January 1st, 2019: Happy New Year from La Serena, Chile.

On 12 December we returned to Chile and it felt a bit like coming 'home'. Our first stop was in the most northern town in Chile, Arica, which is located in the desert but on the beach. This was the view from our hotel room where we stayed for 4 days. The hotel is managed by a Dutch-Chilean couple and it was nice to have a Dutch catch up and hear about life in Arica. Next door a very nice sandy beach where we had our first sea dips since we started our trip. Pretty cold but warming up in the sun with 25 degrees. Nice!

On the beach there was a nice cafe, a 'strand tent' as we say in Dutch, which reminded us of The Hague where we lived in Holland. The street art was visible right away again, this time on the concrete seawall alongside the harbour. We witnessed a militairy parade while we were there, the naval officers stretching their legs :-). For 24 hours there was a big power cut in the whole district which was a problem for the shops and shoppers a couple of days before Xmas. I had my hair cut in a dark shop and yes, it turned out to be a bit shorter than I wanted haha.

So happy to see beach sunsets again, makes us realise again how lucky we are with our home in Te Horo. This is a bunch of pelicans by the way.

We decided to drive the coastal road south where possible and not the Pan Am highway that runs through the desert. In one of the town we encountered this 'desert art',  made by a local artist.  Very tall and in a great setting.

We did do one long day of desert tripping on the Pan Am to visit to he most well known tourist sites, of which this one, 'the gigantica de Atacama'. This is what is called a petroglyph or geoglyph, which is an image created by carving into the hills or using stones to create forms on the surface. This Giant is the largest one, 86 m. high. There are a few theories as to why these were created, and it's thought they date from around the year 1000. The meaning of the symbols has not been worked out yet.

These photos were taken in Humberstone, one of the deserted nitrate mining towns in this area. This has been 'preserved' as an open air museum. As soon as you start walking around here you hear the theme song of  'once upon a time in the West' in the back of your head.

Deserted manufacturing halls, it was a large mining town in those days - the mine actually closed as 'recent' as 1961 when the Germans developed artificial nitrate.

With the wind howling around the buildings (this museum wouldn't get the 'health and safety' tick in NZ that's for sure as any minute roof plates could be flying around) - I did feel a bit like Billy the Kid - 'hands up'!

Humberstone is classified as an UNESCO world heritage site since 2005 - which they love in SA as it means you can charge entry fees and in this case probably that is what makes it survive. We also walked around the houses of the 'upper' and 'lower' classes in this mining town, the doctor of course had the largest house in the street plus a mini hospital.

These are a few of the 400 geoglyphs of another site, called the Cerro Pintados. Unfortunately we only had 10 minutes there as it was the end of the day and the guard didn't want to let us in for the walk that would have showed us a few more. You can see llama figures, the hills are filled with all kinds of shapes and figures. One of the theories is that these were made for communication with the 'gods' or extraterrestrials......who knows

As soon as you drive along the coastal road, you start noticing 'houses' (more like shacks really) everywhere on the waterfront. It looks like a type of free state where people just plant a flag and start building. Most of the time it looks horrible as it's all very messy. We've had different explanations about these houses. Some say yes, they just take the land and the district will legalise it later so they own the land or pay 'a rent'. Others say no these 'houses' are registered and they do pay tax.

The houses don't have power so they use solar panels and have drinking water delivered into small water tanks or drums. The sewage we don't even want to think about.... We asked a local hitchhiker (who talked as fast as a machine gun) who had built his house on the beach, but he was a bit vague. I think they just dig a hole. They live from fishing and the gathering of sea weed which apparently makes a reasonable income if the Chinese market is paying well. It's used in creams, shampoo etc. This photo is of an island full of pelicans where we stopped to take some pics. Quite remarkable they all want to sit on exactly that one big rock.

For all our golf loving friends we had to take this picture of the local golf course located on the beach! So funny to see the 'green' and putting areas all marked out with white rocks or white 'paint' so you know where you are going :-). And the strong winds, wow, you really have to watch every swing to make sure the ball doesn't end up colliding with your head!

Driving the route 5 in the desert or the coastal roads here in Chile, but also in Bolivia and Peru, means that about every 1.5 km you will see a memorial for someone who has died on that road. The amount of memorials is staggering... but than again we just read we hit another record on NZ roads in 2018 as well. Apparently here it's allowed to build any memorial you want for your loved one right next to the road. This one, for a young couple, was one of the larger ones turned into a pilgrimage site.

Our 'beast' enjoying the views and the sun.

And because on the Ruta 5 you are in the middle of nowhere, no one makes the effort to remove the vehicle wreckage after the fact - which paints a macabre picture in this desolate landscape.

On our way to Antofogasta we went for a nice long beach walk where we saw thousands of birds. It was clear why as the beach was littered with little crabs and lots of shell fish, so food for the picking. As we were walking the birds all swarmed which provided for some awesome pictures. On our way from Antofogasta to Chanaral we drove through the national park Pan de Azucar, very nice desert mountain landscapes which reminded us a bit of Argentina.

As we stayed in Chanaral for two nights we drove back the next day for a hike in the park, we thought for 10 km but it turned out to be around 20 km again because the park rangers forgot to remove the chain  so we couldn't get to the official parking at the start of the track. We walked to the mirador on the sea side and by the time we got there, the famous sea mist that feeds all the cacti at the coast was rolling in....so much for the view!!

