My ultimate destination was Arica. It's so far in the north of Chile that it's only about a half an hour busride to the border with Peru. But if you do it all in one shot its a 28 hour bus ride. Soooooooooooooo I decided to break it up and spend a day in La Serena.
Here's a thing I learned once I got to Arica: when you're looking online and in guidebooks for stuff to do in La Serena, they will NOT mention that La Serena has a huge stadium. That hosted World Cup qualifiers, for example. Or that it will be hosting a championship game between two Chilean teams just a few days after you're going to be there. But it does have a beach. And an excellent Japanese garden. Hmph.
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| Lots of meh bread,dulce de leche and powdered sugar. The white one on the right had some baked meringue like a pavlova. So that was nice. |
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| Cool desert bridge. |
When I was there it appeared to be a much sleepier ocean city. My hostel only had a couple of other people in it, and the husband and wife running it spoke zero English but were super helpful and adorable. I wanted to do a tour that would have taken me up north a couple of hours to see islands with penguins and other sea life. But the weather was way too windy. Instead I spent that day walking around, wandering down to the beach, and sleeping. Every town that I've been in has a very lively shopping center. It seems like Chileans really like to shop. In addition, I learned that I don't like papaya juice at all. Papaya yes, its juice, no.
In the evening, I got picked up and went to one of the observatories in the Elqui Valley. Northern Chile is one of the best places for viewing stars due to its absence of clouds as well as pretty thin atmosphere.
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| Second Trek store I've seen. |
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| Papaya juice disappointment |
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| Telescope! |
There, we got to learn about constellations, the life cycle of stars, the various formations of them in space, and see a bunch of stars through a big telescope. I was especially stoked because I got to see the Magellanic Clouds. These are two of the closest galaxies to Earth, and they are visible to the naked eye. They definitely do look like two little circular clouds. I was greatly entertained to learn that one of the biggest telescopes in the world is in northern Chile. It's called the Very Large Telescope. It's mirrors are 8.2 m in diameter. I love the names of the bigger telescopes: Extremely Large Telescope (20m), European Extremely Large Telescope (39.3m), and Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (this isn't under construction yet but the concept design has a 100m aperture). Scientists are so creative.
The next morning I hopped on a bus to Arica. A bus that turned out to be 23 hours long. Not the most fun I've ever had, but not as bad as I imagined. I packed myself some snacks, but the bus company also provides these cute little snack boxes that contained a juice box, a package of cookies, and a package or crackers. Aka the picture of a healthful snack. I read an entire book, watched Fast and Furious 7 (both dubbed and subtitled in Spanish), and tried to sleep through a couple other movies. I finally got to Arica about 330 the next day.
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| Cure right? |
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| The scenery went from looking like this outside La Serena |
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| To this for at least ten hours of the bus ride. |
