A slow start by the standards of this trip — a morning at the beach before the last stretch of Chilean desert, a drive that drops in and out of a series of dramatic canyons on its way to the final city before Peru.
Morning: Playa Cavancha
The morning belongs to Playa Cavancha, Iquique's signature beach and one of the best urban stretches of sand on the Chilean coast — a sheltered cove close to the city centre, calm enough for an easy swim, with a boardwalk running along the back of the beach and a clear view across the bay to the dune-backed hills above the city. After weeks of high desert camps and canyon roads, a morning here with nothing more urgent than the tide is a fair trade for the miles still ahead. Iquique wakes under the characteristic coastal cloud that rolls in off the Pacific at night and burns away through the morning — the same pattern that shapes weather along this entire stretch of coast.