SOOO this weekend I went to La Serena, the second oldest city in Chile (says my guidebook, while failing to mention the first). I went by myself (GASP) and everything went fine (whew). I wanted to try traveling by myself 1) just to see if I could, 2) so I can selfishly do whatever I want, and 3) cause everyone else went to San Pedro this weekend and I am going there later. Don't worry though, nothing happened, I had a lot of fun, and I met a lot of cool people.
I left on Thursday night since we didn't have classes Friday. I did not, however, connect in my head that i didn't have classes because it was a national holiday and because it was a national holiday many other things were closed too. So there wasn't much to do on Friday. The tour I thought I'd reserved for that day was pushed back to Sat, so I just wandered the city center for a while. It's a really nice town, with lots of colonial architecture. I also walked down to the beach (with my entourage of stray dogs) but it was cold and windy so I didn't stay long.
Old church
That night I went to the Mamalluca Observatory. This part of Chile has some of the clearest skies in the world, so there are a lot of European and US observatories in the area. It's really hard to see them, though, since people are always doing research, so Chile built Mamalluca specifically for public use. I intended to do the tour in Spanish but there were only four people in the English group so I went with them. I'm 100% sure I learned way more that way, and I got to use the telescope more (there were like 60 people in the Spanish group).
IT WAS SO COOL. We got to look through the big telescope with the moving dome and everything. I saw Saturn, the moon way up close, Alpha Centauri (which you can only see from the Southern Hemisphere), red and blue stars, star clusters, and a nebula. After that we went outside and the guide showed us a bunch of constellations, such as the Southern Cross, also only visible from the S.H. Also, while the Greeks and Egyptians only saw animals in the stars, the Incas had constellations in the dark parts of the Milky Way (a llama-what else?). Cap everything off with a pisco sour and it was a pretty fantastic night.
The telescope I looked through (photo not mine, obviously)
The guide took this picture for me through the telescope. So cool!
Saturday I finally got my tour to Isla Damas worked out (that was, after all, what I came to LS for). We drove for a while (almost 2 hours) through a semi-desert. Chile has the largest variety of cacti in the world--who knew? We stopped to take pictures of the guanaco again lol. So many guanaco! Since it was such a long ride I got to know the girl next to me, Anais, who is from Montreal working as a nanny in Santiago.
In Punto Chorros we got aboard our tiny boat and set out for Isla Chorros, part of the National Reserve for Humboldt Penguins. Everyone was super excited for the animals, esp the dolphins. The people in front of me kept jumping up everytime they saw anything, even a wave breaking, I thought they were going to tip the boat over. But then we found them! And they were jumping and splashing and swimming around right next to the boat! I couldn't get a very good picture, and Cary needs to fix my video, but just know that it was super cool. And be jealous.
Yay!
Hold stillll
We also saw some penguins and sea lions, although not as many as I'd expected. Maybe they were out to lunch, or on another part of the island, but I expected a colony and we only saw like 6. But still, it was pretty cool. After about an hour and a half we went over to Isla Damas where you could get out and walk around, although there wasn't really much else to do. Then they took us back and gave us lunch and I slept the entire way back.
Humboldt penguin, the second smallest in the world
When we got back to LS Anais and I decided to go around to the ferias for a while. She invited me to dinner at her friend's house in Coquimbo with whom she was staying (Coquimbo runs into LS like Viña does with Valpo). After dinner we went out in Coquimbo to Barrio Ingles, which was *bumpin'*. We went to a bar with a great live band covering classics like Clapton and CCR, and I had a papaya sour, which was amazingly even better than pisco sour. I was super tired though so I left at 2:30 (lame by Chilean standards).
The weather this whole time had been cloudy and chilly, but Sunday, of course, was gorgeous. I had to get back to Santiago before the metro closed though, so I didn't get to enjoy it. We got stuck in really bad traffic on the way back so I almost missed the metro anyway. But all in all, it was a great trip, and the travelers I met really inspired me to drop out of school and backpack across South America. I'll see you all in a few years!*
I'm on a boat!
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*Just kidding, parents.
Wow. This trip sounds exactly like my solo trip to Bucharest. Cold, rainy, every thing closed, and packs of stray dogs. Good time!
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