Arica was as expected, hot and dusty. Apart from the shopping, there are really only two things of note in the city; the cathedral and the old Customs House.
Both were designed by Gustave Eiffel of Eiffel Tower, Paris, fame. Both were first assembled in France and then broken down and shipped to Arica for reassembly. This was in the 1860s! MFI eat your heart out-flat pack is not new!!
The cathedral is very interesting, because of its construction. Very simple, but with real character. The Customs House looks like a proper building, until one gets inside and it is then easy to spot its antecedents.
Arica itself is a bit of an anomaly. It is the port for Bolivia, which is landlocked, even though it is in Chile. Literally at the end of the line, as there is a railway from Arica to La Paz, Bolivia's capital. The streets are bustling as it is a working city. Lots of small shops and market stalls. Around the port entrance are a few 'souvenir' stalls, but just a handful. We used one of the supermarketrs (supermercado in this part of the world) to buy a few things like bottled water, crisps, nuts etc. We were looking round and this young man stopped and spoke to us in Chilean. Ian asked if he spoke english and he replied in perfect english that he did, and the store was owned by Walmart(ASDA) He was most helpful.
We tried to find a couple of the retaurants mentioned in the guide book that Amanda and Esther gave us for Xmas. Unfortunately, they had both closed down! We sought advice from the tourist office, as it was lunchtime, and were advised that Friday was not a good day for lunching, only Saturday and Sunday were, but the evenings were OK. We returned to the ship for the luxury of its really excellent fish and chips served al fresco at the stern on deck 9.
In the evening, there was a BBQ on the aft deck, and we were fortunate to get tickets. We had a table for two, tucked away under the stairway beside the rail. It was great. Some amusement was had by the water in the swimming pool. As the ship was moving, it was slopping over the edges, and going to get food became a bit of a game, dodging the wave. The crew spoilt it by draining the pool.
After a day at sea, we arrived in General San Martin. It is a port but does not appear on any maps. It consists of two quays, one for containers and one for the outloading of minerals in bulk. The nearest habitation is some 20 minutes by coach from the port. We are moored in the bay, and have had to tender in. Our trip out was by coach, about one and half hours inland to Tomba Colorado. This is an Inca settlement, dating from the late 1400s, and well preserved. The place itself gave one food for thought, situated right on the edge of a river valley, with the desert immediately behind its rear wall. This is one of the strange things about this part of the world. The Attacama Desert is vast, but punctuated by the occasional river valley. The one we were following actually ran to the sea, but many rivers dry up before getting that far.
It gave us a chance to see something of the interior, in some ways a little like the Nile Valley in Egypt, green backing up to high sand-dunes and a lunar landscape.
The Incas ran a huge part of South America from their capital, Cusco, and did so very efficiently even though they did not have a written language, nor had they discovered the wheel. They developed a road system with Cusco as its hub, which spread out to Brazil, Argentina, southern Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador. Fortified settlements, such as Tomba Colorado, were key to their system of government, as they housed the local prefect. According to our guide, the nearest next prefects were about 55 kilometres away, north and south. At Tomba, as well as the settlement, part of their road system could be clearly seen. The modern road follows the line of it in parts.
This evening we sail for Callao, and our excursion to Macchu Pichu.