We decided to take a different route out through the majority of the park and set off having given the key back to the ranger.\u00a0 The rest of the park was equally beautiful with hills, cacti and spectacular views.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once back on the main road we stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant.\u00a0 Throughout Chile the food seems to be of a very high standard and even slightly beaten up looking roadsie restaurants in the middle of nowhere offer good fare.\u00a0 The problem for me is that they don\u00b4t really seem to get vegetarianism.\u00a0 Chile is famous for its seafood, which is exquisite, but we were inland.\u00a0 A lot of the restautants offer a luchtime \u00b4menu\u00b4 a set three course lunch with starter, main and pudding.\u00a0 Rather unsurprisingly this doesn\u00b4t have a vegetarian option, and actually, it\u00b4s relatively rare for there to be an option at all.\u00a0 Mum used her infamous Spanish and in the end I was treated to a rather strange fried eggs and rice combo!\u00a0 It was perfectly palatable though.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
After a lot more arid desert we got to Antofagasta.\u00a0 Antofagasta is a relatively large port town and didn\u00b4t really appeal.\u00a0 It followed the coast in a vast line with a mixture of port type industry, strange parks and high rise hotel blocks.\u00a0 We decided to continue out of the town towards Juan Lopez.\u00a0 On the way we took a wrong turning (I was directing but it was the map\u00b4s fault) which turned out to be the right turning if you wanted to see a beautiful arch separated from the mainland by the sea.\u00a0 Apparently it\u00b4s one of the most photographed sights in Chile, so we contributed and headed off.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
When we arrived in the small coastal village of Juan Lopez it originally seemed like the only inhabitants were dogs.\u00a0 This isn\u00b4t that unusual as Chile is full of dogs who wander around the towns and villages looking pleased with themselves.\u00a0 Although they are strays they don\u00b4t appear to have taken the typical inbred mongrel form which you find in other countries, i.e. the brown Heinz 57 dog, and are discernable into near pedigree type breeds.\u00a0 They are also suprisingly friendly and we didn\u00b4t meet any which were in the slightest bit aggressive.\u00a0 In general they also weren\u00b4t that manky and seemed to quite enjoy life hanging out in groups and taking themselves for little strolls together.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u00a0carried on\u00a0up the \u00b4main street\u00b4until we found a place from the guidebook which looked open.\u00a0 Once inside we liked the quaint place with its courtyard garden and were greeted by two sweet old women.\u00a0 The women turned out to be real characters, one of whom Mum thought was the female version of Basil Fawlty.\u00a0 There was a discussion about rooms and then one of the woman showed us our rooms.\u00a0 Well she tried, bless her, but couldn\u00b4t get the key to work.\u00a0 So the other woman was summonsed who did manage to open the door.\u00a0 Having seen the rooms we asked where was best to park and one of the women came in the van with Dad and I to show us.\u00a0 We got to a locked gate which she couldn\u00b4t open with the key.\u00a0 I decided to assist and got out and opened the gate prior to pointing out to her that the top of the parking enclosure was about a foot lower than the van roof.\u00a0 After all the hassle of actually opening the gate she did a really funny shrug and muttered something, before agreeing that it was best if we just parked the van next to the road.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
We settled in and then took a walk down to the beach and around the headland where there were lots of marine birds.\u00a0 There was one cool black bird with bright red legs and beak which Dad and I took photos of.\u00a0 In the evening we had a lovely meal of fresh fish and chips at the place where we were staying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We decided to take a different route out through the majority of the park and set off having given the key back to the ranger.\u00a0 The rest of the park was equally beautiful with hills, cacti and spectacular views. \u00a0 Once back on the main road we stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant.\u00a0 Throughout […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}