Friday February 6, 2015 - Iquique, Chile

Friday February 6, 2015 – Iquique, Chile

We were an hour late getting to Iquique.  The port was destroyed in the earthquake in April of 2014 so we had to drop anchor and tender in.  It took a while for the ship to be cleared and get our tender so our tour left an hour late.  We understood that we were the first cruise ship to arrive in Iquique since the earthquake so there were TV cameras filming us as we arrived.

We had a fabulous tour bus – brand new – and very luxurious.  Margareth was our guide along with Alain – both quite interesting.  Alain was from Switzerland and he is a hang-gliding instructor.  Margareth was born in Chile but looked Scandinavian.  They both were very interesting.

Our first stop was Santiago Humberstone – a deserted mining town where they mined saltpeter for the war.  The town was fascinating with a company store, swimming pool, barracks, theatre, school, basketball court and many other amenities.  The mine closed in 1959 when a synthetic product was developed for explosives instead of saltpeter.

Entrance to Humberstone

One of many deserted streets in the abandoned mining town

Chapel in Humberstone, Peru

Tim checking out one of the descriptor signs in Humberstone, Peru

 

The theatre . . .

a schoolroom . . .

the saloon . . .

and their huge swimming pool in Humberstone, Peru

 

We then headed north along the Pan American Highway to a remote place where there were geoglyphs created in the mountain side in 500 AD.  Lots of different designs – turtles, birds, fish, geometric shapes, llama, etc.  There is no rain at all here and the winds don’t hit the sides of the mountains so the shapes have remained unchanged all of these years!

Shapes all over the sides of the mountains from over 1,500 years ago.

Desolate ground on the plains

Some animals, many geometric shapes, and other designs

Hard to imagine these being here from so long ago and mother nature hasn't changed them!

We were supposed to have a box lunch in a small forest but our bus voted to head back to the ship and have a “proper dinner”.  Good choice – the box lunch was pretty meager.  We arrived back at the port and tendered back to the ship.  We went straight to the buffet line and had a good dinner about 9 pm.

We had a quick drink with Putu in Horizons and then went to the Lounge and got the Broadway Show with Megan and Amy.  Excellent show with songs from Wicked, Les Mis, West Side Story, The Phantom of the Opera, and others.  We enjoyed it a lot.

We headed back to Horizons for one more drink and then went to bed.