Category Archives: Chile

Adventures in Chile and along the southern coast

Ovo Beach Bar in Coquimbo

Coquimbo Fun and Kindness

Random acts of kindness brighten everyone’s day.  We have found that Chileans in general are extremely kind and very willing to go out of their way to help you.  Maybe its because the northern part of Chile is a holiday destination and everyone is in a good mood?  Or maybe just because it is who they are.  The Chileans we’ve met here in Coquimbo seem to take random acts of kindness to an entirely new level.

Every day, and I mean every single day, we’ve been here, we have had kayakers, SUPers, small sailboats stop by to welcome us, say “hi” and compliment us on our boat. We are not the only sailboat in the bay.  The marina manager personally took us in his car to the Capitaneria to straighten our our inflated bill from Huasco.  Locals have given us tips of where to go, what bays to stay in, and places to see.  It’s been refreshing and inspiring.

Sunday Funday

We decided to head to a beach bar on the other side of town.  Even though we could not remember the name, we knew we had passed it on our 10-mile walk. Luckily, I remembered it was near the New Pirats bar we stopped at for drinks.

Since we knew it was over 6-miles away, we decided to take a collectivo to the center of Coquimbo and then walk along the beach.  Effectively, cutting our walk in half, down to 3-miles.

It was a beautiful day.  The sun was shining, a cool breeze, and lots of people out and about  It was Sunday after all.  The collective (shared taxi) drops you off at Unimarc and the mall.  On the side of the mall is a living wall which is absolutely beautiful.  It has a huge array of colors, plants, and textures.

Living wall on side of mall, Coquimbo

Living wall on side of mall, Coquimbo

We continued past the Abasto Feria (fresh market) and walked along the beach toward Ovo Beach Bar.  The entire place was empty and just reaching out to us.  We ordered some drinks, enjoyed screaming fast wifi while basking in the sun.  Matt had me do a little photo shoot, but I kept laughing.

Ovo Beach Bar, Coquimbo

Ovo Beach Bar, Coquimbo

BEER RUN

We have heard from dozens of people how expensive it is to purchase any type of liquor in French Polynesia.  As you might recall, we stalked up on rum and vodka while we were in Panama over a year ago.  Yes, we still have a decent liquor stash, but our beer ran out months ago.

We loaded our push cart into the dinghy and headed to Lider, the local Walmart.  We found it on sale for about $0.60 per can.  Pretty darn good considering it is usually much higher than that here in Chile.

We asked a Lider employee if he had cases in the back and he just kept pointing to the newly stacked display.  Even though we didn’t want to cause them extra work of restocking, he insisted.  In order to get to the cases on the bottom, we had to move the individual 6-packs aside. Another employee came up and asked what we were doing and we told him we wanted to buy 15 cases.  He said, no problem, let me get them from the back.  What, you mean we don’t have to load them ourselves?  He came back 10 minutes later with 15 cases in our cart.  I tried to pay him but he would only accept my huge smile and hug.

RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS CONTINUE

After the store security triple counted the beer, we paid and called Uber.  Our driver actually got out and helped us load the cases into his car.  Once we arrived at the marina, he helped us unload them on to the side walk.  WOWZA, 5-star rating for him.  Matt went to get the cart and the marina manager came by to give us a hard time about the stacks of beer.  He then called his son over to help us cart them across the yard to the dinghy dock.  Sweet.

Just when we thought we had exhausted all the kindness out of this country.  A local fisherman stopped to help us load the cases from the dock into the dinghy.  Man this could not be more astonishing.

But here is the thing.  This is not unusual behavior for Chileans.  Everyone we have encountered in this beautiful country has been extremely nice and willing to go out of their way to help us.

Beer Run February 2019

Beer Run February 2019

Let’s just hope Matt doesn’t drink them all before we get to French Polynesia – after all that is 2 months away.

Other Fun Photos

Manager at Club de Yates, Rolando

Coquimbo with Rolando

Coquimbo with Rolando

A night shot of the Millennium Cross

Millennium Cross at Night

Millennium Cross at Night

Sugar Shack Playa Herradura with Millennium Cross to far right

Sugar Shack Playa Herradura with Millennium Cross to far right

Third Millennium Cross

Monuments of Coquimbo

Coquimbo is peppered with beautiful monuments all over town.  Specifically, the the Millennium Cross, the Mosque, the Mirador, Forte, and fresh markets.

