were several species, all fairly attractive, they were among the most aggressive ducks I have ever seen. They attacked each other constantly, and tourists learned to get out of their way. 

Like many Japanese gardens, there was a waterfall and stream. It was not nearly as impressive as one in Ashland. As we looked at it, our guide offered to take a picture of us. 

After this, we piled into the van and went off to a restaurant on the beach for lunch. This was part of the package: I think the operators know that tourists seldom like to miss a meal. The restaurant was not ready for us, however, as we had come early. So, we had to wait. Some people walked up and down the sidewalk by the beach. John and I just went to the beach and sat on the sand. It is not a great beach. I suppose it might be one of the best in Chile, but the sand is rather coarse and not particularly golden. Nor was the restaurant any better. The meal was barely even mediocre. I had the fried fish, which was okay. John had the chicken breast, which was inedible. 

We went on to Plaza de Armas. The square was lined with stalls selling all kinds of stuff. It was mostly junk, but better junk than we had seen in La Recova. Our guide then took to Cathedral. She assured us it was colonial. But you did not need a degree in architectural history to know that it was obviously mid-nineteenth century and that the design influences were French, not Spanish. 

The cathedral had obviously been renovated sometime in the 1970’s, but whole place looked like a construction zone. Apparently they are renovating the organ.

After this, our guide was ready to take us back to the ship a couple hours early. But one of the tour members, probably irritated by the minimal value of this tour, insisted we go to "the cross" as we had missed the museum. The cross was obviously what we had seen earlier in the day from the ship. Somewhat reluctantly, the guide agreed. 

As we drove there, the guide filled us in with a little background on the cross. It is called "El Cruz del Tercer Milenio," the Cross of the Third Millennium. It was begun in 1999 and finished in 2001, It includes a chapel and a museum. But the real reason people like to visit is that the horizontal part of the cross is an observation platform. 

The van drove through the straight streets of La Senena and then up and down the hills of Coquimbo. We saw ship along the way.

But after about thirty minutes we finally found our way up to the top of the hill. 

The monument ended up having better handicapped access than I thought it would, and I managed to get John in without him having to go up several punishing flights of stairs. We had to take up a couple elevators to make our way to the viewing platform. There were nice vistas of the area, though none of the windows opened. I guess there is an obvious reason for that. 

We spent about ninety minutes of travel for about five minutes on the observation platform, but in the end it was my favorite thing about this stop on the coast. 

La Serena is obviously for domestic tourism. Not much here for foreigner visitor. But in the end, places like that can provide a deeper insight into a country than famous tourist sights. Chile is a country that is conflictedly Catholic, more middle-class than any other in South America, haunted by the past as it pushes forward economically and politically. And if you look hard enough from that observation deck, you can, I think, see all of that. 

Arica and the Atacama

We entered Chile early this morning, the last country in our winter escape. After the mess up yesterday, I was hoping that things would go smoothly today. But I had a sense that things were not right. I had heard nothing from the tour operator about where and when we were going to meet, so I notified Viator yesterday of this issue and asked them to contact the guide. Just before it was time to disembark, I received an email that the guide was “having problems with his vehicles” and would need to cancel. At least this time we had some warning. We were not going to waste another day on the ship. I had a good guidebook and a phone to call an Uber. I figured we could do this one on our own.

Once again, the landscape here is so dry that it barely seems possible people could live here. But the town of Arica is fairly large, even though it scarcely looks any more affluent that Trujillo. Arica, I knew, is not only the most northerly town in Chile, but serves as a base for traveling deep into the Atacama Desert. I have been fascinated by the Atacama Desert for years now. It is considered perhaps the best place on earth to see what the night skies looked like hundreds of years ago. I knew that I would not have the experience of being there on a clear, cold night on this trip, but I had the sense of starting to get to know a place where I would like to return some day.

The town is dominated by El Morro, a giant rock. I learned from the guidebook that the decisive battle of the Pacific War took place here. The Pacific War is not something Americans ever learn about in school. I cannot remember all the facts perfectly, but basically one of Chile’s few profitable industries in the late nineteenth century was mining saltpeter from the desert. Saltpeter was an essential ingredient in making gunpowder, and the European powers needed gunpowder for their colonial wars. Arica and the area around it were then part of Peru. Bolivia and Peru wanted to get some of the foreign currency that was flowing to Chile, so they blockaded sea access unless the Chileans paid for it. Chile felt that this broke some agreement it had with Bolivia and declared war. Peru came to the assistance of Bolivia. But even though Peru was a much stronger power, the Chileans defeated the Peruvian forces and annexed this area to Chile. The decisive battle was fought here when the Chileans forced their way to the Peruvian fort on the top of El Morro. That is why they fly an enormous flag there. Peru is still angry about it.

In the center of the town there is the usual square. Spanish colonial law mandated a fairly large open plaza in the center of each town where troops could be mustered and trained. That is why it is usually referred to as the Plaza de Armas. And the same law mandated that a church should sit on east side of the square with government buildings on an adjacent side. The church that current dominates the square is not colonial, however. It is the work of the famed Gustave Eiffel and was erected just before the Pacific War. Eiffel was a strong believer in modular iron buildings. This church was actually fabricated in France and shipped over in sections to be assembled and painted.

