An interesting or, depending on your point of view, useless piece of background information on Ballina.
In the Atacama desert region of Chile is Vallinar, a city of 60,000 people. The city is the capital of Huasco Province and was originally founded and named San Ambrosio de Ballynary in 1789 by Ambrose O'Higgins who was born in Ballinary, Co Sligo. The city changed it's name to Vallinar which is a Hispanicized version of Ballina.
His son Bernardo O'Higgins is revered in Chile as as a founding father and great liberator of the country from Spanish rule. There are many statues of him all over Chile and indeed, Peru/Argentina. Also many streets and buildings named in his honour.
Ambrose and Bernardo's exploits in South America are well worth checking out and lots of interesting details are available on Wikipedia etc.
A history and geography lesson on a UKGSER weekend........sure you can't be bad to that