La Serena, Chile, South America

I got into La Serena at about 6:15am, and I think I managed to get 2-3 hours of sleep last night. That’s not bad for me on a night bus. My hostel was only a ten minute walk from the bus station, and it looked like a pretty good neighborhood when we were coming in on the bus, so I just walked it. It sounds so obvious that I would walk that distance, but in a lot of cities I’ve been pulling into, you definitely wouldn’t take your chances with even a ten minute walk with everything you own in two backpacks.

It was a find walk and La Serena is a really nice little town. The difference between here and Bolivia is drastic. You can see that there is money here, and the buildings, houses, and malls are really nice. In Bolivia, there was nothing nicely built. I got to Hostal El Arbol at 6:30am and rang the door bell twice, but no one came. I just sat on the curb out front for about 20 minutes until the owner showed up. She is a lovely old lady who treats every guest like they are her child. She invited me in to what appears to be just a house. I sat in the living room, used their wifi, and then had breakfast in their dining room.

I met some really nice people staying at the hostel and this place just has a really good vibe to it. There are two really nice german guys staying here that live in Santiago, so hopefully I’ll get the chance to meet up with Alex and Vincent when I get down there. I headed out into the city and checked out whatever I could. It’s really nice looking, and very comfortable to walk around in, but today is some sort of holiday, so most of the shops were closed.

I grabbed some lunch in town, and then took a walk down to the beach. It was only twenty minutes from the city center to the beach, and it’s a pretty nice walk. The beach, however, was not so nice. It looked okay, but had an unmistakable stench of urine. I’m not sure if it was just something in the water, or if it was actually urine, but either way it wasn’t nice. I only stayed down there for about a half hour and then headed back up to the hostel.

I checked in to my four bed dorm and got a much needed shower after that night on the bus. I did a bit more research on how to get to the south of Chile, and also what Melissa and I can do next week when we are in Santiago. We were going to go skiing for a day, but I just found out from the guys that live in Santiago, that the ski season finished there in September, so we now have an unexpected free day. I’m sure we’ll find something to do, there’s always options in big cities like Santiago.