Hans does agree he looks like  'Mr. Gumby'. The only hats we can get here for Hans are too small (99%) for his more than average brain (haha) or like this one, too big for his liking. Here he is on the top of the 'Mirador de Los Lomitos'.

On our way to the campground  where we were going to spend  Christmas we passed very wide very white beaches so we had to make a stop. The whole beach was littered with quite sizable crabs who were all on their way from the sea to their little holes.

O solo mio.

Piedras las bayas - our dome tent for the week on the beach in the middle of nowhere. We had made sure to stock up on food and wine. There were three dome tents with a private bathroom next to the dome. So glamping, not camping! Unfortunately it turned out we were the only guests, something you can't image in NZ at Christmas.

We had a few nice talks with the owner and the couple that managed the camp ground, but other than that is was very, very quiet. We missed the whanau and the bbq's in our garden but we'll make up for it next year.

We read a lot of books, I finally read the Stieg Larsson trilogy. And Isabel Allendes books 'The house of spirits' and 'Ines of my soul' gave a good insight into Chiles history. The setting was beautiful as you can see. We went for walks on the rocks as swimming was quite dangerous - the swells were huge and very strong currents, full moon and spring tide.

Photo from the kitchen deck where we did out cooking and eating and again a lot of reading!

To make us feel a little bit like we were at home in Te Horo one night we made a fire and the care taker couple with their son who was visiting joined us for a very nice night - like old times! The son was 23, just as old as Floris would have been......it made us think about how life would and should have been with our three young adults around the fire.

Our next stop for a couple of days was Los Hornos, a little town a couple of hours to the south with internet and washing machine according to airbenb so we could catch up with everyone and do some laundry. Turned out neither of those were available....... apparently that's the risk of airbenb in Chile. We had a very nice evening with the neighbour, who used to be an English teacher and had turned fisherman. Despite the nice neighour we left two days early and found an apartment in La Serena with wifi so I could write this blog!

A visit to the pinguino island was very nice - we drove up to Punta Choros in the morning and could ship in right away with a group that was just leaving. It's a national park where a large colony of Humboldt penguins reside. These are tiny penguins like the NZ blue penguin. They scramble up and down a very high rocky hill every day to go hunting and feed their chicks. When they have to climb up they're about 1.5 kg heavier with their full tummies which is a lot if you only weigh 5 kgs. The photo shows Chilean boat maintenance (or the captains steering qualities) - but we did have life jackets so no worries.

We were very lucky to run into the local grey dolphin family on our way over to the reserve - a very large number and as always so much fun to watch.

The American Sea Lion also lives in the reserve, together with many bird species. The excrement (guano) of seabirds is visible everywhere and it's so smelly you can't believe that sometime in the 1850's this was big business for the Spanjards and the Dutch who used slaves to remove it from the rocks to export this around the world on ships as fertilizer. The pink colour is because of algae.

Here are the little white fellows wobbling down to the sea front to go hunting. The pinguinos can only been seen from the boat as no-one is allowed onto the island with the colony because it's too stressful for the birds, which of course is a good thing.

These are red-legged cormerants,  one of the three types of shags that live in the reserve and clearly the most pretty shag we have ever seen. They live in pairs and are shown here with their chick.

The island next door we were allowed to visit and together with the three other 'extranjeros' on the boat we walked the loop walk, while the Chileans took selfies on the beach. As it is breeding time, the seagulls had built nests very close to the trail route so a lot of  protest and some attempts to scare us away. We saw lots of chicks, grey coloured with specks on their heads and very cute. They blended in very well against the rocks or cacti.

On the way back we saw swarms of cormerants flying like squadrons and providing us with a lovely air show.

Talking about macabre and the memorials alongside the road again...we had to stop and take this picture. On the road to Punta Choros, which was apparently a dangerous road until it got sealed last year, we saw this. The family decided to turn the burned out vehicle wreck into a memorial...well whatever works to deal with grief I guess.

Back at the house the nice fisherman neighbour delivered us two cooked crabs which he caught that morning with his bare hands. That's what he does for a living. A bit bigger than the Waikanae crab uh?! Very messy to eat of course and we didn't really know what to eat other than the meat from the legs as it all looked very mushy. City folk you're thinking, yes we know...

Rock on rock to crush the shell - worked well but a lot of splattering! On the FB page Dutch people in Chile I had made contact with Jose back in October and we kept in touch so we could meet when we were in La Serena where she lives with her Chilean partner Ricardo. We went to La Serena to meet them on Saturday and we had a very nice (gezellig!) day with them. We walked around town and she cooked us a lovely lunch, it was like we had known each other for a lot longer than a couple of hours.

Jose invited us to spend New Year's Eve with them in their apartment on the beach which invite we gratefully accepted, looking forward to spend an evening with their friends. That's when we decided to leave early and find a place in La Serena and leave on the 31st. In true SA form we had dinner at 10.30 pm and finished just in time to watch the phenomenal fireworks. Like in NZ it's prohibited to sell and use fireworks at New Year's so the displays are organised by the local councils. It was visible on three boats located in the bay and one right in front of where we were.

This is Patrick, one of the friends and a very good story teller - half in English half in Spanish - very entertaining. We also had a lot of more serious discussions about politics in Chile and it's been years since we went to bed at 5pm....nobody does in NZ! All in all it was a great evening and a lovely way to start the new year and drink to continuing our adventure here. We walked back on the beach yesterday to get our car and had our traditional new year's swim - a good start! To all of you; we wish you a happy and healthy 2019 - big hugs!