We arrived from Santiago at nearly 4 in the morning on Monday. Leaving the bus terminal, we found ourselves walking through streets entirely deserted except for a couple of hungry dogs who opted to ignore us. Our hostel - if you can call this place a hostel - is down an extremely sketchy looking street (at least at night), which is made all the sketchier by the haphazard property numbering scheme they've established. Our hostel is number 18. After loitering outside between houses 17 and 20, a woman came out of her house (unarmed) and informed us unexpectedly politely that our hostel was just down the block. A man who wanted nothing to do with being awake answered our knock and showed us to the room that had been prepared for us, which is just big enough for the two twins and small table that reside in it.
Waking up at 11am (why rush?), we discovered just how cool this hostel is. It's called Maria's Casas, and it is run by a fantastic old grandmother type named, yes, Maria. The place is stocked with fresh fruit, which I have been devouring at a possibly unwelcome pace. There's a nice little courtyard in the back, where Dylan and I set up chairs two nights ago to watch the stars while finally smoking the two Cuban cigars he got for us in Argentina. After using the kitchen to make dinner earlier that night, we came into the kitchen to clean up after ourselves only to discover that Maria had already happily washed the dishes herself (we bought her flowers in the town market yesterday to say thanks). The best part is, we're each only paying CH$5,000 per night! Peter, do the math please.
That day, after walking around the town center a little bit, we took a colectivo taxi over to the beach (well, the taxi dropped us off on the side of the highway and we walked the last kilometer ourselves). It's a strange sight for me to have the Pacific Ocean in front of me and then mountains to the North, South, and East. We sat there on the beach, technically in a small town called Coquimbo, and read our pretentious books and wrote postcards to all of you. Then we strolled down the boardwalk for maybe a mile or two, stopping along the way to pick up a dozen churros, which are simpler cousins of funnel cake, until we reached the last building, which is a fancy hotel and, best of all, a casino! I dragged Dylan in, almost forcibly, and put up with his kvetching, which lasted exactly until the moment I stepped up to the roulette table, at which time he put down CH$10,000 and demanded chips. I regret to report that my recent streak of good fortune at Atlantic City has not followed me down here, folks. Forty bucks down, Dylan suggested we take a timeout to view the sunset over the ocean. It was nice. Maybe I should have stayed out there a little longer, because soon enough I was - rather unceremoniously - down sixty and I had to call it a night.
Yesterday was a good day for hardly doing anything during the day. Most importantly, I got a new camera! A relatively inexpensive Nikon that was on sale at a department store. While it's just nice in general to finally have a camera again on this once-in-a-lifetime trip, I was especially pleased with my purchase last night. We went to Observatorio Cerro Mamalluca, which is a tourist-oriented observatory on the top of a (relatively) small hill in the foothills of the Andes about 75km outside of La Serena. This may have been the best tour guide I've ever had. In English, he was incredibly knowledgeable about everything astronomy-related. He showed us how to use the Southern Cross to get your bearings by finding due South. He showed us clusters of stars ranging from 20 to 1000 to 1 million. We saw Saturn, rings and moons and all. With his incredibly powerful green laser pointer, which appeared to actually reach into space, he showed us constellation after constellation, explaining the mythology behind them and all manner of other interesting data points.
Then, we saw the moon. It looked a little something like this:
Bet you didn't think we were going into SPACE on this trip, eh?
Anyway, that was really really fun.
Today, we went to a tiny, sleepy town about 60km east of La Serena called Vicuña, which is primarily known for being home to Gabriela Mistral, who is one of two Chilean Nobel Prize winners, and the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Don't care at all? Neither did we. There isn't very much to do in Vicuña (other than the Gabriela Mistral museum). So we just walked around. A bunch. There's very little to say about Vicuña to be honest, so I will just post some of the pictures I took from Vicuña. I kind of like the name Vicuña.
The path up to the hill we climbed to get the pictures you will see below.
This is what streets look like in Chile. Completely normal, except for mountains behind the houses.
Seasoned traveler, indeed.
Fields and houses. And mountains.
More fields and bigger mountains.
Etc.
Wandering.
You get the idea.
The coloring and lighting on this one is obviously messed up, but we were working with imperfect conditions trying to use the timer. Also, Dylan forgot to smile.
Displeased only by the relative smallness of our hill.
Yesterday was a good day for hardly doing anything during the day. Most importantly, I got a new camera! A relatively inexpensive Nikon that was on sale at a department store. While it's just nice in general to finally have a camera again on this once-in-a-lifetime trip, I was especially pleased with my purchase last night. We went to Observatorio Cerro Mamalluca, which is a tourist-oriented observatory on the top of a (relatively) small hill in the foothills of the Andes about 75km outside of La Serena. This may have been the best tour guide I've ever had. In English, he was incredibly knowledgeable about everything astronomy-related. He showed us how to use the Southern Cross to get your bearings by finding due South. He showed us clusters of stars ranging from 20 to 1000 to 1 million. We saw Saturn, rings and moons and all. With his incredibly powerful green laser pointer, which appeared to actually reach into space, he showed us constellation after constellation, explaining the mythology behind them and all manner of other interesting data points.
Then, we saw the moon. It looked a little something like this:
Bet you didn't think we were going into SPACE on this trip, eh?
Anyway, that was really really fun.
Today, we went to a tiny, sleepy town about 60km east of La Serena called Vicuña, which is primarily known for being home to Gabriela Mistral, who is one of two Chilean Nobel Prize winners, and the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Don't care at all? Neither did we. There isn't very much to do in Vicuña (other than the Gabriela Mistral museum). So we just walked around. A bunch. There's very little to say about Vicuña to be honest, so I will just post some of the pictures I took from Vicuña. I kind of like the name Vicuña.
The path up to the hill we climbed to get the pictures you will see below.
This is what streets look like in Chile. Completely normal, except for mountains behind the houses.
Seasoned traveler, indeed.
Fields and houses. And mountains.
More fields and bigger mountains.
Etc.
Wandering.
You get the idea.
The coloring and lighting on this one is obviously messed up, but we were working with imperfect conditions trying to use the timer. Also, Dylan forgot to smile.
Displeased only by the relative smallness of our hill.
I never knew the sahara was so mountainous. Sick pics though.
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