After a 17 hour bus journey we were just glad to arrive in La Serena and get off the bus. The rooms at the hostel werent ready so we took off to a cafe for a while to revive ourselves.
We quickly appreciated how nice it was to walk down paved streets, with no one selling things on every free space. It was a pleasant change! In fact the high street here reminds me of an english one, dont know why but it does! Today, with the grey overcast sky, this similarity is even more apparent. After going for a run along the sea front and seeing the hotels and little cafes it was almost like being in Southend, just bigger waves - or is that because the holiday is coming to a end??
Yesterday afternoon we went to Coquimbo, a fishing town for lunch and saw lots of pelicans hanging around. we had a seafood lunch - a mix of seafood but were horrified to see most of it was cold snails, and various unidentified horrid looking things! We later fed them to the pelicans who also weren´t interested in eating them! Eventually a sea gull came and polished it all off!
Last night we went to the Mummallaba Observatory, there are three very close to La Serena, and though we were tired we thought it best to go in case the weather wasnt so good tonight. It was really interesting, and they said that although there is a lot of cloud and its often overcast in La Serena in the evenings, up the hill they have 320 nights a year of perfect visibility for the stars. The talk was interesting and informative, and they even discussed the possibility of aliens on other planets. We saw jupiter, some stars i cant remember and they showed us the zodiac signs in the sky (upside down of course!) and the Inca dark star signs.
Today we got up late, had a run, went for a walk, went to the japanese garden(yes a japanese garden! it was very pretty - apparently the Chileans have a great relationship with Japan), had some lunch and since then we´ve been hanging around ready for the birthday party tonight.
Tomorrow is our last stop on this holiday, Santiago - which is a mere 7 hour bus journey and we should arrive in the middle of the afternoon.
