Blogs from La Serena, Coquimbo Region, Chile, South America - page 3

Miercoles 17th Agosto 2011 (Wednesday 17th August 2011) We wake up to a wonderful early breakfast (desayuno) from Olivier to see us off from Valpo to Mendoza. He even drives us to the station! The bad news hits us straight up when we arrive at Terminal de Buses. The bus has been cancelled due to bad weather over The Andes. We get the tickets changed for the following day and go about finding somewhere to stay. This is where the fun begins. A little lady at the terminal says she has a guest house we can stay at, so we follow her and soon arrive at the house which is quite close to the bus terminal. We accept the room which Sharls has already named ‘Dogsville’ with shared baños (toilets) and kitchen. Sharls starts to ... read more

Serene La Serena Serenity is all relative; I'd arrived in La Serena on a hot, crowded overnight bus from the wonderful, wild, colorful madness of larger Valparaiso, and indeed, La Serena seemed a serene dream of a city. Yet I'd soon enjoy true peace (though some rowdies would say rigor mortis) in the little pueblo of Vicuna. It's all relative. La Serena, with its population of 160,000 was perfect in many ways--busy, but not mad like Valpo, yet big enough to have a municipal theater (where I saw a wonderful evening of operatic love arias and duets), a cinema (which unfortunately only showed American action films), several museums, a charming Japanese garden, beaches that swell the population to double its size in the summer, lots of shopping for those inclined, a camera-repair shop for me, and ... read more

At La Serena I visited the 'tourist observatory' up in the mountains near the town. Here we passed over our cameras and they photographed the moon (see first photograph) and saturn (see second photograph) for us through two of their telescopes (see third and forth photographs). This was definitely a highlight of the trip. La Serena also has an interesting archaelogy museum where the star exhibit is a statue (or moai) from Easter Island (see last photograph). The splendid housing of the statue was paid for from an insurance claim when the statue was temporarily decapitated whilst on loan to Barcelona. For any of my readers that may be tempted to submit a similar claim please bear in mind that human head re-grafting is still at an experimental stage. En La Serena, visité el "observatorio turístico" ... read more

The 2011 Rocky Road Adventure got off to a frustrating start for me, as low cloud and fog cancelled my connecting flight from Kaitaia to Auckland to connect with my Lan Chile flight to Santiago. During my Saturday BUS trip to Auckland courtesy of Air NZ, Hamish, our trusty House of Travel agent, delayed his social BBQ to get me a ticket on the next flight on Sunday. Meanwhile, String, Robin, Diane and Wim all flew out on schedule, with Gerardo picking them up. Paul was on the next flight, so we sat together and met with Gerardo for the transfer to Vina. I went on Monday to pick up the others, but the flight was delayed for 4 1/2 hours, but Bill was there as was Hans, so we headed back to Vina. Baz, Jan ... read more

Geo: -29.9008, -71.2448This little man really touched my heart. He's probably 40 or so--a little short guy with flat eyes a body quick and sharp.I heard his clap clapping to the music a block before I saw them. He dancing and slapping two seas shells to the drum beat of a happy song, his sister standing...watching fondly. She was coating his face with sun block when we walked up and her tenderness towards him drew me to them. I asked if I could take some pictures, Bob tossed in some coins, and I sat on a street side planter to catch the show.There are a dozen street performers here every day--with drums, flutes, dancing puppets, tambourines, sometimes a whole band, but none of them reached into my heart like this sweet little man and his sister. ... read more