Arica

Our 2018 southern summer vacation was in Arica, in far northern Chile near the Peruvian and Bolivian borders. Things didn't start out well; on arrival I left my debit card in an ATM machine at the airport and lost it and the next day Alejandra had a bad reaction to a fish dinner and had to go to the emergency room where she spent the night an all of the next day, Saturday.  Sunday we stayed in the hotel and rested, but by Monday she had recovered and we went back into vacation mode. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

So we went into town.  Arica is a coastal city of about 200 thousand in the Atacama Desert where two valleys, the Azapa and the Lluta, bring water down from the Andes. These valleys were home to a series of indigenous cultures from about 10,000 years ago and Arica was settled by the Spanish in 1541.  It was part of Peru from independence until Chile defeated Peru and Bolivia in the War of the Pacific and occupied the coast all the way to Lima. The current border border with Peru, 18 Km north of Arica, was agreed to in 1883.

Downtown lies under the morro de Arica, site of the battle in which the Chileans defeated the Peruvian garrison, and which now has a huge Chilean flag and a large statue of Christ.  

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

The commercial center includes a pedestrian mall--fairly pedestrian in itself--with the usual assortment of cafes and stores and, due to the nearness of Peru and Bolivia, currency exchanges. 

Nearby is the Cathedral de San Marcos, rebuilt in 1876 after its 226 year old predecessor was destroyed, along with the rest of Arica, in the earthquake of 1868. The building is all metal, prefabricated in France and shipped around the horn.















After leaving the mall and the old city center we went to the fisherman's wharf, complete with the usual assortment of small fishing boats, seals and pelicans.

 And we took a harbor cruse.

The major activity of the port is shipping cargo and oil to landlocked Bolivia, which lost its access to the sea following the War of the Pacific.





















Then back to the Hotel Arica.  Build in the 60s and showing its age, it's pretty clearly the best Arica has to offer, and is clean, comfortable, attractive, on the beach and has good food. All the essentials. 

Pool

Salt water pool

Terrance 

Dining room

Bar

Ocean View

And good food, nicely presented.  There was a daily menu of salad (left), main dish (usually fish), dessert, wine or soft drinks and coffee at 10,000 Chilean pesos, about $16 US, and a very good breakfast buffet, included with the room. After Alejandra's unfortunate episode with fish, she ate mostly off the a la carte menu but they were quite accommodating about making adjustments.

In the evening we took a walk south along the coastal highway to La Lisera beach, popular for family pick-nicks and, since it's lighted, evening activities. 

Tuesday was Azapa and Lluta valley tour day, a round trip of some 70 Km. 

The lower valley is the Azapa, were the intermittent Rio San Jose is fed by rain and melting snow in the Andes. The upper valley is the Lluta, where the river flows year round, heaviest in January and February.  In between the road runs from San Miguel Azpa up about 1000 meters and then down into the Lluta at Poconchile. (The black line to the north is the Peruvian border.)

 Our first stop was at Arica's Terminal Agropecuario, a huge market selling produce from the valleys--especially tomatoes and olives--as well as products from Peru and central Chile.  The characters are (L to R) the Swiss tourist Rafael, our guide Ernest, Rafael's Brazilian wife Glindis, and Alejandra.

Our next stop was a hill over looking the valley and the geoglyphs on the adjacent hill side. The flat expanse of cloth covers tomato fields, protecting them from the strong sun. The green bands in the distance are olive groves. Arica and the Pacific are in the distance.

These geogliphs, formed by positioning darker colored rocks on the sandy hillside, among hundreds in the Azapa and Lluta valleys, fate from between 500 and 1000 AD.  Similar features are found throughout the Atacama desert and north to the famous Nasca lines in Peru.  We also saw geogliphs near Iquique, were we went in summer 2010. 



Next stop was a very pleasant estancia with olive groves and many other fruits.  The photo is of the sales room, where Azapa olives, olive wood carvings and T-shirts were available. The olives are cured using only salt brine.  See the worthwhile article "Chile celebrates olives from Azapa" which includes a good video (in Spanish). For more on Chilean olives I happen to know of a pretty good blog: "Chilean olives and olive oil."

Azapa ripe olives.  The purple color is the natural color after salt brine curing. Black ripe olives are cured with lye in hours, rather than weeks.










Next stop:  University of Tarapaca's Museum San Miguel de Azapa 

The museum's main collection is of the Chinchorro culture (9000-3500 BP) including their mummies, dozens of which have been found locally. They were a fishing, and after 4000 BP, horticultural culture.













The museum also has the olive press from the original estancia at that location. The crushed olives were placed in baskets beneath the huge beam which pressed down on them with its own weight and the pressure of a large wooden screw pressing down on the far end.    


















Crossing the ridge, La Quebrada del Diablo, between the two valleys was scenic, if not verdant.  

But the Lluta valley was both.  The Rio Lluta runs year round, but the water's high mineral content limits agriculture to a few crops: mostly alfalfa, onions, potatoes, and an indigenous salt tolerant corn.  

After crossing we stopped in Poconchile at the 17th century Church of San Jeronimo.    The twin belfries were added later.

