Starting the trip to Arica

Day Three

If you are ever in Antofagasta, do not stay at the hotel that we stayed in. When we got ready to leave, we could not find a clerk anywhere. I finally left the keys in the room and we left. They had asked for payment in advance when we arrived, and I can see why. They had no intention of being around.
As we were leaving Antofagasta, Milton started complaining about not having any breakfast. Chileans usually drink a breakfast of coffee and bread. Milton explained that he had to have his café con leche (milk and coffee) or he begins to feel weak. So we drove over to the town of Mejillones, where we searched for a restaurant that would serve us breakfast. I should point out that in Spanish, you do not eat breakfast, you drink it. We finally found a restaurant that would serve us breakfast. The cooks were all nice ladies, and they decided to serve us. They were even nice enough to go and buy some milk, so Milton could have his milk. We wound up joking a lot with them. I promised them that we would come back some time and eat lunch with them, so we would really know how they cook.
As it turns out, Rolando had a daughter in the town (pop. 8200 people) who was the principal of the grade school. We went over to her school and visited with her for a little bit. She was a very nice person.
In Antofagasta, we had left the main road, and we were taking the coastal road to Iquique. This road follows the coast. It is much prettier, but it has a lot more curves and hills than the main road. I took some pictures along the way. At one point, I noticed that the road which was located on the side of a mountain was split. Most likely, a earthquake had caused some of the foundation to begin to fall away. As a result, the road was beginning to break up. This is not an entirely comfortable thought, considering that the road itself is several hundred feet above the ocean. When we return that way, I will let you know if the road is still there. If it is not, I will take a picture, before we start the long journey back around the mountains.
We stopped briefly in Iquique to say hello to the brothers before we continued on to Arica. One brother fixed us some sandwiches in his shop, which is evidently doing pretty well. I will tell you more about the church in Iquique when we return.
We drove on to Arica, passing several memorable places in the desert. One place was where I hit a rock some years ago and knocked a hole in my gas tank. This had the wonderful effect of making me wonder if we were going to be stranded in the desert. Fortunately, at the time, we were not, because I had enough gas to make it in to town. Another place was where my car broke down, and I had to wait a day there for Pedro to go into town and buy a part.
Another memorable aspect of the trip from Iquique to Arica is that there are four cuestas. Cuestas are where the road climbs up through the mountains and then descends again. For the life of me, I can not remember what they are called in English. One cuesta descends for seventeen kilometers, and another climbs for eleven kilometers. The whole time we are climbing and descending, the side of the road falls away for several thousand feet into an abyss, the bottom of which you can not see. For the entire time, the shoulder of the road is only a yard or so wide before it begins to fall away into the abyss. There is no protection placed along a good portion of the road, which means that there is no protection against driving off into eternity. Every now and then, some poor soul falls asleep at the wheel and drives a kilometer or two without the benefit of traction nor wings, only to be awakened in the next life. As you can imagine, I watched Milton who was driving like a hawk. I did not want him to fall asleep or anything. This part of the trip is always tense.
We made it into Arica safe and sound around eleven thirty p.m. We visited with David Cisternas and his wife until about two a.m. before finally making it to bed.