Blogs from La Serena, Coquimbo Region, Chile, South America

We departed General San Martin (Pisco), Peru in the afternoon of Monday, January 16, 2023 but didn’t arrive at our next port, Coquimbo (La Serena), Chile, until the morning of Thursday, January 19, 2023. That’s three nights and two days of sailing the ocean blue; however, there were some interesting things to occupy our time at sea. I don’t know how strictly ships’ routes over the vast expanse of the oceans are regulated (probably less than aircraft and that’s, probably, a good thing), but the captain announced just as we had left the pier that he had obtained permission for us to pass near a prehistoric rock art formation, or geoglyph, known as the Paracas Candelabra, or the Candelabra of the Andes. I’m not a prehistoric art enthusiast but do find them interesting and worth a ... read more

Suzanne here... The bus arrived in La Serena 1.5 hours late. Not usually a big deal, but we'd booked an apartment and given an arrival time of 2pm, and it was that already. There were no taxi's (perhaps as the Confederations Cup Final between Chile and Germany was on). Nor could I find free wi-fi anywhere to let them know. We found the bus stop and after a bit of a wait a bus came along and took us to within 10 minutes walk of the apartment. We were just under an hour late. The security chap had to phone the guy (who had given up waiting for us) to come back. All rather embarrassing. Still, the apartment was fabulous. Modern and with a great sea view. We quickly settled in and then went out to ... read more

Geo: -35.6751, -71.54314 hours later, we finally arrived at La Serena and Alex went directly to our hostel while I went to Vicuña to finally get back my towel and bikini. We spent the afternoon relaxing and drinking beer on the roof terrace with some people that we knew from our hostel in San Pedro de Atakam and in the evening we went for a walk in the city center, bought some presents (Alex at least) and we cooked dinner in our hostel.The next day (29.12), our tour to the Humboldt Pinguïn Reserve started at 8:30 AM and our guide was actually early for a change ; can you imagine this? Really strange for Chile! ;-)Hannah from Texas came with us, 2 people from England and 3 from Germany. Our guide was really good - he ... read more

Geo: -29.9008, -71.2448I was arriving in La Serena very late in the evening and it was freezing cold in the summer...Chile...it's the chill that gets you...haha...I was searching for the guesthouse I have goggled on the Internet...Unfortunately fully booked but the lady at the entrance brought me to another guesthouse, which is not advertised on the Internet and therefore not fully booked so I got a nice room with a beautiful yard to relax in the morning (sorry, forgot to make pics)... In northern Chile you always have to make sure to stay in the cities a bit and relax...Little Oases in the vast bone dry desert that surrounds just about every city and town in northern regions of Chile. Anyhow, the next day I was fit again and brought my motorbike to the first scheduled ... read more

15/7-2013: We went to La Serena with our friend Cristian by car. It was though to say goodbye and now know if you will return again. Slept a lot of the way and arrived at midday - we had some lunch with the other three girls who were already there and Haroldo who we were staying with - had some really nice seafood at a restaurant at the beach. We booked a tour to Isla Damas the next day and went home to relax before dinner and a night out. We went to a reggae bar called Tsunami with live music and it was really fun. 16/7-2013: We got up early to go to Isla Damas, and got on the wrong bus cause the busdriver chose not to check the ticket.. We found out real ... read more