I arrived in Antofagasta around 8:30 - later than I wanted because I wasn't sure when my new Couchsurfing host needed to get to work. I got a taxi that was quite expensive - 5000 CLP - but I felt I had no leverage to bargain, and the driver had already dropped that from the 6000 CLP price that he originally named. I arrived without a problem - thank goodness!
Clara, my host here, doesn't speak as much English as my other hosts have. However, she is willing to speak slowly and clearly for me, which makes life much, much easier!
The thing about Antofagasta is that it's the 3rd-largest city in Chile by population. However, there is almost NOTHING to do here! I spent today doing basically everything that there is to be done here. I went to the city center - relatively close to Clara's place - coincidentally also called Plaza Colon. Apparently Christopher Columbus is really important? I'm pretty sure he's the namesake.
On my way there was a marketplace and a pedestrian street similar to the ones in Iquique and Arica. I ended up spending very little time in the Plaza and heading to Centro Cultural Estacion first, a little museum of the railway in Antofagasta. I also stopped by the Antofagasta Regional Museum, which was pretty extensive and complete with a downloadable audio guide in English. Unfortunately, since I have no phone, I couldn't download anything.
The museums are right next to the beach, so I headed in that direction. There's a wooden pier called Muelle Salitrero Compania Melbourne Clark, which was used as the main port of the city. It isn't in great condition but has old railroad tracks through it, and the holes in the floor have been replaced by glass panels. It has a cool feel to it and a beautiful view of the Pacific!
For lunch I had a stuffed potato. Since the first one I had in La Paz, I've loved them - fried potatoes stuffed with all kinds of things. This one had rice and veggies and chicken.
In the afternoon, I headed to the only other attraction to which I could walk in Antofagasta - the Ruins of Huanchaca. It took me about an hour to get there, but the ruins were obvious once I arrived. They're a large set of ruins that look like abandoned buildings from centuries ago, and have been turned into a little park that you can visit. The thing is, the information is sparse. There were three or four panels outside with both English and Spanish explanations, but the ink on them had faded so much that you could barely tell the panels with ink from a blank white panel.
Luckily, the museum was better. Everything was written in Spanish, unfortunately, but at least with the pictures I could understand some. There were English explanations, but accessible again only with QR codes. Being without a phone is tough enough, and I can't stand having to be reminded about it!
Anyway, the main part of the museum was focused all on saltpeter. There was an extensive timeline of it, and four large information hubs about it along with artifacts from around the world advertising saltpeter and derivative products (aka fertilizer). They had bags and pictures of calendars, stamps, comic strips, and all kinds of other products from around the world (the US, Asia, Middle East, Europe) with "Chilean Saltpeter" written on them. Fascinating.
They also had rooms/exhibits with samples of rocks from the region, including this gorgeous white one with turquoise tint. The information talked all about the scale of geological time, evolution, the solar system and stars, etc. I wasn't sure how it all tied together, but it was interesting nonetheless. They also had an audiovisual room that said it would play a video every hour, but when it got to the hour (and a little after that) nothing played. There were maybe 5 other visitors to the museum at that time, and I just gave up and walked away.
On my way back, I took the road along the beach - it's beautiful and they have places specifically for pedestrians, meaning people can easily walk from end to end of the city or jog on it, like many people were doing. It was quite the view - the beachfront of Antofagasta is probably the best one out of the ones I've seen!
I got back to the city center when it was kind of dark, but I bought a hot dog (completo, they come with tomatoes, mayonnaise, and guacamole) and churros for dinner - they were amazing! The city center and pedestrian road were full of life and street performers.
The curious issue with Antofagasta is that there are also NO tour agencies anywhere in the city. That makes absolutely no sense to me, seeing as they exist literally everywhere else - even in Bolivia. I walked around everywhere - the city center, the areas around it, the places around the hotels on the road to the Ruins of Huanchaca - and I'm sure of this fact. I'm going to be here for the next three days, and since there's nothing to do without private transportation, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Ugh.
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