Arica, Chile

I took an eight hour bus ride from La Paz to Arica, Chile, the driest city in the world in the driest desert in the world. Northern Chile is famous for its desert and understandably so. Looking out the window, I saw snow capped mountains in the background and practically nothing but sand in the foreground. As we passed small towns, it reminded me of the aerial shots of the flooded Nile from National Geographic: sudden greenery and buildings surrounded by desert, though with a significantly less impressive river.

 

During my one brief day in Arica, I hung out at the beach and checked out Iglesia San Marcos, designed by Gustav Eiffel in the late 1800s.

 

Thanks to its location on the earthquake zone known as the ring of fire, Arica is also vulnerable to tsunamis. Reminders are all over town.

 

Before going to the bus station, I caught a decent, though cloud obscured, sunset from El Moro, an imposing hill that looms over the city.

 

The view reminded me that Arica today exists largely as a busy port town.

 

Much of Bolivia's exports leave South America through Arica because it is the nearest port. This is something of a touchy subject for Bolivia as it wasn't always landlocked as it is today and even though Peru has agreed to give Bolivia a free port area, Bolivia really wants a slice of northern Chile. This BBC article from 2011 provides a good background: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12842978. In the meantime, Bolivian trucks continue to queue at the Bolivian-Chilean border.