Horcon

I took numerous pelican pictures but this was the best one.

During my South America days, I caught a local bus from Vina del Mar up the coast to a fishing village called Horcon. It was an assemblage of shacks and other unprepossessing buildings. You must appreciate that modern Chile is really a very new country - rather like the American mid-west - a product of the mid-nineteenth century. Okay there were Amerindian tribes thriving there for millennia before European exploitation but the Chile we see today owes very little to that heritage.

Down on the beach, muscular brown horses were pulling in fishing boats and a couple of weather-beaten fishermen were filleting their catch and throwing the squirming remains to gangs of waiting pelicans.

I ate fresh fish in a beachfront restaurant before wandering off to locate the bay of Cau-Cau with its picture postcard sands and Pacific waves. The journey back to Vina took an hour and a half - through the charmless township of Quintero about which my "Rough Guide" was very scathing.:-"Avoid this place at all costs" . I must say that that advice almost tempted me have a wander round Quintero but Rough Guides are invariably and uncannily spot on so I didn't bother. Anyway...dear readers...more photographs...

Beach horses working at Horcon

Feeding frenzy

Horse grazing by Cau-Cau beach.

Cau-Cau