Have you ever gone to visit a friend or relative who took you around their town, but who had
no idea what to show you? Then, friend, you know what a tour of Coquimbo, Chile, is like.
We were met by kids dancing on the
dock, which should have warning enough. Nonetheless, like lambs to the slaughter, we boarded our tour bus. Evelyn, our guide, spoke good English, but her commentary was generally of the variety, “on the left is the beach, on the right are high-rise hotels” – useful if you were
blind perhaps. Added to this was a particularly irritating flexibility of schedule – “be back at the bus – 45 minutes!” Only when
you were – and everybody else was - we still puttered around another 15 minutes before we left. All you guides out there,
consistency is what we want,
consistency!
Our first stop was “a photographic opportunity” involving the El Faro Lighthouse, a symbol of La Serena, the regional capital. This would have been fine if the lighthouse had
actually been a lighthouse, had dated from an early time (it was apparently erected in the 1950’s), or if the weather had been good (it was windy and drizzly).
Certainly worth a
pass.
The Elqui Valley was a bit better – after all, it’s hard to ruin a region’s natural scenery, and this agriculture enclave, with cacti in the upper hills and a major dam was reasonably interesting. We stopped in the village of Vicuna, a potentially interesting town with its local Bauer Tower, and the home of
Nobel-prize winner Gabriel Mistral (we hadn’t heard of her either), but it was unfocused – like wandering around the Main Street of a western town right before the big shoot-out. The visit was more a “rest stop with benefits.”
Ironically, the major plus of the day, was the stop that we had both dreaded, the tour of the National Drink Distillery Factory, which manufactures
pisco. (Yes, we know they make
it in Peru too, but between us, it’s too complicated a controversy to cover in a blog!) In any case, we thought this would be a sales opportunity, which, of course, it was. It was also, however, a cracking good tour, with visits to all parts
of the plant and some (small) free samples at the end. One of the world’s most impressive bottles must be the
pisco bottle resembling a Easter Island
moai; who ever came up with
that was a marketing genius!
So what looked like it might be a debit on the trip, turned out to be its best feature.
It’s unclear why the advertised order of this tour was had changed; we finished off with another visit to an observation point (this at least better than the morning’s), a tour of
La Serena’s Archeological Museum, and a short stop at the La Recova Handicraft Market. If anyone thought, the
piscos imbibed might cause more money to be spent, they were in error. Our hands stayed in our pockets.
So, while the trip was not without its rewards, we left a bit frustrated, feeling that we had not experienced all that the area had to offer. We would thus far give Holland America very high grades on its shore side partners, but our experience here could hardly rate above a C-.
Having checked out the workings of the kitchen and the bridge, what else is left? Well, how about the engine room? Mary spoke to the Front Desk, who suggested that we pen a written request for such a tour. Two days later, voila! We received an invitation to see the “innards” of the Amsterdam. (Requests like this do not always succeed; we were told that such chores were anathema to the Amsterdam’s previous captain.)
This tour differed as much from that of the bridge as an afternoon scramble does from a game of … bridge. While the Amsterdam’s engine room is as neat as any Sam has seen, it is not the place to wear anything you’re planning to keep on as “smart casual” for dinner! We were taken down into an “alternate universe” aboard the ship – a part most passengers never see – with long broad corridors and storage lockers.
Craig John Stephenson, Third Engineer, ushered us into the engine room’s headquarters – an area deceptively like the bridge, with its own banks of dials and gauges. Almost predictably, Craig was born north of the Border; the Scottish appear to have an affinity for engine rooms and it is rare to find a vessel without a representative as engineer.
We learned that while the ship had five engines onboard (with if memory serves correctly, 24 heads under 12 covers – that would be a valve job!), she only needed four at any given time and that if necessary, they could be completely torn apart and repaired while at sea – take that all you land-locked mechanics, who can’t handle having the earth move under your feet! We toured the extensive air-handling/cooling systems that the ship needs just to run, the garbage disposal area, looked at the sewage storage tanks, and – 
don’t get too close – walked right past the incinerators (over 600 and 900 degrees Celsius if memory serves us correctly.A quite impressive array of equipment that all hummed smoothly along as we sliced through the southern seas, destination Africa. 
