La Serena, Chile

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La Serena, Chile

Left San Pedro at 19.30. Read a bit of David Huggins´ me me me, an easy read about a pathetic family of actors, lost identities, fake people and so on. Then took a sleeping pill and woke up at 9 the next morning. After an excruciating 16 hours in the bus I arrived at La Serena, 6 hours north of Santiago. I found a dorm bed in the Punto Hostel. The German owneress (together with husband Jens) showed me around and introduced me to my roomies. Alex from London, 20, personal trainer with huge arms, tattoo and lip piercing, traveling with his mate Travis from Sydney, 21, huge dreadlocks. The two met at Summercamp in the US the year before. And Flo, 25, from Liechtenstein, who had arrived 10 minutes before me. As usual, I thought, I´m the granddad of the gang. O fuck that, Alex remarked more than once, age is just a number. It being an awfully faulted cliché, this time he couldn´t have been more right. We talked a bit, hit it off quite well, and agreed to go to the Humboldt Penguin National Reserve the next day, some 120 km north of La Serena. Another organized tour didn´t seem to be too appealing, so we wanted to organize the thing ourselves. While the boys went to visit an observatory on the other side of the mountain range (no clouds) I made arrangements with a local guy (got the number from some tourist office) to pick us up the next morning. As good custom requires the guy was an hour late, but in the end we got there. Two ancient fishermen, Carlo and Culio were waiting for us, or anybody, in the puerta of Puente Choros, and after negotiating a price of 40.000 pesos, told us to go sit in this miniscule wooden raft, something similar to a rowing boat, of 2 meters at most. Yeah, yeah, 2 in the front, two in the back, they gestured, as we were looking at eachother, mimicking loco. The two toothless hombres burst into laughter, and dragged the thing into the water. Culio got in, and within 10 minutes came back with a proper motorboat. The trip was great. We saw a lot of sea lions, seals, Magellanic penguins, and even a sea elephant. Carlo really put in an effort to explain everything, whereas I was the translator, more or less, for the rest. We made some cool pictures on Damas Island of ourselves, watched the people that came with a tour, and left at about three. At 6 we were back in La Serena, and we decided to have a bbq. The hostal being without a kitchen, and another restaurant not a real option, we went to a local supermercado to do some shopping. The boys took of the meat and the drinks as I bought stuff for the salad. Back in the hostal I put quite some effort into the salad, and while cutting up tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber and what we call paprika´s, noticed that the onion was really strong. The boys put some hamburgers, lomo, fish and potato balls on the bbq, and after some time we sat around a table in the courtyard, toasted on the good life with wines and beers, and started eating. Within 3 minutes we were all running around, trying to put out the fire in our mouths, with everything that we could find, water, beers, wine, yoghurt and so on. Turns out that the paprika´s (peppers in English), were no paprika´s, but genuine peppers. Whilst cutting the onions I licked my fingers, and probably should have guessed right there, but didn´t. Now it was clear to me why these paprika´s had black pitts ! We were laughing for a long time, really enjoyed the rest of the food, and left the salad, that I worked so hard on, for what it was. That same night we went to a bar, talked to some joven chica´s, and I went to bed at 2, because I had to get up at 6 to catch a bus to Santiago, and then Mendoza in Argentina. So in the end we met for not even 2 days, had a good time together, exchanged emails, cashed in on invitations in eachother´s towns, and that was it. But eh, that´s travelling ! 😊

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