Bahía Inglesa
Still Cold, Shark Teeth, Goodbye Geoff!

Friday August 24

Wednesday morning, after dropping off the key to the cabaña and driving south out of Pan de Azucar, I decided to give the ATM's of Chañaral another try. When we passed through last Sunday, we found one at the Banco Estado next to the Plaza and another at the Copec gas station. Both had behaved just as stubbornly as the lone ATM of Taltal, but I recall an ATM near the Holiday Inn in Antofagasta magically dispensing cash after not working on an earlier try, so I figure it was worth giving it another shot. Especially since we were down to about $25 worth of pesos, and headed for another small town.

First we stopped at the Copec station. Lynn and the twins went into the snack-shop to buy candy bars while I failed once again to seduce cash out of the RedBanc cajero automatico. While I was waiting for them to return to the truck, a slightly tattered man offered me the quickie windshield wash in exchange for pocket change deal. He was particularly concerned about our rear window, opaque with a thick layer of Pan de Azucar beach and desert dust. I pointed out that window visibility was irrelevant, what with all the luggage loaded in the back. So he gave up on his sales pitch and switched to simple conversation.

    "Where are you from?"

    "Where have you been in Chile?"

    "What did you like?"

    "Where are you going?"

I told him we had been very many nice places but that we wished it was warmer, especially along the coast. He replied that this has been an unusually cold, dry, and windy winter.  Don't we know it!  Our guidebooks say that it is always dry and warm in Arica, with average daytime high's in the 70's during the winter. I doubt if it broke 60 the whole time we were there - and it was foggy and/or cloudy more than half the time. When he found out we were headed south, and would eventually be going to the Lakes District, he broke into a broad grin.

    "You'll like it there.  Can I come along?"

I took this as an auspicious endorsement of good times ahead... green forests, shimmering lakes, lodging facilities located where a snowy winter occurs (and are hence equipped with heaters), and perhaps even foreigner-friendly ATM's. 

About one more hour of driving south brought us back to the little coastal resort of Bahía Inglesa, where we had spent one night on our "race to La Tirana" on the way up north. It is a very beautiful bay, but now it is even colder here than when we first passed through. At least the first day wasn't quite so windy - calm enough that Anna and I could kayak around a little bit in the bay before lunch.  On Friday, we hired a guide (Alex who grew up in Berkeley, Ca.) for a couple hours in the morning to show us where to hunt for 20-million-year-old shark teeth fossils. Everyone found at least one, and Tom found a slew of little ones. This was, according to Alex, quite a haul. In the afternoon, the temperature dropped a little more, down to about 55 degrees, and the wind picked up to a steady 15mph or so with gusts jumping up to 20-25 mph. 

The first night we spent in Bahía Inglesa, the hotel was crowded with people attending some sort of conference, it wasn't the nurses from Arica, who partied until 4am, but they did bother the kids with "very bad karaoke" (according to them) until about 1am. After that first night some of the conference goers left, and we were able to wheedle one electric heater to use in one of our two hotel rooms. Providing two heaters for two rooms seemed to be an impossible task for the hotel, but we were grateful that there was now at least one semi-warm place to sit and watch TV, read, or do schoolwork. 

Every day, the hotel staff thoroughly cleaned the very nice pool, which was full of frigid water. At least it looked nice. The pool is on a fourth floor patio near the restaurant and bar. There is a hallway on the third floor with port-hole windows looking into the depths of the pool. We all agreed that they should put penguins in the pool so there would be something to look at and something significant for the staff to clean-up after when they did their pool duty every day. I'm sure that penguins would find the water temperature in the pool quite comfortable.

We had also lamented the cold weather this winter in northern Chile with Alex the fossil guide, and he confirmed the statements of the windshield washer at the Copec station in Chañaral.

    "Yup, it's 10-15 degrees colder than normal this winter. It's been drier and windier as well. Unfortunately, people in the north just aren't prepared for it. The houses (and hotels!) don't have heat, the people don't have warm coats, and everyone just shivers." 

Count us among the shivering...

Beautiful Bahía Inglesa

Dog's best friends...

Pretty young girl.

Views of and from the kayaking expedition.

Fossil hunting.

Something momentous happened Friday afternoon - I drove Geoff to the nearby Copiapo airport where he began his journey back home to the US.  He will starting his sophomore year at Middlebury in a couple of weeks. Tom and Anna think it will be nice not having to share the back seat of the truck or hotel bathrooms with him, but we all will miss him. I will certainly miss having him around to help understand Chilean mumblers, and now Tom will have to hand me the heavy stuff when I'm loading the truck. In any case, we all gave him a list of our favorite American foods we expect him to enjoy as soon as he gets home, wished him well, and sent him on his way. Good luck Geoff!

-Rolf

p.s. - after Wiring cash to ourselves via Western Union and then draining the airport ATM, we now have cash! Crisis (temporarily?) averted.