La Serena Club Resort

After 2 and a bit weeks in Santiago it was time to head out of the smog and head north. Valparaiso is a coastal port city just an hour from the capital is home to some of the coolest street graffiti you´ll ever see. Parts of the city have been dedicated to an open air museum where artists (it´s unkind to call it graffiti!) can pick a wall and show off their talents. You´ll have to see the pics! I think the one of the Pope is my favourite. In Valpo, I had one of the ...

... food court, but it was all **** like KFC and burger joints. I decided to instead grab a picnic and head down to the beach, near the faro (lighthouse). It was a pretty long and hot walk - probably about 25 minutes. There was supposed to be a big grocery store along the way, just off the main street, but I ended up missing it. There were a number of little mercados, but they only sold soft drinks and junk food. The walk was quite nice, as there is a ...

... when I stepped out of the bathroom - where the heck was the bus??? I was about to panic, but luckily a Chilean dude who was on the same bus, noticed my impending terror, and pointed to the back of the parking lot. Looked like the bus was getting some air in its tires. Phew! The dude started chatting with me and was nice enough, but I could barely understand any of what he was saying. This Chilean accent is going to take some getting used to ...

... south is Tierra del Fuego the "land of fire" at the tip of South America that Chile shares with Argentina and beyond that lies Antarctica. So now that you understand the geographic wonderland of where I'm living, here's my blog about my trip to "el Norte Chico". La Serena On Saturday morning Paulina, Roberto and I took off to head North towards La Serena, a beach town about 4 hours north of Santiago or as the guide ...

... internet cafe to upload my precious Easter Island photos, and then went for lunch. I had grilled fish with rice in a restaurant, which turn out to be very good. Then I went to the bus terminal to get my bus ticket to Calama, where I need to catch another bus to San Pedro de Atacama. The journey from ...

... bewölkt und einmal hats sogar g**egnet....und das in d** d** Region in d** es angeblich 360 klare Tage und Nächte geben soll! Wir haben an einem Tag also ein Auto gemietet und sind mit einem australischen Pärchen zu dem Pinguin National Park gefahren.... Da d** Nationalpark auf einen Insel ist und man ein kleines Fisch**boot dorthin nehmen muss sind wir also bis an die Küste gefahren um zu **fahren das heute keine Boote raus fahren weil das Me** zu ...

... on there. PHOTO_ID_L=sewing-machinex.jpg] And then there was this... with the old radio and gramophone and all. And then... Overall a bit odd. The town apparently has about 600 residents in Winter, with this swelling to up to almost 3,000 in Summer from all of the tourists. After lunch we headed back down to Montegrande, where Gabriela Mistral lived and worked for a long time ...

... de nosotros suben casi verticalmente como paredes hasta 2.850 m, esto si que es de respeto. Merece la pena llegar hasta aqui. Menos mal que los dos somos parecidos en cuanto a gustos y caminar es uno de los comunes. De vuelta de las Torres, Cristobal nos dice que no hay vuelos baratos para ir al norte. Nos hemos informado tambien que al sur no hay mucho que ver ahora, hace demasiado frio y viento en Tierra de Fuego y los pingüinos famosos alla han migrado y no regresan ...

... my friend Rodrigo called me and asked if I didn't wanna come over and see him and his friends who are in a rock band practise in his basement. Rodrigo plays the drums and they were practising for a concert. So we had some drinks, the guys were playing for a while and then we went to eat at around 22:00 and then we all went to this guy's house, which was more drunk than any drunk person I had ever seen - he fell asleep on his couch. Haha. I did meet him later on, though, in a much ...

... pottery and textiles with a few
mummies thrown in) We spent three days in Santiago, visiting another
museum (this one full of natural history, which we did understand even
if it was all in Spanish), and got a train to the top of "san
cristobal", which has a huge statue of Mary at the top. It was very
peaceful up there, which made for a nice break from the crazily busy
metro system.

With neither me or T speaking much spanish we heavily relied on
our ...