Arica, Chile

After three days at sea and two hours of time change, we arrived to the northern port of Chile. Arica is only 11mi south of the border with Peru.
Arica’s population is 222.000 and it is an important port for a large inland region of South America.
We were a little late to dock, instead of 8:00am, we docked at 9:00am.
Erin organised today’s tour. There were 6 of us, all friends from 2017 cruise.
To meet our guide we took a port shuttle and after a short ride were outside of the port gates.
The plaza in front of us was full of vendors preparing for three days Carnaval. Our guide offer us to walk a little bit around before The start of Carnaval.
One of the interesting things was a steel and iron St. Mark Cathedral designed by Eiffel.
The cathedral withstood two earthquakes of 1868 and 1877.
Then we all got into a very nice van and drove costal road to El Morro hill. It is approximately 130 meters high. From the top we could se a panoramic view of Arica.
Also at the top, there is the Historic and Weapons Museum of Arica. There is also a monument to unknown soldier.
We continue driving thru desert toward River Mouth, observing numerous geoglyphs from 1100 to 1400 years ago.
We passed one valley in which they grow corn, lattice, tomatoes and another valley where fruits and olive trees are grown. We stopped few times to take pictures.
Arica was inhabited by different native groups dating back 10,000 years. These people are the first known culture to mummify their dead, 2000 years before Egyptians. We stopped at the very interesting museum containing 300 mummies and artifacts. The mummies were discovered as recently as 2004.

We enjoyed the museum, unfortunately it was very hot and only mummies enjoyed the A/C. The time was 1:30pm and we needed lunch.
This tour included lunch, so we stopped at the restaurant which was not air conditioned. The lunch was delicious and portions were huge.
After lunch we stopped at one more stop for pictures and continued to the port gate.Read more