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Published: August 1st 2010
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After a long night bus, (in which I had the front seat on the top deck so I felt like I was in a video game) I arrived in La Serena.
The hotel wasn't exactly my favourite what with the mold on the walls and stench of damp.
Spent a bit of the afternoon watching football, browsing the super-size supermarket (seriously, this super-market novelty does not wear off in South America!) and watching TV (exciting times) until going out for dinner that evening.
When we got back to the hotel, we decided to try the 'mentos in a diet coke' trick. Dropped the mento into the bottle and the coke exploded everywhere. In addition to finding Cadbury's chocolate, that was probably the highlight of my first day.
At around 5.55am the next morning, there was a man shouting about something outside mine and Sarah's room so five minutes later, we were both awake to feel an aftershock of the earthquake. It shook the room and and things fell off the bathroom shelf. It was definitely a strange experience.
Went back to sleep for a couple of hours (obviously, experiencing an earthquake wasn't too traumatic for me) and
woke up for a long walk to the beach with Molly, Sarah and Suzanne. It was a nice walk and it was lovely to have a long catch up and girlie chat with Molly.
The beach was freezing. It was just like sitting on a beach at home in about March/April time. It was relaxing to lie in the sand and listen to the waves but the cold meant that I wasn't going to last long and we headed back up to grab some lunch before a fun-filled (no sarcasm) afternoon.
In the afternoon, we were picked up by a Tom Jones lookalike and taken to a Chilean Pisco factory.
On the way, we passed vineyard after vineyard and made a stop at one to sample the wine which was really sweet.
We arrived at the factory and it was completely different to the Peruvian one.
We walked around to see how it was made, ate some grapes from the vineyard and tried different types of Pisco. One was 65% alcohol and sweet and the other was 45% alcohol but really oaky and strong and actually made me want to vomit a little. The last
one to try was a mango flavour which was surprisingly tasty but not quite tasty enough for me to buy.
We had some time to kill after the Pisco factory so climbed a hill to watch the sunset and then went to dinner before heading to one of my favourite parts of the trip: the observatory.
When we arrived at the observatory, it was pitch black and the stars were out in full force- including a view of the Milky Way. Our guide showed me the Inca constellation of the Serpent which I'll hopefully be able to find from now on. The Incas saw their constellations between the stars - there's a llama in there too!
We then went in to watch a demonstration on space which messed with my head. My brain can't quite comprehend more than space- what is there? I don't get it. Ouch.
Then we were taken outside and shown how to find (non-Inca) constellations. So in addition to being able to find a llama and a serpent, I can now find the Southern Cross, Orion and the Leo (which looks like an upside down question mark.)
We were allowed to look through smaller telescopes outside to see different types of clusters. Then we had the opportunity to take a look through their new, shiny, huge telescope to see Saturn and the brightest star in the sky which I thought looked like a big sparkly diamond, so of course, I loved it! We were allowed to take take photos but typically, my camera chose this prime time to not work but I reckon that this is one of those experiences I won't forget so no photos won't worry me too much.
Back to the hell hotel to pack for an early trip to Santiago in the morning.
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