It rained heavily last night. We’d had another exceptional meal of cold spaghetti and boiled, frozen veg again last night.
At breakfast they gave us coca leaves and some other herbs to help with altitude sickness, or maybe it was to help obliterate the memory of some of the worst coffee we had had so far. (And that is saying something, in even the posh hotels, you only get instant coffee.)
We set off back to Arica. On the way we passed the Pukara de Copaquilla, an Inca fortress with typical round houses from around 1000 b.c.
On the way we decided that we didn’t want to stay two night in Arica, but would rather see some different places. We cancelled our hotel and then went into the centre to have a decent meal, as we didn’t know what we would get later.
We saw several car transporters taking old cars to Bolivia.
On the way to Arica we had seen a sign to a village which seemed to have lots of facilities. After about an hour, we saw the sign again and headed inland. 47 km later, we reached Codpo, a small oasis town, deep in a valley.
To our surprise there was a tourist information office and it was open. We’d seen a sign for a hotel on the way in, so we asked if there were “habitaciones” available. We were shown to a room off a road in a side street. The wife of the tourism officer came and changed the linen, and we paid the pricely sum of 13,000 pesos ( about £13). The officer seemed very concerned about our dinner so he took us to the restaurant, which was shut, and arranged for it to be opened up for us.
Back in the room, there was no electricity, though there were light switches and fittings. Unlike Colchane, they had provided candles and matches. You could see daylight through a crack in the wall, though inlike Tocopilla this was mostlikely caused by bad construction and not an earthquake.
We did a “pasiendo” (walk) around the town and saw the tourism officer on his bike. He seemed also to be in charge of the village water supply, which he explained had been installed a year ago, and came from bore holes. He then went off to feed his livestock.
We saw fig trees, lime trees, grapes and other things being cultivated in a rather ad hoc way. There were also sheep and pigs.
On the way back into the village, the tourism officer was there again talking with the local Carabinero, no doubt telling him about our arrival. He had previously explained that once some French and German people had visited the village, but we were the first English.
On the edge of the village, we found a sizeable hotel complex, complete with modern buildings and a pool, but it was closed up.
At 8.30 p.m., we turned up at the restaurant which was in darkness, apart from a couple of lightbulbs. We were served a meal of rice, lettuce, raw tomato and avocado with hot bread. Miraculously at 9 p.m. all the light came on, and the proprietress explained that there was electricity for three hours per day. At other times, a generator is used.
The meal with wine came to £3. Back at the room, the lights were like Blackpool Illuminations, but for the third time only in Chile, there was no WiFi.
Then the electricity went off. We had only had one and a half hours.
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