Our few days in Bolivia were stunning, highly memorable, but utterly shattering! In order to see the Salar De Uyuni and then get back across the border to San Pedro we had to get up at 3.30am two days in a row… painful. And then of course we wanted to move swiftly northwards through Chile towards the Peruvian border. So, unfortunately we had a brief stop-over in the small town of Calama and get up at the crack of dawn AGAIN to catch the bus to Iquique. By this time we were more than a bit exhausted, and so it was just as well that Iquique turned out to be a very pleasant place to have a break! After all, we are meant to be on holiday…
Iquique is a coastal town, perched on a narrow sliver of land between the sea and some dramatic volcanic slopes. I think most people come here for the beaches, but to be honest we preferred the lively town centre. But then again we have seen a number of beautiful beaches this year (particularly in Australia, Thailand and Malaysia), and Iquiuqe’s wasn’t quite amongst the best. And even on the prettiest beach in the world we’d probably play in the sea and then go off for a walk! We don’t make good beach bums!
As it happened the centre of Iquique was particularly nice during our stay. There was some sort of ‘International’ festival going on, which seemed to mostly consist of lots of stalls and booths in the main Plaza, each with it’s own National theme. OK, most of the countries represented were South American, and practically all of these were trying to make money by selling stuff… but even so it gave the place a very colourful lively atmosphere! My only complaint would be the noise – imagine about 7 getoblasters competing tenaciously with a huge PA system to see who could blast their Latino-pop the loudest… Not so good. Especially as by now we have developed a profound dread of some types of South American pop music – see the ‘leaving Chile’ post I’ll put on the main site in a few days for a good rant about that!
Anyway, now that we’ve recovered from our Bolivian exhaustion in Iquique we’ll move further north to Arica. And from there it will be a short hop to the border with Peru!
Iquique is a coastal town, perched on a narrow sliver of land between the sea and some dramatic volcanic slopes. I think most people come here for the beaches, but to be honest we preferred the lively town centre. But then again we have seen a number of beautiful beaches this year (particularly in Australia, Thailand and Malaysia), and Iquiuqe’s wasn’t quite amongst the best. And even on the prettiest beach in the world we’d probably play in the sea and then go off for a walk! We don’t make good beach bums!
As it happened the centre of Iquique was particularly nice during our stay. There was some sort of ‘International’ festival going on, which seemed to mostly consist of lots of stalls and booths in the main Plaza, each with it’s own National theme. OK, most of the countries represented were South American, and practically all of these were trying to make money by selling stuff… but even so it gave the place a very colourful lively atmosphere! My only complaint would be the noise – imagine about 7 getoblasters competing tenaciously with a huge PA system to see who could blast their Latino-pop the loudest… Not so good. Especially as by now we have developed a profound dread of some types of South American pop music – see the ‘leaving Chile’ post I’ll put on the main site in a few days for a good rant about that!
Anyway, now that we’ve recovered from our Bolivian exhaustion in Iquique we’ll move further north to Arica. And from there it will be a short hop to the border with Peru!
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