La Serena - Caldera

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In the end I spent 3 days in La Serena, mostly walking around the city and chilling out.
The observatory tour was very interesting, looking at the moon, planets and star constellations through telescopes, and a presentation on how stars are formed. Though by the end we were all pretty frozen by the end, and the pisco served in the bus after was a welcome warmer!
Friday was….
So as Friday was such a disaster day I spent Saturday morning sorting stuff out. Had lunch over looking the market, made interesting lunch viewing.
Saturday afternoon was spent chilling in the garden; I got a message from Fernanda, a friend of Amada- my hostess in Valparaiso, inviting me out for the evening with her boyfriend Juan and a friend Maria. Made my way out to the Plaza de Armas and watched a free concert of traditional music before meeting up with Fernanda, Juan and Maria. We drove down to the coast, and spent the evening hopping from bar to bar. We found ourselves in quite possible the worst bar in Coquimbo, completely empty, bad food, weird tasting beer and music so loud it hurt the ears! We finished the evening in a little bar on the beach back in La Serena playing Jenga.

Sunday I caught the bus up the coast to La Caldera, planning to spend a couple of hours there before carrying on my journey to San Pedro de Atacama. - well at least that was the plan! It’s a small touristic fishing town, surrounded by are empty hills, however, I quite quickly established there was not a lot to do there, and I had hours to kill. Decided to take a walk around the bay, take some views. A young Chilean woman passed me on her bike and stopped to talk to me. We spent the afternoon sitting overlooking the bay, drinking wine and talking our heads off, Paula’s English is brilliant, and we found we had many similar views. We finished the evening at her Aunt Irene’s, the 3 of us sitting talking in her kitchen but all too soon it was time to leave for the bus. Irene offered for me to stay, and with the help of Paula, I didn’t take much convincing, so the 3 of us set off for the bus station to change my ticket for the next day! We spent the rest of the evening partying in the back yard with Paula, Irene and their friend Alejandro. The next day was spent very lazily around Irene’s, got to know her 2 daughters better; her son was out all days so I only saw Ricardo in the evening. The youngest girl Romina was an absolute darling, I let her play with my camera, and at 6 years old she got it figured out pretty quickly and then took loads of photos of everyone. Ivette was very sweet and the 2 of us managed to have some chats, and by the end she was becoming my 2nd helper, still wearing the little bracelet she gave me. The afternoon Paula and walked over to the old coal works, wanting to walk out along the pier, but it had been closed off, so walked around the rusting towers and around the shoreline. We came back to the house for supper with the family and before long bus time came around. So after some ender goodbyes, I left my friends in Caldera and boarded the bus for an overnight journey to San Pedro de Atacama.

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