Dr Who fans will get the title reference.
Arica is right at the top of Chile on the border with Peru and cops a whopping 0.76mm of rain per year. No need for gutters here and most roofs are designed for shade not waterproofing. Despite this they had a fair whack of flooding here a couple of weeks ago and the clean-up is still in operation on the beach (town is clean again). Basically a big chunk of rain fell in the high Andes, and most of it came through town. It is somewhat cruel that you get flooded and it never rains.
After we arrived at 07:00, it was still pitch black outside (we’re in the tropics, on daylights savings and Chile is somewhat misaligned so that it matches Argentina), so we grabbed breaky in the bus terminal and then headed to our hotel which is just down the hill on the beach, hopefully we won’t get a tsunami as we’d be in trouble.
Fortunately we could get our room when we arrived at 8:00, so a welcome shower and a disco nap made us feel more human. We then wandered into town to see if we could get some laundry done and to touch base with a tour guide we’ve organised to take us into the hills for a few days. Neither was successful but it is Sunday, so we climbed the local rock instead.
Great views over town.
A rather kitch war museum on top, celebrating (and I mean celebrating) the Chilean victory over Peru in the war of the pacific where they took the rock in an hour and haven’t given it back since. Chile, a little tack wouldn’t go amiss here. There is of course the ubiquitous big catholic thing on top of the hill too (every town has a hill with something on it). In this case a big J.C. symbolising peace and harmony between Chile, Peru and Bolivia. Anyone spot the irony?
A wander back into town where we stopped at the brand spanking new museum (opposite our tour agency who still wasn’t home) where they found a graveyard from about 4000 B.C.E when they were doing excavations for a new hotel. As the remains were too fragile to move, they left them in-situ and whacked a glass floor over the top. Whilst not technically mummies, some had basic mummification processes done on them such as organs removed and clay masks etc. A lot of the wrappings, hair, etc was beautifully preserved however due to the arid climate.
After a latish lunch we had a look at the outside of the Cathedral (designed and built by Gustav Eiffel). As it was Palm Sunday we stayed outside.
By the time we had lunch, we were shattered again, so drifted back to the hotel for a nanna nap before dinner and a long sleep. I like quiet hotels, and the views are rather pretty
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