The Great Excursion Northward Part 1

This is going to be a long entry so I’m going to split it up into a few different posts.

On Friday April 6, the day after I showed PJ’s parents around Valpo, I got on a bus with four friends at 11:30 PM with a backpack and a water bottle and got off 11 hours later in a town called Copiapo. The plan was to spend one night there, then make our way to Bahia Inglesa, a secluded beach town. After three minutes in this town I was already itching (figuratively at this point and a bit later, literally) to leave and go to the beach.

I think my friend Dan summed up Copiapo in his blog better than I could here, so I’m sharing his thoughts with you:

I have spent the week pondering how one should describe Copiapo. Yet I believe my assessment of the town after one hour best describes it. “If the mafia issued me a death warrant, I would go here. My assassin, Tommy the Gun, would bypass this town thinking surely anyone would choose death before living here.” I really do not have anything pleasant to say about this town and I am pretty laid back. My traveling companions developed two vulgar names of their own to describe the town. I shall not provide them but anyone with a lively imagination could figure them out. Right now someone from Copiapo has logged onto this account and has begun plotting my demise. I am truly sorry my friend, but Lonely Planet was quite misleading in its summation of tourist activities in your town. Perhaps they too had a miserable experience in Copiapo and specifically wanted to take it out on me? Luckily, I am a benevolent writer and am speaking the truth.

My sentiments mirror Dan’s exactly.

This picture, taken in one the town’s plazas, sums up the general feeling in Copiapo

The only good thing about this town was this amazing empanada place called Empanadopolis we ate at for lunch.

We went out early that night, going from dinner to the one sports bar in town around 8 PM, and then went to bed early (at least, relatively for Chile).

The next morning we got out of Copiapo as quickly as possible, taking an hour long bus ride to Caldera and then a 15 minute colectivo ride to Bahia Inglesa.

MAP