First port in Chile

Silver smelter ruins

Big Ben replica clock tower

More desert coast line

Salute to the haggis

Jan 25  We arrived in Antofagasta, Chile at 8 am.  This is an industrial port city located on the Atacama desert, (the driest place on earth).   The town has about 300,000 residents at any given time but only about 200,000 are permanent.  The 100,000 extra are miners that work either a 4 day on/4 day off or a 7 day on/7 day off schedule and they return to their permanent homes on their days off. 
Mining is the only industry and they have very little tourism so there is not much to see or do.    We chose a tour that  was supposed to go to a couple of museums and the old town square.  The tour operator had supplied some large buses but we drew the short straw and got one that was really very dirty, inside and out.  It looked like all it ever did was drive on dirt roads and was never cleaned.  The  first place we visited was an old silver smelter built of large stones that was from the late 1800's.  The museum contained some nice exhibits but everything was in Spanish.  We then drove a short distance to the main plaza in the center of the town and got off the bus to walk around the square and to visit another small museum.  After getting off the bus several members of the group decided to leave the group and get back to the ship on there own, the first defections!  We had the same problem with the second museum, everything was in Spanish so we could not really get much information from the nice exhibits.  The tour guide's english was very good but he did not seem inclined to do any translation of the information.  He then told us we were going to the train museum, this stop was on one of the other tours but the guide insisted that it was on our schedule so quite a few, including us, decided to leave the tour.  Maybe no one stayed until the end!  The ship had a shuttle bus available from the main square so we made it back in time for lunch. 
Today is Robbie Burns birthday so tour director Ray donned his kilt and we had a celebration  that  included a "salute to the haggis" during cocktail hour in the Observation Lounge. 
Jan 26  We are at sea again today and will arrive in Valpariso tomorrow morning. Tom will get a visit to his first Chilean winery, one that is known for its pinot noirs.