La Serena, Chile/a few observations about Chile

La Serena was my very last beach town to visit. It is about 6 hours north of Santiago. I thought I had read “white sand, turquoise water” somewhere and knew I had to visit. Unfortunately, the white sand was someplace else! Oh well, next trip I suppose! But I did get to hit the beach and hear the sound of the ocean waves one last time (that is definitely my favorite sound on the planet!). Here are a few photos of the area.




Cool bird I saw in the water.

I was a little surprised to see people swimming in the water when I realized there were lots of sea jellies washed up on the beach. Most were small, but I saw this big one and had to take a photo. Hopefully from the white seashell on top of it, you can get a sense of its size!!! It was definitely bigger than a dinner plate!





But the one cool thing about visiting La Serena was getting to go on a tour to visit an observatory at night. With it’s dry air, and mostly cloudless skies northern Chile is one of the top places to observe the stars! We left at like 9pm and got up to the Mamalluca Observatory around 10pm.

What’s great is that they offer tours in Spanish and in English. I went on the English tour, which was nice because there were only like 7 of us on it. We first went to the big telescope.

Here we got to see stars in Orion, and Gemini. We also got to see Mars, which was cool. Then we went downstairs and talked about the universe, planets and constellations. After that we went to a smaller telescope where we got to see the moon and Saturn. Yes, we could even see the rings around Saturn – it was awesome! The guy added a magnifying lens to the telescope and then took pics of the moon for us - I think these photos are amazing! The whole tour definitely filled my science nerdiness need for the month! HA



At the end of the tour, our guide gave us a small snack (it was like 12:30 at this point). We got these chip/cracker things and a pisco sour. Pisco Sour seems to be the national alcoholic beverage of Chile. It was pretty good. But after 2 of those, I quickly fell asleep in the van on the way back home! LOL

The next day I hit the beach for a bit before getting onto a bus and heading into Argentina. My first bus took me to Mendoza. I only hung out there for a few hours before getting on another bus and heading up to Salta, Argentina.

So a few last thoughts/observations about Chile.
1)The Spanish is CRAZY hard there. I am at the point now where if I talk to someone from Paraguay, Uruguay or Argentina I can usually understand about 80-90% of what they say, depending on how fast they talk. In Chile, that number dropped to about 30% - even with someone speaking slowly! From what I gather, PY, UY and AG more or less have a similar vocab base. But Chile just has its own unique vocab that I was just completely lost with! I was starting to feel discouraged about my Spanish until talked with a guy at church from Peru. We had a perfectly fine conversation, so then I realized it was more about Chilean Spanish and less about my personal Spanish!! (if that makes sense!)

2) Another interesting fact is that they don’t eat dinner here. Seriously! I guess most Chileans like to sleep late, which means given the choice they will wake up and eat breakfast at like 11am/noon. Then it will lunch time around 4-6. Then they have “once” sometime that evening. I would have thought this would have been the time for dinner. But they normally just have bread and tea/coffee and that’s it! They do eat a “real” breakfast though. In PY, breakfast is usually coffee/tea and like bread/toast and that’s it. In Chile you can find waffles, pancakes, even Dunkin Donuts – lots of restaurants serve breakfast foods. They are NO breakfast places in PY except for maybe at hotels!

3) Here is a photo of another interesting drink they have. I will quote from Wikipedia here “Mote con huesillo is a traditional Chilean summer-time drink, known as the “refreshing national drink.” It is a non-alcoholic beverage consisting of a sweet liquid syrup made with dried peaches (huesillo) and mixed with fresh cooked husked wheat (mote).” (the wheat part are the things that look like corn). This stuff was seriously on every street corner in Santiago. I didn’t get a chance to try it until La Serena and to be honest I just don’t get it. The juice is sort of a bland apple/peach juice. The dried/rehydrated peaches are ok. The wheat is just weird! I think I like the Pisco Sours better! LOL


4) So as many of you know, my brother and his wife went on a tour last year through S. America. I went to their blog and found they had written a few observations about Chile as well. I am going to quote them since their observations are SUPER true and most of my friends didn’t read their blog.(thanks Neal and Laura! LOL)

• “Public displays of affection are acceptable. Especially if you're 15 and in a public park.”
o Been a long time since I have seen some much PDA!!

• “Nescafe (instant coffee) is a way of life”
o Unfort this is true in PY as well, but ironically NOT Argentina!

• “The most popular snack is a hot dog with everything ("Completos"). The toppings are usually ketchup, avocado, and lots and lots of mayonnaise. Really, anything with lots and lots of mayonnaise is popular.”
o Didn’t try it, not sad that I missed it. But you could def find them everywhere

• “People really like Megadeath here. We have seen lots of T-shirts and goth-y folks”
o I will add here that any heavy metal group is acceptable and popular.
Metallica came to concert while I was there and one girl was really bummed
that she couldn’t go!
o I was also told that the people who are considered cool here are the ones who can
play guitar and/or drums and listen to heavy metal NOT the jocks in any way!

5) My last two are that:
a) apparently everyone in Santiago needs multiple photocopies every day b/c literally like every 3rd store had a sign offering photocopies.

b) I saw multiple places and kiosks I saw selling booklets on Chilean laws. Not quite sure what that was about though and never got a chance to ask!

Chile definitely has amazing places to see. I pretty much only saw the center of the country. Hopefully one day I can head south and/or visit the north as well!