La Serena and Around

Marja and I hopped on the night bus from Santiago to La Serena. The journey was only seven hours so we got on at midnight and had a very short and slightly intereupted night's sleep.

We arrived at our hostel at seven o'clock on the dot. It was supposed to open then but we had to wait outside in the cold for a good ten minutes whilst the owner got up I suppose. It was called El Punto and was run by some German people and of course was run very efficiently.

As our room wasn't ready we spent an hour in the TV room trying to snooze until breakfast was served. We ate breakfast with a jolly middle-aged German woman who we spoke Spanish with. We then headed out into the town to see what it had to offer.

La Serena has a HUGE number of churches. Something like 27 I think. We took some photos in our jet-lagged state and walked around the Plaza de Armas (the main square.). After checking our e-mails we decided to head into the Elqui Valley. It was pretty cold in La Serena (about nineteen degrees) so we knew it wasn't beach weather. We got a colectivo (a shared taxi) to Vicuna which didn't have much to offer but then headed on to Pisco Elqui in a bus.

The journey in the VERY SLOW bus was worth it in the end and we arrived in Pisco(with the temperature about ten degrees warmer than Serena so it was about thirty at least apparently it's constant summer there.). We met a guy from Seville, Spain on the bus and were very amused my his different accent. We went and had a jugo natural in a quaint little place with little wooden chairs carved out of tree stumps and then went to the Pisco distillery.

Pisco Sour is the national drink of Chile (and also Peru) and apparently, years ago, the then president of Chile renamed the place where we were as Pisco so that the Chileans could claim Pisco to be their national drink. There are lots of disagreements about Pisco. It's a damn good drink though but as I said gives you a bad hangover.

The brewery tour was interesting. We got a free drink of Pisco Sour and were taught how to drink and taste Pisco (we went to Mistral distillery which is supposed to be one of the better Piscos.).

It was then back on the bus for a well deserved sleep at our hostel.

The next day we got up for breakfast and decided to go to the beach. We were abling down the road and discussing whether to get a bus and suddenly this hyperactive American guy popped up from nowhere and asked where we were going and then started offering us all this information and advice and within five minutes he'd given us his phone number and invited us to join him that evening in a nearby town where he'd been living for the past four years. We thanked him and went on our way, exchanging raised-eyebrow glances.

We walked to the Faro (lighthouse) and sat on the beach and ate our lunch (sandwiches made at breakfast time) and then took a wonder back to the main road to catch the bus to the REAL beach we wanted to go to. Unfortunately we got distracted by Casa Ideas (a bit like Habitat) and ended up going in and buying bathrobes.

We finally got to the beach near Cuatro Esquinas (four corners) at about four and as there was no sun just sat about. There were lots of pelicans which was exciting for me and a huge number of seagulls but no people which was great. A Chilean family did turn up just before we left and in true Chilean style, of all the places that there were to sit on the beach, sat on top of us.

We went to the observatory about two hours away from La Serena called Mamalluca in the evening. We got to look at Saturn through a telescope and mars and a few other constellations. We had a lesson about our galaxy and realised how small and insignificant our plannet is. Our guide then took us outside and showed us with his laser pen some easy to see contellations. We were very lucky that night because the sky was clear and it was a new moon so there was no moon in the sky and only a little light pollution from Vicuna.

On our last day we went to another beach called Tongoy. The bus driver said it would only take an hour to get there but ended up being two so we actually had to get back on a return bus about half an hour after we arrived but it gave us time to get the feel of the place and we walked around and looked at all the little houses and had a coca-cola (cola-cola as they call it here-not to be confused with Colo Colo which is a very popular football team in Santiago.).

Finally it was time to go home so we got our bags from the hostel and hopped on the bus. It was a giggly journey for the first part and then when the sun went down and there was no scenery to look at we settled into watching a film. They put three on and they were all quite bearable.

We arrived in Santiago at eleven and missed the last tube unfortunately. They have a crazy metro system where the metro only runs until eleven thirty on weekdays and then EARLIER on weekends so it closes at eleven. That wouldn't seem so ridiculous if the Chilean people didn't go out at midnight, but they do. Nevermind. Can't be helped. At least the metro is cleaner that the one that we have in London and never as packed even though they are nationalising the transport system here (Transantiago) and the buses and their schedules are up in the air. All part of the joy of living here though.