It’s hardly an architectural masterpiece. Minus the crucifix, it could easily be a railway station in some village in Lancashire.

I am not sure Eiffel had much sense of where the building was going to be, as he carefully placed lots of gutters on the roof and added their copper gargoyles to help with keeping water off the iron walls. It’s not a particularly necessary touch as Arica gets less than a half inch of rain a year. Death Valley gets far more than that.

The inside was filled with all the usual tacky stuff you would expect to find in a nineteenth century Catholic  Church. At least this statue of The Sacred Heart was not make of cast iron.

Arica is hilly, and John and I gave up trying to climb a small hill to look at an archeological site. Instead, we called an Uber and went to the top of El Morro. Uber is interesting here. It is a free market dream. Instead of the app giving you a set fare, you have a suggested amount but are allowed to bid more or less than that. The driver can see what you are offering for where you want to go and either accept, reject, or provide a counteroffer. It’s called Uber Accuerdo, or “Uber Agreement.” 

From the top of El Morro, you can get a panoramic view of the entire area. It’s not like looking at London from the top of the Eye, however. It’s dusty town with lots of single-story rebar and concrete houses. The museum devoted to the heroes of the Pacific War did nothing for either me or John. So we looked at the enormous flag and pondered where to go next.

At that moment, however, our friend Paula from the ship appeared. She’s one of the regulars at John’s afternoon meeting. I like her a lot. She spends most of the year traveling, and there is something about that I find incredibly appealing. .

We did not have a lot of time, but we felt like there was more to see. So we got an Uber to take us to a nearby village, San Miguel de Azapa, where there is a famous archeological museum.

It took about thirty minutes to get there. I decided not to worry too much about getting back. The first thing we saw was a collection of ancient petroglyphs. I cannot remember the name of the indigenous group who probably carved these into the rocks. There was some pretty good signage, but it was written only in Spanish and it fairly academic Spanish at that.

Inside the museum, there was a sequence of exhibits which traced the various groups who had lived in the area and their achievements in both arts and technology. I could get the gist of most of the explanations and I interpreted as best as I could for John.

The real reason everyone comes to this museum is to see mummies. The people who lived here practiced a form of mummification – I think that is a word – for centuries. They removed most of the internal organs and most of the head. Clay was used to indicate certain body parts like breasts and penises. The face was replaced by a clay circle. None of the faces had any expressions or showed any individual markings. They seemed generic.

Getting back to town was harder than we expected. There were not many Ubers out in that area, and none of them wanted to take us back to Arica. We finally found a cab who had just dropped off a few people and he was willing to take us. Both John and I were having nightmares about being stuck in Arica while the ship moved on. And it took even longer to get back than it had to get there. Some protests had closed down some of the streets, and we saw protesters in front of the provincial government building blowing those extremely noisy horns.

I am not sure how successful this strategy was. Nobody seemed to be blowing car horns as they passed or giving thumbs up signs. We couldn’t stand the noise so we walked on. Another famous building here is the old Customs House.

Unless you plan to spend some time in the desert or go up to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, there is no particular reason to visit Arica. But it was still glad we came and glad that we had the resolve to see it ourselves in the limited time available.

Art in Callao

For our second day in Callao, we had a better sense of where things are and how we could get around. Today’s activity was chosen to be different from what we did yesterday. We explored the natural world outside of Callao yesterday, and the plan was to investigate its historic center today. I found a tour which called itself “City Tour of Callao” and booked it.

We arrived early. The Uber dropped us off at 250 Constitucion, the appointed meeting place. I was immediately intrigued. The building was a classic arcade, though far smaller than the more famous examples in Milan or Paris. It had the classic iron and glass ceiling. Busts of famous European painters and composers lined the walls. 

The interior consisted of about twelve small rooms each to the left and the right of the central aisle. All seemed devoted to art except for two restaurants at the small end and one room in the middle on the right that was clearly being used for a children's center. 

Many were empty, but obviously being prepped for some new installation of some kind. 

We looked around a bit in the building and wandered around the surrounding neighborhood. The was a small church on a square. I imagine that at one time this had been the center of the small community. Workmen were disassembling some kind of scaffolding that had completely covered the square. 

There were some charming side streets off the square. I have seen this parasol thing a couple places in South America. 

We returned to the meeting place for our tour, and a few minutes later our tour guide showed up. He was young, probably in his mid-thirties, and had the usual assortment of tattoos. I was not surprised by that. I was surprised, however, when he made it clear that he really did not speak English and that the tour was going to be in Spanish. That was not indicated in the listing on Viator, and although I figured I could mostly follow this, it was not particularly fair to John. But we went ahead with it. 

He explained to us that the arcade, named El Monumental, is the center of an effort to revive Callao, and particularly its historic core, through the arts. Visual artists from all over Peru apply to has a three to six month residency here. The small storefronts in the arcade serve as both workshops and showrooms. Right now, they are in the middle of welcoming a new group of artists, This was what we had guessed, and it explained why so many were empty yet in reasonably good shape. 

