The National Dress for boys and girls
(the boy is dressed like a Huaso, the girl's dress is Huasa China style)
While I had seen a month and a half's worth of preparation in Santiago for the Bicentennial, I did not get to enjoy the fruits of labor. On Thursday afternoon, Lauren, Danielle S, Mark, Alice and I set off for La Serena, a coastal town to the north of Chile. I enjoyed the majority of the bus ride to Serena because the scenery was beautiful. For a great deal of the ride, the mountains set a backdrop of springy green. As we passed the trees blooming pink, the clusters of cacti and the hills of exposed rock, the different aspects in front of the mountains accesorized the terrain morphing it from sweet and joyful to serious and pensive. It amused me to see such personality in the land.
In our entire stay, we did not see much of La Serena. The next morning, on our first day, we took a colectivo to Vicuña to the east of La Serena. Vicuña is centered in the valley, a beautiful ever green, ever clear, ever temperate place that is irrigated from glacier water. All along the road there were fields of grape plants and advertisements for papayas. The town itself is tiny and quiet. The plaza is little and sweet and every time we saw it, little children would be zipping around in kid-sized automatic cars. That first day, we toured the CAPEL pisco distillery.
The second day, we walked to the beach of La Serena and rode horses along the shore. As I was rocking back and forth on my horse by the water, it occurred to me that most people would be tranquil. However, due to my inexperience with horses, I regarded the activity with nervous interest. Throughout the ride, I kept singing snippets of songs to calm myself (and in my mind, the horse) down. Danielle, who rides horses more frequently than me, kept assuring me that the horse was beaten down and tranquil. However, when I was on top of a horse and having trouble nudging it in the direction I wanted (my convo with the horse was the follows, "okay horsey, let's follow the others and go up the hill" *I move the rein, the horse's head moves, I let go and the horse continues in the original direction, "okay horsey, I know it's hard to walk up a slope, we can stay here if you want, horse, sir") , it's hard to reassure yourself that the horse is not out to get you. But I made it through the ride without any damage. Then, we were going to go to Pisco Elqui to ride more horses, but we ended up taking a horrible bus ride to Vicuña instead. I was forced to endure The Descent 2, a terrible horror movie. I hate horror movies.
But thankfully, the trip turned out well. We went to the Mirador de La Virgen which is a wonderful viewpoint from a hill.
At night we got to go to the Mamalluca observatory and I got to see planets and stars. I also got to have this lovely close up of the moon.
The last day, we went walking around La Serena. We girls hit an open fruit/vegetable market and a really cool park/military base while Mark went to church in the Plaza de Armas.
Then, we all set off to Coquimbo where we ate a delicious seafood lunch and then went for a very chilly ride on a Catamaran boat to see sea lions. Coquimbo was a really placid place with a lot of sea life and sea food. There were about 25 pelicans that flew around the dock. I was really interested in the pelicans because I usually do not encounter them. Unfortunately, they also scare me with their size and their flying.
Once on the boat, we got to see a couple of islands full of sea lions. The first thing you notice though, is not the cuteness of the sea lions but rather the stench. I learned some life knowledge that day: Sea lions bark, bite each other and are really quite smelly.
Overall, the La Serena trip was really quiet and perfect for helping me through the next two weeks of school.
In our entire stay, we did not see much of La Serena. The next morning, on our first day, we took a colectivo to Vicuña to the east of La Serena. Vicuña is centered in the valley, a beautiful ever green, ever clear, ever temperate place that is irrigated from glacier water. All along the road there were fields of grape plants and advertisements for papayas. The town itself is tiny and quiet. The plaza is little and sweet and every time we saw it, little children would be zipping around in kid-sized automatic cars. That first day, we toured the CAPEL pisco distillery.
The second day, we walked to the beach of La Serena and rode horses along the shore. As I was rocking back and forth on my horse by the water, it occurred to me that most people would be tranquil. However, due to my inexperience with horses, I regarded the activity with nervous interest. Throughout the ride, I kept singing snippets of songs to calm myself (and in my mind, the horse) down. Danielle, who rides horses more frequently than me, kept assuring me that the horse was beaten down and tranquil. However, when I was on top of a horse and having trouble nudging it in the direction I wanted (my convo with the horse was the follows, "okay horsey, let's follow the others and go up the hill" *I move the rein, the horse's head moves, I let go and the horse continues in the original direction, "okay horsey, I know it's hard to walk up a slope, we can stay here if you want, horse, sir") , it's hard to reassure yourself that the horse is not out to get you. But I made it through the ride without any damage. Then, we were going to go to Pisco Elqui to ride more horses, but we ended up taking a horrible bus ride to Vicuña instead. I was forced to endure The Descent 2, a terrible horror movie. I hate horror movies.
But thankfully, the trip turned out well. We went to the Mirador de La Virgen which is a wonderful viewpoint from a hill.
At night we got to go to the Mamalluca observatory and I got to see planets and stars. I also got to have this lovely close up of the moon.
The last day, we went walking around La Serena. We girls hit an open fruit/vegetable market and a really cool park/military base while Mark went to church in the Plaza de Armas.
Then, we all set off to Coquimbo where we ate a delicious seafood lunch and then went for a very chilly ride on a Catamaran boat to see sea lions. Coquimbo was a really placid place with a lot of sea life and sea food. There were about 25 pelicans that flew around the dock. I was really interested in the pelicans because I usually do not encounter them. Unfortunately, they also scare me with their size and their flying.
Once on the boat, we got to see a couple of islands full of sea lions. The first thing you notice though, is not the cuteness of the sea lions but rather the stench. I learned some life knowledge that day: Sea lions bark, bite each other and are really quite smelly.
did you take all these pictures?
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