Guanaqueros is a

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

an town in the commune of

Coquimbo Coquimbo is a port List of cities in Chile, city, Communes of Chile, commune and Capital city, capital of the Elqui Province, located on the Pan-American Highway, in the Coquimbo Region of Chile. Coquimbo is situated in a valley south of La Seren ...

, Elqui Province, Coquimbo Region. It is located in

Guanaqueros Bay Guanaqueros Bay ( es, Bahía de Guanaqueros) is a bay in Chile's Coquimbo Region. The bay is U-shaped, open to the northwest. Its western boundary is made up by Punta Guanaquero, a spur of Cerro Guanaqueros. The beach of Guanaros Bay lies about 34 ...

, 12 kilometers northeast from

Tongoy Tongoy is a Chilean coastal town in the commune of Coquimbo in Elqui Province, Coquimbo Region. It is located to the south of Chile's second oldest city, La Serena, next to Guanaqueros beach, on a rocky promontory opposite the Pacific Oce ...

. It is a fishermen's cove, which spreads along the eastern rim of the ''

Cerro Guanaqueros Cerro is Spanish for "hill" or "mountain". Toponyms ;Bolivia: * Cerro Rico, the "Rich Mountain" containing silver ore near Potosi, Bolivia ;Brazil: *Cerro Branco, a municipality of Rio Grande do Sul *Cerro Grande, Rio Grande do Sul, a municipa ...

'' ("Guanaqueros Hills"), and with its houses built facing to the north in the direction of the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

. Guanaqueros is situated next to an extensive ocean harbor of the same name, where dozens of recreation centers are located, along with inns, hostels and other accommodations for the tourist industry. The town lies next to the ''Carretera Panamericana'' ("

Pan-American Highway The Pan-American Highway (french: (Auto)route panaméricaine/transaméricaine; pt, Rodovia/Auto-estrada Pan-americana; es, Autopista/Carretera/Ruta Panamericana) is a network of roads stretching across the Americas and measuring about in ...

") and, according to the 2002

census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses in ...

, it has a population of 1,395 inhabitants. The town's first inhabitants were the

Diaguita The Diaguita people are a group of South American indigenous people native to the Chilean Norte Chico and the Argentine Northwest. Western or Chilean Diaguitas lived mainly in the Transverse Valleys which incised in a semi-arid environment. ...

s, who lived off the ocean and who mined and made tools from the area's copper deposits.

References

* Guanaqueros. From the Spanish-language Wikipedia. Retrieved April 24, 2006

References

See also