Updates (3) - La Serena, Chile

So after the grand Mendoza trip I unpacked all my stuff and repacked for leaving a little before 11 the next day (Thursday) for La Serena, north in Chile. For me and a few others the trip wasn't as fun as it could have been. I chalk this up to two different reasons: 1) that most of us had been traveling for the past few days and were completely burned out and 2) the trip was poorly planned and there was weird amounts of down-time...

Regardless it wasn't a total bust!

We left Thursday morning and drove for a long time, stopping at a gas station to eat some food! After more driving we arrived in La Serena where our first stop was the Hiper Linder, supermarket, to buy food for the weekend. This could have been a large mess but Leanne and I decided to just split peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the weekend.. We got to the hotel and all started cooking dinner, or in my case, eating one of the 3 sandwiches my mom had packed for me! Some people had an asado (grilling meat and vegetables) and others cooked pasta.

The next day we had the whole day open to wander around La Serena. A large group of people and I went into town and walked around. We shopped at some markets, went to archeological museum, and a japanese garden! The japanese garden was very beautiful so we had a picnic there and attracted a large group of ducks! After that I went shopping with a Liz, Sophie and Lindsey but didn't buy anything. That night we got on the bus at about 7:30pm and drove for a while to get to Vicuña to the Observatorio Astronómico Mamalluca (observatory!!!) to look at the stars! It was simply fantastic!!! We got a presentation and got to look at stars through a telescope! We saw Mars and Saturn and a bunch of constellations! After that the people played us a couple songs (this was soo random and really strange!). Although we had plans to go out that night by the time we got back it was about 1am and everyone just wanted to sleep!

Japanese Garden

The duckies want fooood!

Lovely church building in La Serena

Archeological Museum

The family in the park (Chaz, Leah, Jacob, and I)

Saturday we started off the day at Restaurante Solar (Solar Restaurant). This was not at all what I expected! I thought that there would just be lots of solar panels on the roof but in fact there was just little outdoor oven things that cooked food with the heat of the sun! The food was absolutely to die for! ^_^ After this we visited a Pisco Capel factory which reminded me of the wine and bike tour from Mendoza. After that we visited the Museum of Gabriela Mistral. Unfortunately this wasn't that interesting to me as I didn't know much about her. But I did go buy ice cream after, canela (cinnamon) and chirimoya (a fruit)! They were both very good! ^_^ We had a free evening and I hung around the hotel, watching tv and playing pool. Some people went out but I was tired and went to sleep instead.

Sunday morning we left at about noon and got back in the evening where I went out and watched a sunset and bought a necklace from a street vendor who told me I was a princesa (princess) when I left... ^_^

The lovely sunset I watched with a lovely friend!

The ride back to Viña

The cookers at the Solar Restaurant!

<3Annie