Mar 6 - Arica, Chile

DONNA KAY PHILLIPS : Still shaken AND stirred from the "Valparaiso Incident" two days prior, needless to say, we stuck close to the ship today in port. Arica, Chile was nice resupplying outpost for the Piratas and we stocked up nicely on Cerveza Austral Dark Ale, Kunstmann Bock and Brahma Negra Stout. We also nabbed a couple of white and red Chilean Wines which we enjoyed at dinner last night.

You may or may not be aware that Chile is reknown for it's Salmon and it's wines. The country runs half the vertical length of the South America (America do sul). From the Sub Antarctic cold of the Chilean Fjords, to the Monterey like Puerto Montt, up to the arid desert of Arica at the Peruvian border, the slim, long country of Chile experiences one of the widest varieties of climated I have every experienced.

Arica, is known as the "City of the eternal spring". It was founded by Spanish captain Lucas Martinez de Begazo in 1541. The city was part of Peru until 1880, when it was taken by the Chilean forces during the War of the Pacific. A war we were taught nothing about in U.S. schools. My father and our fellow travlers did a city tour on one of the lovely hermetically-sealed tour buses where they were taken to the Mueseo (Museum) to learn about this war amongst seeing some of the oldest Pre-Columbian art on display in the world. Us, Cervasas y Vino.

Arica is Chile's northernmost city located on the border with Peru. It's climate is hot and dry (avg. 75º) and is known as one of the driest places on Earth with an annual rainfall of approx. 0.03 inches. When we arrived this afternoon, delayed by yesterday's tragedy at sea, it was what I would imagine sailing into Saudi Arabia might look like. Massive sand and rock formations dotted the landscape with colorful cactus and bougenvilla offsetting the surrounding desert landscape.

There were points of interest such as Morro de Arica (a scenic outlook), Putre (a charming village 3500m above sea level), Lauca National Park (a breathtakingly beautiful UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve 4500m above sea level), most of which Dad and the gang visited, while Sandy and I hung in Plaza Colon on our search for - well you know.

On the issue of shopping, we found the people of Arica to be very friendly and helpful but the stores to be hilariously and annoyingly inefficient. Purchasing some colored pencils involved 4 different people - person to fetch sales person, sales person to retreive item on shelf behind counter, ticket given to customer, item taken to cashier by sales person, cashier provides receipt to take to bagger - AHHHH!

This small experience provided me a wealth of perspective as to how "good service" is really at the heart of good commerce, something I do see on the decline in the U.S. Paradoxically, living on a cruise ship with the outstanding service we are provided daily, shines a very big light on the lack thereof in some of these ports where life runs at a very different pace.

We chose to view it as a scavenger hunt and we had fun figuring things out. It helped immensely to do all of this withing walking distance to our ship :-) ~dkp