We didn’t want to do a 24 hour bus ride from Arica to Santiago, so we thought Copiapo would be a nice place to break the trip in the middle as it’s about equidistant from the two. The problem with Copiapo is that there’s not much to do there, especially if you arrive on a Sunday. There’s not even a movie theater. Inexpensive hotels/hostels are hard to find and fill up fast, and the food options are pretty slim for vegetarians. There’s some nice sounding national parks nearby, but you need a car to get there and we didn’t know where any car rental agencies were (the tourist office was closed too) or feel like paying for a car again so soon. One day if we come back to Chile we’ll just plan on getting a car for a week or more to drive around to these parks.
The one fairly interesting thing we did do there was go to the Mineral Museum, which has some cool glow in the dark rocks. The museum has tons of samples, although it could use some more signs explaining why to care about any of the rocks or how they’re organized or something.
Other than rocks we mostly wandered around the town plaza and hung out in internet cafes. The Empanadopolis, which serves some decent vegetarian empanadas with more that just cheese, finally opened up right before we caught our bus, and we ate far too many empanadas.