The adventure of La Serena begins with me waiting at the bus terminal in Valparaíso and German Thomas arriving not 30 second before the bus left. It was a double-decker bus; you can imagine my excitement! This trip was a rather spontaneous decision. I wanted to go to Mendoza but we decided that one full day there was not enough, so we pushed it for Valle de Elqui, a 7.5 hour bus ride north. Once again I packed to leave half an hour before I left the house.
I never would have predicted that a bus trip this long could be enjoyable, but it was very much so. The scenery was great, the seats were comfortable, they showed movies the whole time that were hard to hear but that's ok, and when you were hungry, they brought around cheap food like meat sandwiches and pastries. The only bad part of the experience was entering the bathroom in full light only to be shrouded in darkness, without knowledge of location of the light switch, when we entered a tunnel. I finally got my bus ride through a mountain pass, slightly alarming, especially at night, but good all the same.
Upon arrival we made our way to the hostel, which was packed full of Germans and Estadounidenses. The owners were the nicest people you could ever meet. They ended every sentence in 'po'; once the lady, in reference to the German with dreads, said that if he did not cut his hair he would have "pelo por aca po." Everything po, I loved it.
With a few hours before we were tired, we headed into town on foot. The center of La Serena is pretty and clean, with a large plaza de armas and a lengthy plaza that we named plaza desnudas. Eventually we made our way to a restaurant, where we spent just about the entire evening talking to the waiter, who was amazingly interested in our stories. He gave us travel trips for San Pedro de Atacama, thought it was hilarious that I loved a two-story bus, and explained the reasoning for the brand name 'The North Face', something to do with the north side of a mountain being harder to climb. I also collected the nickname Nena, short for Elena, and I like it a lot.
Day 2
We arranged for a tour of Reserva Nacional Pingüino de Humboldt, which is about an hour and a half north of La Serena. On the way, we stopped to check out the desierto florido, which happens when there is extra rain, in this case 4 days of rain during the winter instead of 3. The dormant seeds sprouted and we saw some spectacular desert flowers. Finally, we made it to the shoreline where we joined another tour group and departed on a motorboat (which I called a 'ship' the entire time) to Isla Choros. This was an island set aside specifically to preserve the marine life there. The three islands in the reserve a full of marine birds and mammals, especially Humboldt Penguins. There were Red-legged Cormorants as well as Neotropic, Piqueros, pelicans, and adorable penguins amongst rocks and cacti, yes cacti and penguins were in the same place. Also notable were the sea lions, some of which were massive. One slid into the water near our boat and we were all freaked out, the thing was half the size of our boat.
We made our way to Isla Damas where we had about an hour to hike around white beaches, rock outcroppings, and chase lizards. It was weirdly chilly on an island that looked tropical. Finally, we motored back to shore. Somehow I defied the odds and did not get seasick. I credit this to an absurdly large breakfast and calm seas. After a dainty lunch with the Europeans (everyone but the guide and myself) we made the return trip to La Serena. Determined to see the city, if only by night, we set out again on foot. I have been waiting for a long time to get pictures with the Claro advertisements with Don Francisco, which are amazing, and we found a bulletin board that was accessible. He became known as the 'weon de Claro."
Here the story gets sketchy. We stumbled on a cuerca festival in the plaza de armas. On cuerca, I love it, the costumes, the dance, the music, everything. Later we meandered up to the hill at the end of town to the huge military castle thing. We were too late to enter, but a guard led us close to he building to see it for a few minutes. We felt safe with a military escort anyway, he should have returned us to our hostel at this point. It was the return walk where things went wrong. The center of La Serena consists of clean stone streets and nice arcitecture, a nice friendly place. Wrong. Two blocks from the plaza two guys jumped out of a car and chased us, successfully robbing Thomas. Luckily no one was hurt. See the post above for a detailed account. After the attack we returned to our hostel to cancel his credit cards and call the police to us, as the station was close to the attack site and we were not about to go back.
Day 3
After a late night before, we left rather late for Valle de Elqui. In Vicuña, where we changed busses halfway to Pisco Elqui, we met three other college students who were going the same way and hung out with them for a few hours, exchanging stories of attacks and robberies. Once in Pisco Elqui, a tiny town at the center of Pisco production (pisco is a cocktail made from grape brandy), we toured around the town on our own, ate some really good local papaya, and opted for a horse tour. Though initially terrified that I would be thrown off of a cliff, it turned out to be ok. The valley is comprised of insanely steep mountains, and I had no idea how we were going to get anywhere, it looked impossible. Before we got far though we ran into Michael, Thomas's German friend who went with us to Isla de Pascua. It was pure coincidence; neither party had any idea the other was there that day. Chile is apparently the country of crazy coincidences. We were riding along trying to stay on our horses and bam! there is Michael, walking along and wondering where we came from.
The scenery in Pisco Elqui is fantastic. Many of the mountains are snow-capped and impossible to climb, ridiculously high. As we approached the overlook, the sun made it through the clouds and onto the peaks, an amazing sight, the valley full of shadows and light and snow and steepness. To the left was the pass that we drove through, and this was the best of all. This is only relevant to the 2008-09 Lenhardt staff, but I feel like the image I saw was like the painted poster I have, with mountains and sunset. It is impossible to describe or portray in picture form
Finally we descended, what seemed like straight down. My horse kept going all over the place because I was taking pictures and not steering. Our guide was amazing, we talked to him for like 40 minutes before catching the bus back to La Serena (2 hours) then to Valpo. It was so interesting to talk to the one guy we met, who lives in Florida but goes to school in Oxford, and is studying Latin American Hisory. Oh, I forgot the Queltehue. This is a bird named after a Mapuche word for something like guardian of the land, because you can't get anywhere near it without it raising the alarm. By 6:30 Am we were safely back in Valparaíso. We did not have to worry about getting back to Recreo by night, because the sun was already up. Three days of quite the adventure, both good and bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment