Iquique - first day

I caught the bus from Arica at 6:30am today and slept all the way to Iquique.  Good job too because the bus was 5 hours long.  I was shocked to learn that the bus couldn't go to Iquique ecause of the severely damaged road from Alto Hospicio to Iquique.  The bus dropped us off at Alto Hospicio, from there I got a taxi to the hostel and checked in.

The hostel is very nice, very south american in design haha with all of the eccentric colours and art work.  It's right next to the beach which is good for the surfers, but unfortunate in case of a tsunami haha.  After lunch I set out on my random wanderings, focusing on the northwest of Iquique and the harbour area.  I decided not to rent a bike today so progress was a lot slower.

I did manage to take a lot of pictures in my 5 hours of aimless wandering and noticed that the damage in Iquique is indeed a lot worse than in Arica.  There are more cracked roads and pavements as well as more damaged buildings.  There are a lot more damaged modern buildings, for example the university of Chile building in the north west of the city has lots of cracks and fissures on its exterior walls.  I would have gone inside but the staff wouldnt allow me to take photographs (this was the case in a lot of the buildings I visited)

In Arica however a lot of the modern buildings remained fairly normal and undamaged showing that the overall affect of the April 1st earthquake was more severe in the Iquique area.  There isn't that much evidence of tsunami activity/tsunami tide despite the abundance of washed up rubbish on the beaches and rocks near the harbour, and an overturned yacht.

I'm going to attach a couple of photos to the next post.  Tomorrow I will be renting a bike and will try and cover as much as Iquique as I possibly can.  Wish me luck!