CRUZ DEL TERCER MILENIO – “THE MILLENNIUM CROSS”

The Cruz del Tercer Milenio is Spanish for “Third Millennium Cross”.  This 93-meter-high Monumental Cross is made of concrete. It includes a museum, temple, bell tower, park and stations of the cross. The cross is located a top a hill overlooking the two bays and sits 197 meters above sea level.  Construction began in 1999 and it was completed in 2001.  Notably, this is considered the tallest monument in South America.

  • Cruz del Tercer Mlenio is supported by three bases which represent the Holy Trinity.
  • 10 columns represent the 10 commandments.
  • 12 pillars represent the 12 apostles.
  • It only took 10 months to build the main structure.
  • The monument commemorates the 2000 birthday of Christ.
  • The entire structure was built between two large rocks.
Third Millennium Cross

Third Millennium Cross

You enter the temple through ornate, massive, carved metal doors.  Once inside you are immediately struck by the beautiful simplicity of the temple.  Until, that is you look up to the alter where a vision of gold twinkles in the light and captures your attention. Seeing that from afar draws you into the temple.

Entrance to Cruz

Entrance to Cruz del Tercer Milenio

The bell tower was constructed with a delicate metal alloy that allows it to reproduce in high fidelity, 9 musical notes of the scale. It is operated with an Italian mechanism which can perform over 400 melodies.

Bell Tower of Cruz del Tercer Milenio

Bell Tower of Cruz del Tercer Milenio

The stations of the cross:

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You take an elevator to the arms of the cross where you have a 360-degree view of Coquimbo.  The arrows show you where Sugar Shack is anchored.

View from the T of the Cruz

View from the T of the Cruz

PLAYA HERRADURA – Mirador

Playa Herradura has a few nice lookouts, or miradors.  We took a walk up to one of them and were pleasantly surprised to find many beautiful sculptures.  Coupled with the view, these skinny sculptures provided interesting stories and picturesque photos.

Mirador Playa Herradura

Mirador Playa Herradura

MOSQUE OF COQUIMBO – CENTRO MOHAMMED VI para el DIALOGO DE LAS CIVILIZACIONS

The Mohammed VI Center for the Dialogue of Civilizations, better known as the Mosque , is a cultural center. The minaret of this mosque is a scaled replica of the Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakech , Morocco .

Its construction began in 2004 with the help of artisans and builders from Morrocco. The mosque was inaugurated on March 14, 2007.  If you would like to read more on the Mosque, here is a really interesting blog that goes into detail on the history of the Mosque.

Unfortunately, the Mosque was closed for renovations so we could not go inside.  With this in mind, we were only able to walk around the outside.

Mosque

Mosque

FUERTE COQUIMBO

Also known as Fuerte Lambert, this former 19th century fort offers picturesque views.  Originally built in 1865 to guard the entrance during the war with Spain.  The unique, brick fort was named after Carlos Lambert who reconstructed it in 1879 to protect his ports against possible attacks from the Peruvian Navy during the Pacific War.

Fort Lambert no longer has an operational role militarily, but it is a popular tourist destination because of the views it provides across the Bay of Coquimbo.  There is not much to see at this forte except a few good photo ops.  With this in mind, this fort might have been a good replica of the original fort prior to the renovations.  Now it sort of looks fake and too modern.

Forte de Coquimbo

Forte de Coquimbo

Notice the pirate tourist ship in the background – talk about nice timing.  It is important to realize that they threw away the key.

Forte de Coquimbo

Forte de Coquimbo

PIRATE SHIPS – AHOY!

At the wharf, they have several pirate ships outfitted with all the trimmings including live pirates.  They will sheppard you around the bay in search of gold and other valuable treasures. Evidently, they are “real” pirates as you can see them in the above photos while we were at the Forte de Coquimbo.

Muelle Morgran Pirate Ship

Muelle Morgran Pirate Ship

TERMINAL PESQUERO

Large fish market brimming with fisherman selling their daily catch.  Breathing through your mouth is a must as the fish smells accost your senses like running into a brick wall.   Despite the smell we forged ahead to try to identify the huge variety of fish.

The fish come in off the boats and are loaded into trays.  Next, they are cleaned and hauled into the fish market to sell.  In some cases, they are cleaned inside the market while others are sold right off the dock.  An unidentified delicacy can be seen at the bottom left photo.  It looked like a hard piece of coral. Seeing that it is a crustacean we shied away.  They gently cut off the tip and then scoop out this red gloppy thing to get to the meat.  No, we did not try it.

