La Serena - and towards home

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So tonight I am leaving La Serena, a small city about 6 hours north of Santiago. I have been here for a few days.

There are lots of beaches here - not the nicest ones - they are rather marred by strings of tacky hotels - but beaches nonetheless!

I am still really enjoying being in Chile. I have eaten some fantastic fish, and I continue to find the people of Chile to be friendly, expressive, interesting.

The other night I took a tour to an observatory 1 hour away, near Vicuña. We were able to look through a super-powered telescope and saw the rings around Saturn! A very knowledgeable tour guide then took us outside and pointed out all kinds of constellations to us.

Using an outdoor telescope, we saw close-ups of the moon and used our cameras to take photos of the moon, enlarged in the telescope.

Today I did another tour, this time to the Reserva Nacional Penguina de Humboldt. After a rocky, 2-hour drive up the coast, past foggy, cloud-covered mountains and desert, we boarded a boat towards Isla da Damas. On the way, we stopped at neighbouring islands and saw penguins!! Yay! One of my goals for the trip, finally realized. We got up close to all kinds of dolphins - or rather, they came up close to us! Friendly creatures. We sea sea lions, and all kinds of birds. Afterwards we had a delicious lunch of fresh-caught fish. A great way to end my trip!

Yes, my trip is coming to an end. Tonight and tomorrow I face many hours of bus travel, arriving back in Buenos Aires the morning of April 16. April 17 I catch my flight, and I´ll be back in Toronto in the early morning of April 18.

I am ready to come home: I have seen so many things, been to so many places, but in the end, there´s no place like home. It has been quite a whirlwind, always arriving in new places, meeting new people, taking in new experiences. It´s time for some familiar faces, some old friends, and reconnecting with family.

I hope to post more photos to this blog once I get home and can shrink them down. In the meanwhile, thank you to all who have been reading and commenting - and I look forward to seeing you in person real soon!

Emma.

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