Arica, Chile

Arica is a city in the very north part of Chile. It used to be part of Peru but Chile and Peru had a war a while back and Chile won the war and Arice became part of Chile as a result.

Not a bad little town compared to some we have seen so far.

The church below was designed by a Frenchman - Gustave Eiffel - after his success with this church he also built a tower in Paris.

All the red pieces you see above and below are painted steel. All the metal parts and pieces were all fabricated in Eiffel's shop in Paris and then shipped to Arica for assembly.

We first saw this church at the start of our excursion. When we returned to it a few hours later there was a big change.

Our activity after visiting the church was a trip to the Atacama Desert to look at some sculptures.  I don't recall exactly why they're way out in the desert but it had something to do with the sculptor wanted to put them up in Arica but the town bossy people wouldn't let him.

One of the sculptures below represents a man and the other a woman.  Don't recall which.

Don't recall what this one represents.

These fine folks did a dance for us when we got close to the Man and Woman sculptures.

Here's a small video of it.

On our way back to town we visited a small museum that had some very old mummies. They had different method from the Egyptians and apparently everyone got mummified when they died. Even a baby only one day old.

It's quite remarkable why people all over the world mummify their dead. Like who gave them the idea that there was something after death?

Another stop on the  back was to visit some geoglyphs - animal shapes on hillsides created with piles of stones.

A close-up.

Another type of "geoglyph" only made from tens of thousands of glass Coke bottles. Didn't quite get the story about who did it but our guide was pretty sure Coke had a hand in it. DUH!

Back in town there was a protest going on on front of the church wed visited earlier. Anyone watching the news lately likely knows there's a lot of civil unrest in Chile these days. We hadn't seen much evidence of it to date as this was our first stop in Chile.

This was a peaceful protest though and we were allowed to get close and see what was going on. What we found is a group of indigenous people protesting against a mining company that was proposing a to build a mine on or near their land that had the potential to seriously affect their water. There were lots of speeches and horns blowing but everyone was in a pretty good mood.