Jardin del Mar La Serena

So we arrived in La Serena around 1pm, Decided to explore the town....it didnt take too long to decide that this was not somewhere we would stay for long. It is meant to be a beach town, so we decided to take a stroll to the beach. Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly a stroll by any means but about 30 mins down one very long and boring road! When we got there we thought a nice coffee would help b4 the walk back, but it was deserted ...

... La Serena is just so neat and clean and pretty it did not at all feel like the South America I had come to know and love. The cars obeyed road rules, there was no litter everywhere, there were no women carrying their life´s possessions on their backs and the buildings were all pretty colonial buildings - no brick and concrete monsters with steel cables from the top floor to avoid tax. I found a hostel and walked around until I found myself in some mall with mega stores: a ...

Breakfast with Ben and Brent, before checking out. Unfortunately today, there was no sign of Macarena :( Not sure if it was a scam or not, but when I checked out I was told that I hadn´t paid for my second night at the hotel. Luckily, I hung on to my receipt - innocent mistake? Who knows, but given what I´ve seen so far with the taxi situation, I wouldn´t doubt that it was a rip-off attempt. Off to the bus station, where I noticed several Spanish ...

... climatic zone. In the far north, "El Norte Grande" is the Atacama desert, one of the driest places on earth. In certain places rain has never been recorded. Once you get out of the desert region you get to "El Norte Chico" which is the agricultural heartland of Chile and where I went for this blog entry. The middle of the country is Santiago and wine country which of course is where I spend the majority of my time ...

... noia de Salzburg (Àustria) anem cap a un hostal al centre. Aquesta vegada l'allotjament és molt econòmic però amb el bàsic que necessitem. Hem quedat amb en Giovanni i la Sabine per sopar tots plegats! Després d'un dinar informal i una dutxa calenta i llarga per treure'ns tota la pols que portem des de fa dies al poble de San Pedro, anem al centre de La Serena. És un poble prou maco, agradable de passejar... no hi ha gaire gent als carrers, suposo perquè és ...

... but Chile must take the prize for the biggest flag waving country we've been to for a while. Most homes have a flag, and at most major traffic light junctions there's at least a couple of people selling more flags ...and the aforementioned kites, Spiderman designs seemingly the most popular. Santiago was a really pretty city, at least compared to BuenosAires - much greener and surrounded by an amazing backdrop of snowy mountains, if you can see ...

... and c) probably any other sane person as its like -18 at night! so while sleeping in your warm beds at night please think of me! probably sleeping huddles with the rest of my gap group in 1 bed taking it in turns to sleep on the outside like penguins do to keep warm!!! Oh i forgot to mention that im goiong to be climbiong to the highest altitude of the trip in the next week, with 2500 m at the next place and up to 4000 meters in the desert! so i hear that those who ...

... we are told that there are no flights available to go north, so we think we have more buses to go north, but we met some Americans and they say that there is a ferry right here which goes to Puerto Montt, our preferred destination. Cristóbal from the hostal arranges everything and a few tour later we are on board for four days. We really enjoy the trip and see nice virgin places, spot some seals and even a couple of whales (maybe blue). We met nice people and the last ...

... to my good friend Noler, who has a pickup truck, whether he could maybe drive me over the mountains - it's just over 400 km crossing the Andes, as Villa Union is just on the other side, in an almost horizontal line from La Serena on a map. I'd pay the petrol and they'd stay at my place there, but I already had a house I was renting there. So me, Noler, his girlfriend Paula, and my friends Chino and Gulo left La Serena Friday 29th February and headed for the mountains. That's the next story.<br>

... on end! And once again, luck strickes us! Now it was time to go to bed.<br><br>The next day we took it easy - slept in, ate great breakfast, went to get some Completos Italianos and a Chorillana, the latter a mix of french fries, beef bites, fried onions and eggs, all stirred together in a large pan, along with a ROCKET.. a personal 3 liter draft beer pump.. at the Schop Dog restaurant in the La Serena Mall. There we sat, poured us some glasses of beer, ate the delicious ...