January 17, 2025

IQUIQUE, CHILE - Town Square below

Today 4 of us hired an Uber driver to take us to Humberstone, a UNESCO world heritage ghost town out in the Atacama Desert.  This once thriving town was built for the extraction of Saltpeter or potassium nitrate - a component of gunpowder, fertilizer and used in food preservation. Unfortunately, most of the displays were just in Spanish, but I could figure out the basic history of what went on - the employees were being taken advantage of and they had an uprising, that basically ended Humberstone. Place was huge!

Next we drove out further into the desert to see The Atacama Giant or Gigante de Atacama or the Tarapaca Giant an anthropomorphic geoglyph. It is the largest geoglyph with a human representation in the world at 390 feet. It is considered an archaeological monument and cultural heritage of Chile. It is believed to be a shaman or deity or spiritual figure. Regardless, our uber driver had never seen and he hiked with us to the desert viewing spot. A very different kind of day!

By Patricia Patrick February 15, 2026
We got up at 6:45am to get to National Park Forts Walk trail in the hope of seeing koalas . Prior walkers mark trails with tree branches pointing in the direction of their sighting and we were luck enough to see 3 markers in our first hour of hiking. It is so stinking hot and humid the success we had made it bearable. The koala population on the island started with 20 brought over in 1930, to escape fur hunters. Today, the island boast 800 to 1000, and they are so cute and drowsy. They need 20 hours of sleep a day! The early morning is when they are the most active.
By Patricia Patrick February 14, 2026
Just off the coast of Townsville, Australia is a special little island (that used to be part of mainland, hundreds of thousands years ago). The island was formed by molten granite that was pushed to the earth's surface with volcanic force.Over time the volcanic overlay weathered away leaving an extraordinary landscape of rounded domes and boulders, many as big as a house and spectcularly perched. Over Seventy Percent of the center of the Island is a National Park. There is lots of wildlife here too - koalas, rock wallabies, snakes & birds.
By Patricia Patrick February 14, 2026
This is my third time in CAIRNS, AUSTRALIA and I really enjoy how walkable, clean and charming it is. The waterfront esplanade and lagoon area is a nice walk day or night. We had 2 nights here in the waterfront Shangri La Marina Hotel while waiting for the Ship to arrive and then 2 additional days in Port.