Terminal Pesquero Coquimbo

Terminal Pesquero Coquimbo

There were several forgotten boats on the coast…always makes you wonder what the heck happened. From now on this will be known as the bird perch…

Fishing boat that has seen better days

Fishing boat that has seen better days

Ship wreck

Ship wreck

Feria de Abastos de Coquimbo

Fresh fruit and veggie market

Coquimbo's Sign by the beach

A10-Mile Walk in Flip Flops?

We were eager to get off the boat to stretch our legs.  We did a little research and found a few of our favorite stores in Coquimbo.  Keep in mind, that Coquimbo is located on the other bay.  But it appeared to only be a few miles away, doable.  A 10-mile walk was not in the plan.

Coquimbo is a port city situated in a valley south of La Serena.  The city was recognized in 1879 and now has approximately 200,000 residents.  This city is easily recognized from sea by the enormous Cruz del Tercer Milenio, giant cross.  We will share our visit with this stunning monument in another blog.

Our first explorations of a new city are just that, explorations.  Locate the stores, see what they have, make note of it, and return another day with bags, carts, or a car.  We were told that we could not walk to Coquimbo because it was not safe and the only way to get there was on the autopista (highway).  But, our trusty maps.me app showed us a walkable route – so we set off.  Thinking that we had a 5-mile walk ahead of us, not a 10-mile walk.

Here is a rough map of our path.  We started in Playa Herradura, the red arrow on the left, then went to Coquimbo (the blue arrow), then along the beach to La Serena (the green area) where.

CoquimboMap of our Walking Path

CoquimboMap of our Walking Path

10-MILE WALK / JOURNEY BEGINS

The town of Playa Herradura is actually very small and does not have the large “box” stores that we were looking for.  So, we needed to head toward Coquimbo.  Using Maps.me we were able to find a nice, safe sidewalk that took us from Playa Herradura to Coquimbo (along the autopista).

Decisions, decisions.  Should we explore the Mosque de Coquimbo and the Cruz del Tercer Milenio or should we continue find the big box stores.  We decided to find the box stores.  Luckily, Coquimbo is large enough that they have a variety of big box stores like:  Jumbo, Lider, Unimarc and the hardware stores like Sodimac Homecenter and Easy.

COQUIMBO DISCOVERIES:

We found a Unimarc across the street from Vivo Coquimbo Mall a decent size shopping mall.  Both were across the street from the Terminal Pesquero (fish market) and Feria de Abastos de Coquimbo (fresh fruit and veggie market).  We stopped in the fish market and walked the Vivo shopping mall.  The Feria de Abastos is not open until Sunday so we forged ahead.

We walked along the beach and found a beautiful bird preserve where lots of varieties of seagulls nest.  There were lots of tourists down by the water, so we enjoyed the view from the bridge.

Seagull Preserve

Seagull Preserve

Our walk would take us along a really long beach to the far edge of Coquimbo.  We did not realize that the other box stores were actually in another town called La Serena.  Perhaps if we used Maps.me to map our route we would have realized that it as over a 10-mile walk.  As we walked down the strand, we found Coquimbo’s sign and had to do our usual tourist thing.

Coquimbo's Sign by the beach

Coquimbo’s Sign by the beach

Coquimbo has a lot of the “Lombard” type streets. They are super colorful and often had people running up and down for exercise.

Windy streets of Coquimbo

Windy streets of Coquimbo

We continued our quest and quickly grew tired.  I forced Matt to stop at Nuevo Pirats a local eatery as I couldn’t move another step.  Earlier, we had a light breakfast and it was close to 1300.  Lucky for us they opened early in order to accommodate us. We picked a seat in the shade and ordered some drinks.  To our surprise we had already logged over 20,000 steps, no wonder I was tired.  We rested for over an hour before packing up and pushing onward.

LA SERENA

After what seemed like eternity, we finally made it to Jumbo Market and Easy (hardware).  It wasn’t until we arrived that I realized we walked into a new town, La Serena.  I did not have enough energy inside me to walk Easy, so we skipped it.  We grabbed a few items at Jumbo and called Uber to pick us up. We collapsed on the boat.

10-Mile Walk Proof

10-Mile Walk Proof

Who walks 10 miles in flip flops?  Nobody in their right mind that is for sure.  Gesh, 2 advil, a light dinner and bed before 2000.