Bienvenidos a Chile! 🇨🇱

So I’m not gonna lie, about 10 hours into the seemingly never ending bus journey to Chile, one does begin to start questionning ones life decisions. Even more so at 2am the following morning when on the world’s bumpiest bus whilst everyone around you seems, inexplicably, to be sleeping. And again, even more so when arriving in Chile in a rather sketchy bus terminal at 4.15 am, desperately needing to find solace somewhere, anywhere, until we can leave our bags at our inn. It was rather a long, drawn out wait until 8am, but we made it through! Off we went to the inn to drop off our things. We couldn’t do check in until 1 supposedly, but the inn owner took one look at us and told us to come back in an hour or two and she’d have a room she could let us sleep in until we could check in. Hallelujah!

So off we pootled! We went to the main square on a hunt for breakfast and a nose around, and soon enough we found ourselves getting stuck in to breakfast. Rather baffingly, what they offered us was a beef sandwich and a cuppa. Not quite what I anticipated a Chilean breakfast to be but gratefully we sunk our knashers in and it was pretty good!

Then, after we were fed and watered off we went in persuit of the sea, we found it and found ourselves scrambling over the rocks. I find it quite funny that in the Glover clan, if you see rocks on a beach, there’s no question that that’s where you’re going! Nolz doesn’t have this unspoken agreement in his family (confusing, I know), but has come to expect this sort of thing and now rather likes it too 😜

So after the rock exploration, we moseyed back to the inn and had the best nap of our lives, quite possibly the best nap in the history of man kind. Delicious.

That afternoon we pootled off to find some more nosh (ended up in a Peruvian restaurant somehow 😂) and went for a little wander on the nearby beach. Then we turned in for an early night but not without first ordering a dominoes! Now, I realise this is a tad ridiculous. First a Peruvian lunch, then a dominoes dinner, however! I was complaining the other day that Argentina doesnt have dominoes and my eyes happened to alight on the dominoes ad when we first arrived which made me very happy indeed…

Now, the thing is, there’s not actually loads to do in Iquique. It’s mainly a place to go and sit on the beach and have a little wander, around, eat some food, go back to the beach and brave the water if you fancy getting chilly in Chile 😉 so this is what we did the second day, a little read on the beach, lunch at some nearby food trucks, sitting on a smaller beach where Nolz braved the water and then went back out again for a hot chocolate and to watch the sunset before having a spot of dinner and retreating back to our lil Inn for the night.

Day number 3, Monday, was a couple of hours on the main beach. And goodness me, let me tell you, it’s an assault on the senses! Every five seconds there’s a vendor yelling “EMPANADAS, RICAS, CALENTITAS” then two seconds pass and “MOJIIIIITOSSS, CORONAAAA” and then a few more seconds pass and “FRUTILLAAA CON CHOCOLAAATEEEE” and that’s not even mentioning the ice cream horn that would intermittently join the cacophony of sounds, all jostling for attention. Both myself and Nolz actually quite liked all the background noise and it was quite amusing at points.

It seems that the thing to do at the beach here, is rent a sun shade. The whole beach is literally a sea of sunshades. However! It wasn’t too busy for us as we went in the morning and stayed till about 3, giving me enough time to have a little swim. The Pacific ocean is pretty cold! But the thing one is most worried about is the jellyfish, there are sooo many dead on the beach but you can also see them floating about in the sea. We were planning on eating on the beach, but typically enough, the one time we wanted the “EMPANADAS, RICAS, CALENTITAS” guy to come our way he never did! So at about 3pm, with grumbling stomachs we went off in the persuit of food.

After eating, we wandered round to the other bay and goodness me! There was basically noone there. I don’t know why everyone masses to the one beach, this one was really beautiful and basically deserted! We hung there for a bit before returning to the main beach.

On the main beach, we decided it was time to be adventurous. I’m not sure exactly what it was that we did, but imagine this huge circular inflatable thing (… okay, best if you look at the picture below), that up to 8 people can clamber up onto, thats pulled by a guy on a jetski. Now the whole purpose of this is to spin you around and around and around whilst going incredibly fast and you’re clinging on for dear life, trying not to go flying off. Sounds fun right? It was quite fun actually! Just somewhat dizzyfying. Turns out that I just laugh in these situations. They just seem incredibly funny to me but I can’t quite explain why 😂 I also noticed, whilst whirling around, a fin go up in the water a little way from us! When I told Nolz this afterwards he was rather bewildered as to how I had spotted this as he was just clinging on and there was me, giggling and looking for sea life. Anyways, I suspect it was a dolphin! Which is sighting number 2 as I think I spotted another one the other day too.

Then, after surviving whatever the above thing was, we wandered back along the beach, picking up some churros on the way! And returned to our inn. Was thinking we’d get a second wind and probably pop out again later but the second wind never came so we watched some disneyplus and called it a night.

Day number 4, off we went into the little town to pick up a few bits and bobs and have luncheon. Then, after a little afternoon siesta, off to the water park we went! If youre reading this from England, you might know what water park I mean. It’s an inflatable water course, with slides and bits to climb up and jump off of. Its good fun! Here they have one in the sea so obviously we were always gonna do that 😜

The water park was fun! Recently I’ve been doing lots of swimming as exercise so swimming out to the park was quite satisfying as I could get there quite quickly 💪🏻 and I managed to get on the water park trampolines, which I was pleased about as at my hen, part 2 in England, I didnt manage to get on them. Incredibly difficult to bounce! But still, I did it. The funniest thing about the water park was that it was in the sea. So every now and then I’d look around and be like, oh! Look! A seal! Pretty close to people swimming actually. I’m surprised by the animals here, they don’t seem super afraid of humans. I guess they’re used to the mob of people here.

After the water park antics, I felt like we deserved some more sweet treats so walking along the beach we kept our eyes right for the appropriate thing – ice cream for Nolz, churros for me! And along the beach we went, ambling back to our lil inn. Then that evening we popped out for some cocktails 😊

The next day I stuck my nose in my book all morning! We then pootled off out for some lunch and then went and sat by the sea for a bit. We went back out in the eve for our normal walk around the beach and to watch the sunset.

Day number 6 we had a beach afternoon! To avoid the sand, we invested in two beach chairs this time. Oh the luxury! It was suuuper comfy and we just hung on the beach, me reading, nolz playing a game, listening and watching the goings on around us. V nice and relaxing! And of course, we had our daily walk along the beach back to the inn 😊

Our last day, Friday, we headed off out to a nearby shopping centre to kill time! Had some Chilean pesos to use up so that was rather fun hunting around for what to spend it on 😏 then when the time came, we hopped into a taxi and headed off for the bus station for our first bus at 10pm. We were very thankful to arrive in Calama at 5am instead of 4, as our next bus was at 6am and it was very cold ! Then the rest of the journey went without a hitch and we arrived back in Salta at 7pm on Saturday.

So, there you are! The full account of our holiday to Chile. Well done if you made it this far on ma blog, it was a long one! Stay tuned for holiday part 2 😜