Oct. 26, 2016.  Hostel Plaza de Armes, Santiago, Chile.

• Bought a plane ticket for Santiago,leaving this evening: about $300.  Better than a 26 hour bus ride along the world's most boring coast!  In the meantime, I took a collectivo to the the Azapa Valley, to see the world's oldest mummies in the Museo Arqueologico San Miguel de Azapa.  The mummies are more than 2,000 years older than Egyptian mummies!  Well preserved, too, thanks to their elaborate burial rituals.  They even had mummies of fetuses.

• Azapa is in a narrow valley bordered by high sand dunes, and full of olive groves, started by the Spaniards.  

• Back to Arica for a walk around the harbor, watching the fishermen clean their catch and throw the guts to the waiting sea lions and pelicans.  Had a lunch of spiced fish and potatoes, and of course a glass of Chilean wine.

• Now hanging out in the lobby of the hostel until 6 or so, when I'll grab a taxi to the airport.  I arrive in Santiago late this evening.  

• So here's how to prepare a Chinchorro mummy:

Dismember the corpse's head, limbs and skin.

Remove the brain by splitting the skull or drawing it through the base.

Take out the other internal organs.

Dry the body with hot stones or flames.

Repack the body with sticks, reeds, clay, and camelid fur.

Reassemble the parts, sewing them together with cactus spines.

Slather the body with a thick paste made from ash.

Replace the skin, patched with sea-lion hide.

Attach a wig of human hair and a clay mask.

Paint the mummy with black manganese.

• Several hundred Chinchorro mummies have now been discovered, all ages are represented, and there 's no evidence to suggest that mummification was reserved for a special few.  

• Sky Airlines delivered me safely to the Santiago airport in the narrowest plane seat I have ever squeezed into.  Then, thanks to the advice of Lonely Planet, I took the Transvip fixed-price minibus (with 5 other passengers) for about $9 for the 14k ride from the airport to the hostel, right on the main square in downtown Santiago, arriving around 11 PM.  My room, with private shower and a balcony on the fourth floor overlooking the plaza, cost about $35 - more than usual, but this is Santiago (and breakfast is included).