We awoke to a grey sky; sea mist in the mornings and evenings is apparently the norm in this part of the world - but eventually the sky cleared into a bright warm day.

Chile is on a different time zone to Peru - with summer time it is two hours further East. So now it won't get dark until about 8:30 - yippie. For the last 4 months we have been places where it is dark by 6:00-6:30 and we have found that makes for poor use of the daylight hours.

Nina was not well this morning, she had an unexplained pain in the abdomen, so we spent a quiet day, seeing a few of the sights of Arica and also spent some time just parked at the beach relaxing in the warmth.

The difference in affluence between Chile and Peru was evident today. There are two large supermarkets and a large hardware store in Arica and they were packed today - though all other shops were closed. Also at the beach there were hundreds of vehicles parked on the sand with large groups of people just having a day at the beach, with their surf boards and body boards. No one looked like they were fishing for their existence and there was no evidence of scavenging.

Arica is famous for one of its churches, built by Eiffel (of the tower fame), it is made entirely of stamped cast iron. It was built in France and transported in pieces to Chile and assembled on site.

It is also famous (at least in this part of the world) for the head land called El Morro. This is where the decisive battle of the war of the Pacific between Chile and Peru was fought and won by Chile. Before that war Arica was part of Peru. Bet you have not even heard of this war - we hadn't.

It was really nice to be at lower altitude where we could breath easily, to sit on a beach and feel the salt in the air and the warm sun on ones skin. I think we are going to enjoy a few days of coastal travel.