Petroglyphs, desert, winery and the TransAmerican Highway

Enjoying a morning glass of wine (or two, or three)

A quiet meal yesterday evening before retiring to bed. The BBC iPlayer app decided that it didn’t like being wherever we were in the world and so we were not allowed to watch the next episode of This is Going To Hurt. Frustrating. 

“Place of Calm Water” as Coquimbo translates, dawned grey and drizzly which is fairly normal along the coast. The name was a slight misnomer when the tsunami hit in 2015 and devastated four city blocks with a 5-metre high wave. 

Third Millennium Cross

The Third Millennium Cross stood proud on the hillside as the ship pulled into port and it almost looked attractive but, as we disembarked and headed for the buses, it looked more like an unfinished Soviet Brutalist project, 90 metres high. 

Looking across the port to the Islamic Centre, surrounded by colourful buildings

That effect was strongly offset however by the colourful houses that crowded on the hillside and huddled into seeming inaccessible corners of the rock face. The overall effect is of an attractive maritime town. In the outskirts, neat lines of modern houses and clean blocks of flats are ordered around the main TransAmerican Highway. There is little in the way of graffiti there. 

Our trip was to take us out of the area, however, and off into the desert to see petroglyphs - prehistoric carvings in rock. Before we started though, more administrative chaos with a missing person and then two additional passengers on our coach. They had mistakenly boarded the wrong one and were eventually identified and transferred. Fashion imperatives for visiting the desert ranged from shirts and t shirts to long skirts and high heels - some of these were doomed to failure. 

From what we learned from our guide, Marcelo (who was excellent), we were due to drink pisco - the national drink of Chile - then wine, at around 10am. Then a bit of archaeology, then a bit more wine, then archaeology again. Sounded like a plan!

Coquimbo sits at the narrowest part of Chile at 90km. It benefits from the Humboldt Current which brings with it a varied climate according to where you are.  It also brings nutrients that encourage seafood production. There’s little rainfall here which is why parts of the country are desert, as we observe as we travel South. Here, the landscape changes: limestone underpins the upper layer of land and is dotted with “chandelier” cacti and scrubby bushes that were hand planted by the army, prisoners and volunteers under Pinochet’s regime in order to hold back the advancing desert.  The limestone is also mined for calcium carbonate. 

Petroglyph with grinding stones - one was used to grind pepper

We arrived at the Tololo winery and, after seeing the barrel making and various aspects of preparation of the grapes for pressing, we were shown an ancient stone with holes in it that had been used to grind spices and colours for paint in prehistoric times. This was a petroglyph and we were to see many more in our next stop.

Filled barrels at Tololo Winery

This winery was much more of a functional operation with rougher barrels - we felt they’d possibly never done a tourist opening before - but it was all a much bigger organisation with large vats and barrel stores. 

The bottled wines on offer

Other companies bring their grapes here to make pisco and Tololo exports millions of litres of unbranded wine across the world. 

Tololo Winery servers (one is called Diana Spencer!)

After our tour, at 11:15am, we tasted the wines and pisco in rapid succession and with little breathing space. It was great! The servers were great fun and so friendly. 

Gabrielle enjoys the pisco

Gabrielle particularly enjoyed the pisco as you can see. It’s a firewater of around 40% and comes in two varieties: unoaked and oaked and although we had it neat, it’s usually used in the pisco sour cocktail. Both were pretty potent. The wines were average but perfectly drinkable since the main business is not producing and maturing wines for bottle sales, but rather the bulk export market. 

This was a huge contrast to yesterday’s tour which had been very slick, professional and designed to encourage you to buy the product. To be fair though, there were plenty of people stumbling back onto the coach laden down with bottles from the shop. Whether the security people will allow them to take them to their cabins on the ship is another matter. All in all a very jolly visit! 

And so, off to the archaeological site at the Enchanted Valley with silly smiles on our faces. We saw a pair of nesting cara-cara raptors at the entry to the petroglyphs park and then we walked along to the first of the sculpted stones. 

Cup marks, possibly in same orientation as the stars?

These bore the same cup marks we had seen at the winery but, as we progressed down the valley, more complex etchings appeared, scratched into the regolith with harder stone such as granite. 

Witch-doctor (or is it?) at the petroglyphs park

The grand finale was a full witch-doctor, guarding part of the valley. Alienists believe that he is from another planet and his appearance denotes his advanced technology. Seems an optimistic interpretation to me! In the valley the sun beat down and everyone covered up with hats and umbrellas to protect us from the strong rays. Our guide said that on a scale of one to ten the UV would rate around nine. 

And so, on to a restaurant for more wine and some “snacks”. We drive past kilometres of plantations for almonds, blueberries, vines and olives. The almonds and olives are not for eating but for oil production. The grapes are part of raisin production that is largely exported to Russia. Also there’s a huge production of avocados here which, in some areas has become something of a cartel, where the owners are taking so much water they deprive the local people of fresh water. All these are water intensive but rely on the micro climate of this valley to provide irrigation in what is essentially a desert. 

At the Panoramico Hotel Restaurant at Limari

The restaurant sits atop a beautiful, broad escarpment with views across the area we have just visited. We were expecting nothing much, but waitresses emerged with plates bearing two ham and cheese enchiladas per person and a choice of a glass of red (yes please), a pisco sour or a fruit juice. The latter had very few takers. This was all the better for being unexpected and was in a beautiful location. In case you were worried, Gabrielle was provided with a plate of salad. Some guests remarked that they’d had a hearty breakfast and weren’t expecting this. Perhaps don’t eat it then? Oh no! They couldn’t possibly leave it.

We all boarded the coach, fed and watered, and headed out for the TransAmerican Highway to get back to the ship. After yesterday’s chaos with a bus arriving back late, it was evident that the tours were under strict instructions to return promptly. 

Amazingly as we travelled the highway we spotted lots of flags on the side of the road, each heralding the presence of a small cafe, fruit stall or queso stop. I counted around eight in the space of only a couple of miles in one section. To call them services would be stretching a point and I’m guessing the baños were simply about going behind the nearest rock after everyone who came before you. 

Now the tugs are preparing for our departure at around 6pm and we have a sea day tomorrow before we arrive in Arica - the very northernmost port in Chile … and the hottest.