Today we are to be docked at another new port for us. As with Coquimbo yesterday, we were to call on this port on our 2016 Circle South America cruise but the 2014 earthquake had destroyed the cruise ship dock but it has now been repaired so we are docking at pier today. There are approximately 500 volcanoes in Chile, of which, 20 are active today. When one does have a big eruption, ash can go in excess of 30,000 feet which caused airline interruptions. Ash can destroy a jet turbine engine in just minutes. We are to be here from 8:00am to 6:00pm.
Historical/Background Info:
Iquique with a population of over 180,000 is located in far northern Chile just 125 miles from the Peruvian border with Chile. I guess I should give you some information about this most interesting country geographically wise--Chile. It is 2653 miles long but only averages 110 miles wide and 80% of the country is mountainous. Most of its population of 18 million lives near the mountains. The world’s most arid desert, the Alacama Desert is over 600 miles long and starts at Chile’s northern border . Rainfall here averages 0.6 inch per year (yes, only 6 tenths of an inch per year). Despite this, over 600 species of plants have been identified here. Few animals can live in the desert but some birds do survive here. We will have cruised for two days along this desert. The desert has rich deposits of copper and the world’s largest natural supply of sodium nitrate which is used for fertilizer, explosives (gun powder), and some pharmaceuticals. This was mined in a large scale until the early 1940’s. The world's largest open pit copper mine is in northern part of Chile. 30% of the copper is exported to China. Many Chileans work in the country's mines as pay there is much more that they could otherwise hope to make. For example the agricultural workers around Coquimbo only make $500 per month. Not a misprint!! Most of these workers are not Chileans but come from Bolivia, Haiti, or now Venezuela.
Now let’s get back to Iquique. Although habitation in the area by the Chango people dates back to as early as 7000 BC, Iquique was not founded until the mid 1500’s but was then a part of Peru. During the War of the Pacific between Bolivia and Chile, in 1879, during the naval Battle of Iquique, this portion of Peru was given to Chile. As I mentioned above in the discussion about the Alacama Desert, Iquique really developed during the 1800’s when saltpeter (sodium nitrate) was heavily mined near here in the desert. Now the desert is littered with about 170 abandoned saltpeter mining towns.
Iquique now has one of the largest duty-free commercial ports in South America. Copper mining is now important to its economy. Climate wise, due to the Humboldt Current along the coast, it has an average of 1 inch of rain per year and a high temperature in the mid 70’s. If you were to go swimming at the beach, you will find the water temperature to be very cold (60F during the summer months).
What We Did Last Night:
Formal night on board.
Kadek & Yeva, bartenders in Meridian Lounge where we have evening cocktails.
Joey serves us some canapes.
We were invited to dine at the Social Hostess's table. Did not get photo of everyone but there were 3 other passengers besides Caron. This is the head waiter, Abraham. We have sailed with him before.
After dinner we with to see Debbie Cravitte perform. Sorry, Debbie, but I did not care for you and left after 3 songs. Rebecca said she got better later on.
What We Did Today:
I am going to do the same excursion I was scheduled to do back in 2016 when the port call was cancelled. This 6 hour tour is “Huberstone and Pintados Geoglyphs”. My tour bus departed the pier at 8:30am and heading east into the desert to visit the ghost town of Huberstone. This town was established in 1862 and was home to thousands of workers that mined the saltpeter (sodium nitrate). When the price of nitrate plummeted after the invention of synthetic nitrate in Germany, the town was abandoned in 1960 when the refineries closed. Check out my photos! From 1862 to 1907 the miners were paid with "tokens" that were specific to that mine town. (There were over 170 of these mining towns.) So they could only buy food and goods from the mine owner. The tokens were not good anywhere else. In 1907 there was a miners revolt and then they were paid in Chilean pesos. At Huberstone there were 3700 miners, some with families, living there. It was basically like any other town with church, store, dance hall with bar, theater, swimming pool, and housing. The single men lived in a barracks. Family would live in two room place with very small kitchen and outdoor toilet. There was a real town not far away with whore houses for single men. The owner and engineers lived in much nicer homes. This place was very interesting and probably could have spent all day there rather than just 2 hours.
We then continued south on the Pan American Highway driving through the nearby town of Ponzo Almonte (this is where whore houses were) on our way to view the amazing Pintados geoglyphs. Created over 1500 years ago, this is one of the largest displays of ancient prehistoric art. It covers over 60,000 square yards of hill slopes and decorated by more than 400 figures depicting humans, birds, animals, and odd shapes. 95% of these were made either by scraping the darker soil away to expose the lighter colored subsoil and/or by carefully placing stones or other natural materials to form the figures. The reason for these geoglyphs is unknown but some of the possible functions include a ritual worship of the mountains or devotions to Andean gods. Some even believe they were used as “traffic signs” to store knowledge of safe passageways for llama caravans through the desert.
Returning we stopped at the Tamarugal National Forest Reserve where we stopped to enjoy a box lunch from the ship. This place was not much to look at. Actually the box lunch did not come from off the ship and was not that great.
We arrived back at the ship at 3:00 pm so I ran up to the pool grill and grabbed some pizza which I took back to the suite and ate while photos of today were downloading. No problem today with the download. Now 4:30 and finished with adding captions to nearly 80 new photos.
