Day 20 - 10/26/23 - Coquimbo, Chile

 While we arrived at 7am, the ship was not cleared for passenger disembarkations until 7:40.  After breakfast, I met our group in the Ocean Bar and we departed the ship just after 8:30am.  We had a short walk to a "Terminal" building where all backpacks were scanned for food items.  Our tour company was in the building and collected our $55US fares and the 32 of us boarded our bus for the day.  I didn't quite know what exactly to expect, but we ended up on the bus for nearly 2 hours to reach the Elqui Valley and more specifically a cool vantage point called Paihuano which is in the Andes mountains and not far from the Argentinian border. 











The viewpoint was spectacular and the mountains were really impressive.  Along the drive up we passed by numerous wineries and orchards and one very large dam used for irrigation purposes.  However the lake level was very low due to the fact that they have had no rain this year.

Front Side of Dam at Gualliguaica

We then retraced our path back to a PISCO distillery (Aba Pisquera) where we took a short tour and sampled 3 varieties of Pisco wine.  Bottles were available for purchase but we didn't purchase any as we have a couple of bottles that were gifted by our tour company in the General San Martin port.  It was then a hour and a half ride back to La Serena which adjourns our port city of Coquimbo.  Our stop there was at the lighthouse which was quite pretty.  Afterwards, Angela bought some homemade churros which were quite good, and our bus made it back to the port using the local road that skirts the sea shore.  








The most interesting thing I observed on the drive back was the harvesting by hand and drying of seaweed for export to Japan.  However, also along the way, there is a giant cross on a hill overlooking the port and I was able to take some photographs of it.  Later we talked with friends on the ship who hiked up to the cross and climbed up to the observation area which is the horizontal piece of the cross.



We were back to the ship about 2:45 which allowed time for some shopping before our onboard time of 3:30pm.  Getting to see the Andes Mountains up close was really interesting, but if we were to return to this port, I'd probably just stay in the local area and see the sights as 4 hours on a bus is a bit much especially when the audio system made it very hard to hear our guide's commentary.  I didn't even catch his name and probably less than 10% of the commentary.


On board the ship, I snacked on some nachos and photographed Angela with the penguins.  


The ship left on time by backing away from the pier out into the harbor, and then started headed south towards our next port of call.  We then had a light dinner and enjoyed the Zaandam singers and dancers in a new routine called Encore featuring songs that were hits on screen and Broadway.  


We have another early start tomorrow in San Antonio, Chile, so we headed back to the room to watch the port talk and get to bed a bit earlier.


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