Poconchile has only around 120 inhabitants, somewhat fewer than the residents in its cemetery. But it was a much more important community in the past. The church was the site of the first Arica parish, built to Christianize the local Indians, was and still is on the road from Arica to the Altiplano and Bolivia, and was was a stop on the Arica-La Paz Bolivia railway from 1913 until 2005.

And there are several restaurants--pretty basic (salad, meat, rice, potatoes)--but not bad.  We ate here at Puro Chile.















Our last stop was at the mouth of the Lluta, a protected area where up to 20,000 birds of 125 species congregate in December through February, many from North America.

The most common, seen all over the Arica waterfront, is the Franklin Gull.  

There are crabs too.

The following day we took another tour, the "panoramico."   

We arrived a little early.

The first stop was the mouth of the Lluta, which we saw the day before, but we had more time and our guide, Jennifer, was much more knowledgeable about the birds. 

Then we went to the Cuevas de Anzota, where the government is building a coastal pathway to the caves.

In addition to having been a shelter for the Chinchoro people, the caves and the surrounding cliffs were originally covered with a thick deposit of guano from sea birds which was mined for fertilizer. 

Our final stop was the Morro, overlooking Arica.

The city

 And on the point below, past the cove, our hotel.

On our final day, we took a tour to Tacna, the Peruvian city about 35 km from the Chile-Peru border and 45 Km from Arica.  

Tacna, a city of about 300.000, is a commercial city, like Arica, but without beaches.  Which is to say, it has little to offer tourists.  Our tour, we discovered, was a "shopping tour," which is what most people go to Tacna for.  Peruvian prices from gasoline to laundry detergent, toilet paper and restaurant meals are less expensive that Chile's.  




First stop was the main plaza, where we had our picture taken in front of the cathedral, started in 1875, delayed by the war, and finished in 1954.  

Then to a mall, where we bought Soles (Peruvian currency) and had a great liquado, AKA smoothy. Our companions are the Swiss-Brazilian couple and guide from the earlier tour and a Chilean couple.

More shopping followed; the Chileans knew why they were in Tacna--they bought lots. And then we went to almuerzo at a very good restaurant, "El Mar Adentro." 

I had a very good dish, filet of dorado, which in this case seems to have been a tropical catfish, crusted with black pepper corns, basil oil and a risotto of rice with yellow chile. Following her earlier experience with a different fish (also called dorado) Alejandra had to pass on fish, but had grilled chicken with a quinoa risotto.


Then following another shopping adventure (we bought souvenir T-shirts as gifts) we went back to Arica, and then back to Santiago the following AM.

Ushuaia, End of the Earth

(Click on pictures to expand)

Ushuaia calls itself “The City at the End of the Earth.” And it is. It’s 1500 miles south of Buenos Aires and about 700 miles from northern Antarctica.

We had previously been to Chile’s southernmost city, Punta Arenas (which I wrote about here), and that trip inspired us to risk going further south. I say “risk” because Ushuaia is notorious for storms, sometimes so strong that ropes are stretched along sidewalks to hold on to. We would be going in midsummer, early February, but even then daily highs average 55° F. and rain is expected on about half the days. But Santiago was having the hottest summer ever, including a record high of 100°, so cooler weather sounded good. 

We flew out on Feb. 6; 1 ½ hours to Buenos Aires and another 3 ½ to Ushuaia, dropped through the low cloud cover and rain into the modern airport. A 15 minute taxi ride took us to the Patagoina Villa, where we had reservations for 6 nights.  The Villa includes a large lodge and several cabins.  Our cabin, right, had a fully equipped kitchen and bath down stairs and a bedroom above.

Breakfast was self-serve with breads, cereal, milk, yogurt, coffee and coffee maker and spreads restocked each evening.  A well-stocked refrigerator, wine rack and snack basket with prices not much above local stores offered other temptations.

We enjoyed our time there and especially appreciated the friendly service and good advice on what to see from owner Luciana, her son Gino and manager, Manuel.

We got up the next morning, pleasantly surprised to see blue sky, dotted with white (not grey) clouds, and walked into town; about 15 minutes—downhill.  

Ushuaia, capital of the Provincia de Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas del Atlántico Sur, is a new city.  The area’s first European inhabitants were English missionaries who arrived in 1869 to Christianize the indigenous Yaghan population.  In 1873 the appropriately named Argentine President, Julio Argentino Roca, recommended that a prison be established there, and in 1896 it was.  The prisoners’ labor built the town, the railroad that delivered construction materials, and the prison which operated until 1947.  At that time the town had about 2200 residents. Today’s population is about 60,000, supported largely by electronics assembly, gas and oil extraction and tourists.

We only saw the tourism, but plenty of that. Our first day’s activity was a walk along main tourist street, Avenida San Martín and a return one block down along the street bordering the coast. San Martín is filled with the usual souvenir shops, restaurants, upscale clothing shops, tour agencies, etc.; worth a walk through but relatively uninteresting unless your stack of penguin t-shirts is running low—which of course, with 5 grandchildren between us, ours was.