I can't add each one individually like above so here is the link to today's Google album.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/W9sZrDxxf3NgDmm17
Once again you will have to cut and paste it as I described yesterday. Click on first photo and captions will be in upper right. Arrow mid way down photos through rest.
This evening we are meeting David & Marge Byrne from LA, who we first met on our 2012 Circle South America cruise for drinks and dinner. Dave has been fighting a courageous battle with cancer so we were so happy he made it on this cruise. First production show of the cruise is at 9:30.
Sea day tomorrow!!
Historical/Background Info:
Iquique with a population of over 180,000 is located in far northern Chile just 125 miles from the Peruvian border with Chile. I guess I should give you some information about this most interesting country geographically wise--Chile. It is 2653 miles long but only averages 110 miles wide and 80% of the country is mountainous. Most of its population of 18 million lives near the mountains. The world’s most arid desert, the Alacama Desert is over 600 miles long and starts at Chile’s northern border . Rainfall here averages 0.6 inch per year (yes, only 6 tenths of an inch per year). Despite this, over 600 species of plants have been identified here. Few animals can live in the desert but some birds do survive here. We will have cruised for two days along this desert. The desert has rich deposits of copper and the world’s largest natural supply of sodium nitrate which is used for fertilizer, explosives (gun powder), and some pharmaceuticals. This was mined in a large scale until the early 1940’s. The world's largest open pit copper mine is in northern part of Chile. 30% of the copper is exported to China. Many Chileans work in the country's mines as pay there is much more that they could otherwise hope to make. For example the agricultural workers around Coquimbo only make $500 per month. Not a misprint!! Most of these workers are not Chileans but come from Bolivia, Haiti, or now Venezuela.
Now let’s get back to Iquique. Although habitation in the area by the Chango people dates back to as early as 7000 BC, Iquique was not founded until the mid 1500’s but was then a part of Peru. During the War of the Pacific between Bolivia and Chile, in 1879, during the naval Battle of Iquique, this portion of Peru was given to Chile. As I mentioned above in the discussion about the Alacama Desert, Iquique really developed during the 1800’s when saltpeter (sodium nitrate) was heavily mined near here in the desert. Now the desert is littered with about 170 abandoned saltpeter mining towns.
Iquique now has one of the largest duty-free commercial ports in South America. Copper mining is now important to its economy. Climate wise, due to the Humboldt Current along the coast, it has an average of 1 inch of rain per year and a high temperature in the mid 70’s. If you were to go swimming at the beach, you will find the water temperature to be very cold (60F during the summer months).
What We Did Last Night:
What We Did Today:
I am going to do the same excursion I was scheduled to do back in 2016 when the port call was cancelled. This 6 hour tour is “Huberstone and Pintados Geoglyphs”. My tour bus departed the pier at 8:30am and heading east into the desert to visit the ghost town of Huberstone. This town was established in 1862 and was home to thousands of workers that mined the saltpeter (sodium nitrate). When the price of nitrate plummeted after the invention of synthetic nitrate in Germany, the town was abandoned in 1960 when the refineries closed. Check out my photos! From 1862 to 1907 the miners were paid with "tokens" that were specific to that mine town. (There were over 170 of these mining towns.) So they could only buy food and goods from the mine owner. The tokens were not good anywhere else. In 1907 there was a miners revolt and then they were paid in Chilean pesos. At Huberstone there were 3700 miners, some with families, living there. It was basically like any other town with church, store, dance hall with bar, theater, swimming pool, and housing. The single men lived in a barracks. Family would live in two room place with very small kitchen and outdoor toilet. There was a real town not far away with whore houses for single men. The owner and engineers lived in much nicer homes. This place was very interesting and probably could have spent all day there rather than just 2 hours.
We then continued south on the Pan American Highway driving through the nearby town of Ponzo Almonte (this is where whore houses were) on our way to view the amazing Pintados geoglyphs. Created over 1500 years ago, this is one of the largest displays of ancient prehistoric art. It covers over 60,000 square yards of hill slopes and decorated by more than 400 figures depicting humans, birds, animals, and odd shapes. 95% of these were made either by scraping the darker soil away to expose the lighter colored subsoil and/or by carefully placing stones or other natural materials to form the figures. The reason for these geoglyphs is unknown but some of the possible functions include a ritual worship of the mountains or devotions to Andean gods. Some even believe they were used as “traffic signs” to store knowledge of safe passageways for llama caravans through the desert.
Returning we stopped at the Tamarugal National Forest Reserve where we stopped to enjoy a box lunch from the ship. This place was not much to look at. Actually the box lunch did not come from off the ship and was not that great.
We arrived back at the ship at 3:00 pm so I ran up to the pool grill and grabbed some pizza which I took back to the suite and ate while photos of today were downloading. No problem today with the download. Now 4:30 and finished with adding captions to nearly 80 new photos.
I can't add each one individually like above so here is the link to today's Google album.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/W9sZrDxxf3NgDmm17
Once again you will have to cut and paste it as I described yesterday. Click on first photo and captions will be in upper right. Arrow mid way down photos through rest.
This evening we are meeting David & Marge Byrne from LA, who we first met on our 2012 Circle South America cruise for drinks and dinner. Dave has been fighting a courageous battle with cancer so we were so happy he made it on this cruise. First production show of the cruise is at 9:30.
Sea day tomorrow!!
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