At sea between Chile & Peru

3.5.2015

Thursday was our last day in Chile.  The port is Coquimbo, but the big attraction city is La Serena, nine miles away.  We took a city bus out and back in the morning and walked around.  We visited four of the five main churches in the old town and found a great craft market next to one of them.  Shops do open late and close in the early afternoon for siesta.  We got to La Serena around 10am and it was quiet.  After the church visits were done, around noon, the street vendors were everywhere and shops were open.

As in Valparaiso, there were many murals on walls, but here they seemed of less quality and many were painted over with graffiti.  Dogs everywhere as well. They are amazing, comfortable enough in their safety that they sleep in the middle of sidewalks and squares.  And, they do not look underfed at all.

Now we have two days at sea before Peru on Sunday.  Two of our table mates are disembarking at the first port, San Martin, to take an overnight excursion to Machu Pichu.  They will rejoin the ship the next evening in Lima. 

3.4.2015

Valparaiso, gateway to Santiago, Chile.  Marvelous little town.  Not really a little town, but a lot of small neighborhoods, build on 42 hills.  At one time they boasted 18 funiculars but now only 4 or 5 are left working.  We had arranged a five hour walking tour with a company called "Tours by Locals", the same company we used in Rio.  We were to meet the guide outside the terminal building at 8:30am.  The ship was not able to dock on time due to a crane being broken and in the way of our ship's bridge.  We got started an hour late.  Met the guide, Victor Hugo Tello who had a trainee, Diego.  Both of them are English teachers!  How weird is that?  It was great, no difficulty in understanding them. 

So, a bit late, off we went, the two guides and four of us, our Australian table mates and us.  When we booked the tour, it was $200 USD, plus $20 for each additional person over two.  Two of our tablemates were with us, so the cost was now $240, split four ways.  We started out going up one of the restored funiculars to a great lookout and then back down.  On to a very old electric bus, seriously old.  Maybe '50's.  The main guide was giving us commentary throughout the bus ride and some other cruise ship passengers were listening in.  (There was a Holland-America ship in port as well as the Ruby Princess.)  As we started to walk to a square, a plaza, we realized that there were five others who had joined us!  John mentioned that we had paid for the tour and it would only be fair that if they wanted to join us, they should pay an equal amount.  Oh no, they didn't want to pay for a walking tour.  Freeloaders.  (They left.)

So, the six of us went on our way up and down hills via funiculars and streets looking at the city.  There are so many murals painted on the walls of houses.  The government pays for the paint and supplies, the artists donate their time and the homeowner just needs to give permission.  Beautiful murals and pastel colored houses.  Victorian houses, Edwardian houses, even a Swiss chalet.  There are dogs everywhere sleeping in the streets, completely unconcerned about people. Apparently people get them as puppies and when they are too big for the small houses, they set them free.  They are protected by the government, no one mistreats them, someone feeds them because they are not thin. We walked over six miles and have very tired feet tonight.   It was a wonderful excursion, we saw so much that we wouldn't have seen without our guides.  The guides did tell us that the women of Valparaiso have the best legs in South America due to all of the hills.

Up on one of the hills there was a flatbed truck with wooden sides driving by with a very loud clanging noise coming from the back of it.  In the back end was a man beating a wrench on a propane tank.  They use propane here for fuel and that is the way that the vendors let homeowners know that they are in the neighborhood.  No natural gas line due the frequency of earthquakes and the severity of them.

Back on the ship, we watched out our balcony at the black and white sea birds (boobies?) who were quite entertaining.  They would fly low, just above the water and then rise a bit, curl back and dive into the water.  Audibly.  At about 15'-20' high they would tuck their wings and dive straight down. From the track of air bubbles, we guess that they were going down several feet.  Up and out they would pop and do it all over again.

3.3.2015

We had an interesting thing happen Sunday at sea.  At about 11:30am, we were up looking at the buffet and suddenly the ship listed to one side and stayed that way.  The big ships have stabilizers. wing like devices that can be extended from the sides of the ship to control side to side motions.  (Nothing can be done about front to rear "porpoising".)  The commodore came on the loudspeaker to say that ballast was being shifted from one side of the ship to the other to balance it out and we would be level in about 15 minutes.  He was right.  But, when it happened there was a huge clatter as trays of food from the buffet shot to the floor and made a huge mess.  We think that the ship must have made a turn where the wind came from the side.

Punta Arenas, Chile has two sister cities: Bellingham, Washington and Split, Croatia.

It is getting warmer, maybe shorts tomorrow.