Returning via the coastal street was more interesting.  We passed the Plaza Isla Malvinas honoring the Argentine heroes of the Falklands Islands war.

The text says “The people of Ushuaia to those who… watered the roots of our sovereignty with their blood.  We shall return!!!”  This 1982 war, which Jorge Luis Borges likened to “two bald men fighting over a comb,” took 749 Argentinean and 255 British lives.  

The walk along the Beagle Channel water front provides a nice view:

...of the cruise ships.  These were (left to right) Quark Ocean Endavor  (200 passengers) the Sea Princess (2400), the Fram (318), and the Hanseatic (127).  According to the port schedule 14 cruise ships arrived while we were there.  Over 100,000 tourists visit each year, mostly from cruse ships.

…their passengers waiting for bus tours

...and the tour boats.

 …and of the city and Glaciar Martial where we went the next day.

The next morning was clear and cool again, so we took a taxi to the start of the ski run/trail leading up to the glacier. One of us found the going a little slow, but the view was great.

And even better at the top… or almost at the top.  It was another strenuous 45 minutes’ walk to the glacier at 1,050 meters (3,445 feet).  We declined.

Fortunately there was a refugio at the bottom.  Does someone look tired?

Almuerzo, was next.  Ushuaia is known for its merluza negra (Chilean sea bass, aka Patagonian tooth fish), centolla (king crab) and lamb, and this was my day for lamb.

Unfortunately, food is expensive in Ushuaia, at least by South American prices.  Our lunch for two was $50 US with an order of lamb (delicious), a grilled chicken breast, salad, French fries, bottled water, a half bottle of wine; + tip (10%) extra. If you order Chilean Sea Bass or King Crab you can expect up to double that, or you can spend a little less, $30 to $40 for pasta, local trout, milanesas (breaded cutlets), etc.  Pizza, empanadas, burgers will be less, though expensive.  

After almuerzo we visited the Museo del fin del Mundo, an interesting if unremarkable museum with a good display of the fauna of Tierra del Fuego (photo Wikipedia) and a little video room with films of explorers and indigenous Fueguinos.  Good place to spend some time sitting instead of walking.

The next day we went to the National Park, west of Ushuaia a few miles and stretching to the Chilean border.

The tour began by taking us to the fin del mundo train station where we waited with an international crowd from the cruise ships: Japanese, Australians, Brazilians, French, Americans, Chileans, Germans and even a few Argentinians. 

Then it was on to the trains.  

The tracks follow the Pico River up the valley for 7 km

Stopping about half way for photos. 

The 1931 photo shows prisoners with the one of the original steam locomotives.  The train ran until 1952 and was reconstituted as a tourist attraction with rebuilt tracks and new steam locomotives in 1994.

 From the train’s end point in the we took a tour through the national forest ending at the Bahia Lapataia on the Beagle Channel at about the same time as a tour boat and a dozen or so tour buses.

This was truly the end of the road; in this case the Pan American Highway.

The following day we went to the prison. 

 With 5 two-storey wings and space for 540 prisoners, there is plenty of room for museum exhibits.  In addition to the actual museum and its inmates, there is information on prisons from around the world, a maritime museum, an Antarctic exploration museum, an art museum and an art gallery.

 

And of course, there are biographies of the famous prisoners; here (the thin one) is Cayetano Santos Godino, captured at 16, a serial killer who tortured and killed other children. He died in prison at 44. 

Saturday, our last day in Ushuaia, we went for a boat ride, east on the Beagle Channel, named after the HMS Beagle on its voyage of 1826-1830; the trip prior to Charles Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle.

(click on map for better view)

Our trip took us out into the channel, past locally designated:

 "Bird Island,"

(imperial Cormorants in this case)

 "Sea lion Island" 

and "Penguin Island."  (Humboldt Penguins)

We also passed Puerto Williams, "the town at the end of the earth."  It is on Chile's Naravino Island, and is further south that Ushuaia, but with a population of less that 3000 civilian and Chilean naval personnel it doesn't qualify as a city.  

Our destination at the end of the boat ride was Estancia Harberton, established in 1886 by Thomas Bridges, an Anglican missionary and author of a Yagan-English dictionary of 30,000 words.  After retiring from the mission, the Argentine government gave him a land grant and he turned the mission into a working estancia or ranch.  It is now owned by his grandson and run as a tourist destination.

Off our tour boat we had lunch and a tour of the estancia and visited the adjacent Museo Acatushun, a working scientific museum with a collection of 28,000 marine mammals and 23,000 birds.




















Our return to Ushuaia was by bus, on a gravel road via the valley of the Rio Larsiparsabk.




Our day was calm and bright but the few trees showed that the weather was not always so calm.

















We passed several areas of dead trees in beaver dam flooded valleys. Beavers were introduced to Tierra del Fuego in 1946 to establish a fur industry.  Unfortunately, the fur industry was not successful, but with no predators, the beavers were.  Today an estimated 200,000 beavers damage thousands of acres of forest. 

Leaving the valley we reached Argentine highway 3 and crossed the mountains to return to Ushuaia.  And it began to rain.