Antofagasta is a seaport of considerable importance, being the port of entry for a large part of Bolivia and northern Chile. Yet it shares with Mollendo the reputation of being the worst harbor on the west coast of South America. There is little protection against westerly and southerly winds. Even in calm weather there is a considerable swell at the boat-landing.
Once in the boat, however, we were charmed by the gambols of inquisitive sea-lions who thrust their snouts out of the water, a biscuit-toss away from the boat. As a counter attraction great flocks of birds flew in circles overhead looking for schools of fish that swim in this bay. As soon as a school was located, the entire flock of birds would pause an instant and then dive with the rapidity of lightning from the airy height straight into the billows, leaving only a splash of white water to show where they had gone. Another moment and they came to the surface, shook themselves, flapped their wings, and were away again to enjoy another magnificent dive a little later.
I had heard much of the terrors of steamship travel on the West Coast. Passengers who had recently experienced it assured me that it was simply horrible. We must have been very lucky, for we found the Mexico most comfortable and quite as good as one could expect in this part of the world. Of course she was neither so large nor so luxurious as the average trans-Atlantic liner. On the other hand she was not intended to carry luxury-loving travellers three thousand miles over a rough ocean and keep them amused, contented, and well-fed for a week. Her task consists in stopping every afternoon, anchoring in a badly-sheltered bay or an open roadstead, landing passengers, merchandise, and cattle into row-boats and barges, taking on cargoes of hides, coffee, or provisions; and meanwhile acting as a home for itinerant greengrocers whose business it is to provide this two thousand mile desert with fresh vegetables. Furthermore she was built to sail over the comparatively smooth waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean and provide for passengers who are travelling in a climate of perpetual spring and summer. All of this she does admirably.
The staterooms opened onto the promenade deck. There was a well-stocked library of fiction with books in four languages. The Chilean stewards were polite and obliging. Altogether we had little to find fault with. The food might have been a little better, but when one looked toward the land and saw that bleak desert coast continuing for hour after hour and day after day and realized that in the mountains behind it there were even greater desert solitudes, it did not seem surprising that the food was not up to our ideas of what it should be on board an ocean steamer.
Most of the passengers were natives of the West Coast. To them the diet seemed quite luxurious. To us who had come from the postes of southern Bolivia the table fairly groaned with abundance. I can readily believe that a traveller, who, while on his way south from Panama to Lima, has his first South American meals on board of one of these West Coast steamers would find the fare distressingly bad and the boats not very clean. Perhaps the discipline would seem lax and the service execrable. It all depends on one’s point of view.
If one is going to travel in South America at all, it is necessary to make up one’s mind to put up with a lot of this sort of thing. It need only be remembered that these boats are as safe and comfortable as those in other parts of the world, and that they have better accommodations than will be found anywhere in South America outside of half a dozen cities.
The first day after leaving Antofagasta brought us to Caldera. On the second day we reached Coquimbo which seems to be a flourishing seaport. Of course there are no wharves, but the bay is fairly well protected and steamers are able to anchor within three quarters of a mile of the landing-stage. New villas in course of construction on the heights at the south end of the bay testify to the prosperity of two of the leading business men of the place.
Devoted as Coquimbo has been to commercial pursuits, very little attention has been given to making the buildings attractive, and only recently has an effort been made to improve the appearance of the plaza. I visited two book shops in the hopes of getting some local prints and found a recently published anthology of the poets of Coquimbo! The books for the most part were those such as are found in the usual South American book store: French novels, French text-books, a few Spanish novels, and the local legal commentaries and law books.
It is a night’s journey by steamer from Coquimbo to Valparaiso. The temperature was much cooler than we had expected, and grew more so as we neared Valparaiso. To be sure, Valparaiso is as far south of the equator as San Francisco is north and the same general climatic conditions prevail.
The beautiful bay and harbor of Valparaiso have been repeatedly described by enthusiastic visitors for many years. Since the terrible earthquake of 1906, the city has lost much of its beauty, although many of the buildings have been restored and business is going on quite briskly. In the harbor were fifteen or twenty ocean steamers lying at anchor, two or three Chilean men-of-war and two large floating dry docks capable of taking care of the West Coast merchant steamers.