Experience the best of Talcahuano

Talcahuano occupies the neck of the Tumbes Peninsula on the Bay of Concepción, a short distance from the larger city of Concepción. It is a major naval base and a long-established fishing and shipbuilding port. The Huáscar, an armoured ship built in Britain in the 1860s for the Peruvian navy and captured in 1879 during the War of the Pacific, is preserved here as a museum ship.

The fish and seafood market near the waterfront is the busiest corner of town, with stalls of shellfish and conger eel. Offshore, Quiriquina Island lies at the mouth of the bay, and the cliffs, beaches and woods of the Hualpén Peninsula lie close by. Penco, where Concepción was first founded, is along the bay to the north.

At the market, cooks serve caldillo de congrio, a conger-eel soup that Pablo Neruda praised in verse, and fried fish with lemon. The sea is cold and the climate temperate, with wind and rain in winter and sun in summer.