He took us to look at the giant sculpture at the far end. I had noticed it before and knew that it was a reference to the Transformers movies. But he explained that the robot in this case had originally been one of the three-wheeled little vans that are so popular in parts of Asia. They are also used in some parts of Peru.

There were a couple other pieces near the statue that he considered important. This one was salvaged from the wall of a building that had been torn down.

 

And this one, less technically impressive, commemorated a prison break during some political crisis. 

On the upper floors there was a significant collection of art from the Amazon regions.

Much of this, he explained, contained references to Ayahuasca, the Peruvian psychedelic. Mostly I just saw a lot of mermaids and vines. I guess they were "trippy" like a lot of similar stuff from the 1960s. 

He brought us up to the roof which had been transformed into a party space with a couple bars and a dance floor. Some of his work was on display here. He seemed to think I was unfamiliar with the word for shit. Having taught junior high in East LA, I just might know more Spanish obscenities that he did.

From the top floor, there was a nice view of the harbor. Just beyond that statue is the place where we caught our boat to see the sea lions.

From here we went to look at some things outside the arcade. He brought us by the church, but not inside. He did say that his grandmother was baptized and married there, so he thought about the place with a great deal of sentiment. We went into a couple of studios along the street with the umbrellas. Most of what we saw looked terribly sixties retro including a lot of black light art. 

With that, he left us on our own with a couple recommendations for lunch. We chose a place that specialized in ceviche, and had a good, if rather spicy, meal. John liked the waiter, too. 

One more stop in Peru tomorrow. We'll be looking at penguins again there. 

Swimming with Sea Lions

We pulled into Callao about seven o’clock in the morning today. 

I was struck by all the colorful fishing trawlers in the harbor, all moored just outside the breakwater.

 Callao is the port district of Lima. It was no doubt once a separate city located some distance from the historic center of the capital, but now it is just part of the sprawl of the Lima metropolitan area. I became aware of this town when I was teaching students about the Gold Rush. Those argonauts that sailed around Cape Horn had to stop a several times along the way for fresh food and water, and Callao was usually one of those stops. In By the Great Horn Spoon!, a novel about the Gold Rush I read with my students every year, Jack and Praiseworthy accidentally pick up several cats when they stop here.

John and I, a few years ago, had a long stopover in Lima on our way back to California. We arranged a private city tour with a young university student, and she showed us a remarkable amount of the city in only a few hours. So when I was planning our shore excursion for this port, I noticed that all the city tours simply went to the same places we had been before. And then I noticed that that there was one which offered us the opportunity to swim with sea lions. It appealed. John had a few reservations when he heard about it but was willing to give it a try.

We took a shuttle bus from the ship to the Plaza de Armas in the La Punta district of Callao. I will try to snap some pictures of this area tomorrow – since cancelling Santa Marta we are now here two days – as it is an fairly affluent and attractive area. From there, we took an Uber to the restaurant where we were meeting our tour. We were greeted by Rogelio, our tour leader, who found a seat for John while we waited for everyone to show up. A little while later we were walking toward the sea wall where we were to catch a shuttle out to our boat. It was here that the only mishap of the day occurred when John tripped on some uneven pavement and skinned both knees.

Once safely in the boat, things went more smoothly. We shot about a mile across the harbor to the Palomino Islands. This is a small archipelago easily seen from the shore. The islands have no natural source of fresh water, and there is not a single plant growing on any of them. The largest of the islands is the property of the navy, and there are some buildings there used occasionally for training purposes. Another island had the remains of a maximum-security prison. Rogelio assured us that it had only been used for the worst criminals: “narcotic traffickers and politicians.” Continuing beyond these islands we came to the rest of the archipelago, now a national marine sanctuary. The islands had been a rich source of guano in the nineteenth century, and before the advent of artificial fertilizers guano had been highly prized in Europe. There were still stone walkways left there from the time when Chinese immigrants had scooped the bird droppings into barrels to be shipped to England.

There were penguins everywhere. 

We continued on to one of the farthest of the islands, our final destination, the home of a large colony of sea lions.

There was a small fishing boat near us. I imagine that the fisherman was not as enchanted by these voracious fish eaters as we tourists were.

John mulled over the idea of getting in the water here but decided that he was happier staying on the boat.

I, on the other hand, happily put on a wet suit and jumped in.

I was not the only white-haired person in the water, but we’re reasonably sure that this one is me. But I was definitely had company, both human and animal.

It was a blast. Sea lions are extremely territorial on land, but in the water they are curious and playful. They came up close to check us out and seemed to enjoy swimming underneath us. Although we had been warned that the water was cold, it was certainly far warmer than it ever gets in Oregon. I did not mind it at all.

All too soon we had to go back to shore. John and I returned to the restaurant where the Uber driver had dropped us off and we had a wonderful meal of ceviche, shrimp and rice, and fresh-squeezed lemonade.