March 21 – Arica Chile

Today we are in the port of Arica Chile.  This port was an important trade center in this region dating back to prehistoric times. It was the sight of many battles between Chile and its neighbours Bolivia and Peru in the nineteenth century for control of this trade. It remains to this day an important destination for Bolivian trade.  It is also home to a large fleet of fishing vessels.

Arica is on the edge of the Atacama desert and is known as one of the driest places on earth.  They average less than 5 ml of rain a year.

Our excursion into the city and its surrounding district was an excellent educational trip.  Our guide was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. You could tell she was very proud of her hometown and its heritage.

We started by going up the Morro, which was a fort for the defense of the port.  Today it offers up a spectacular view of the city, its port and its marinas.

We then travelled east into the Azapa valley. This valley has a bit more rain and they grow a wide variety of vegetables and fruits.  Our guide told us that they actually can grow four crops of tomatoes a year. Here they have maintained many artifacts of the native cultures that have inhabited this valley for 10,000 years.

On a couple of the hills you can see geoglyphs, giant depictions of animals scratched into the mountain and assembled in stones. These were created some 2000 years ago and in addition to possessing ritual and symbolic significance, these geoglyphs also served as route markers for desert caravans.

We then stopped at the San Miguel de Azapa Archaeological Museum.  Here we got to view mummies from the Chinchrorro tribe.  These mummies are about 7600 years old. They predate the Egyptian mummies.  Our guide explained in great gory detail how the corpses were treated and preserved.  The Chichrorros mummified their stillborn in the belief that they were still alive and part of the family.

We then came back into the port where we visited a church that was designed and built by Gustave Eiffel.  Because this area is on the geographic area known as the “Ring of Fire” they have many earthquakes. One such earthquake and its associated tsunami destroyed this church shortly after it had opened.  It was rebuilt and has survived several quakes since then.

Our dining room experience has been a bit of drama since we started the second cruise.  Our first dining room companions were great.  We had a fantastic time with them every night.  The second group was a completely different story.  On the first night we meet three other couples. Mel and Ruth are a Jewish couple from Florida.  He is over ninety years old and just retired this year from a university where he taught dentistry.  We get along fine with them.

The other two couples were impatient, arrogant and rude and self-centered.  They treated the wait staff like scum and did nothing but complain.  They made it very plain to us that we were an annoyance. Every time I tried to engage in a conversation with them, they appeared to be pain.  At one point, out of the blue, one the idiots said that Canada was a stupid country for allowing French to be an official language.  Marg was very quick to reply that they also had two languages, English and Spanish.   At that point we both had decided to be moved to another table.

When we asked the maitre d’ to move he said he would look into it and let us know the next day.  It turned out that this group of jerks had also complained and they had been given a new seating assignment.  Unfortunately they have been moved to our old dining area and Renato and his team don’t deserve to have this grief.  So for us I guess you could say it is a case of all is well that ends well.