As I see more and more of Chile I am continuously being reminded of Oregon and they really do share alot of the same landscape. There is just an amazing mix of geography, especially being in the central region between the two extremes. For example ... I live on the beach, and there are plenty of palm trees but there are also different types of pine trees. The rolling hills remind me of northern california and of course it should ... we share the same fault lines along with the pacific ocean : )
Ok so on to La Serena. This first picture which is clearly a ridiculous amount of food basically sums up the first night that we had. We were all split up into Cabañas, 5-6 people sharing a mini house : ) Deciding to make the most out of the time we have left as a group we all decided to pot-luck the first night! Fruit Salad, curry rice, mashed potatoes, cobbler, nachos ... basically a bizarro mix which somehow worked together ... because we all miss cooking for ourselves.
I guess I didn't really consider this before coming as to one of the things that I would really miss doing but wow, it's really hard to always have food made for you. Especially when I would never think of telling Patty that I didn't want to eat something she had made me. The other day I made peanut butter cookies and it was soo nice to just be able to get in the kitchen and do something!
Our second day - while we were still digesting - we were given a free day to wonder around the city or lay at the beach.
The city was really beautiful, much more colonial then other Chilean cities I have seen. There were also a lot of beautiful churches, a nice artisan market where I picked up some things to bring home (only for those who have kept up on my blog of course :) ), and a surprising japanese garden. The next three pictures are from the Valle de Elqui, a valley about an hour and a half inland of La Serena.
For our second day we started with lunch at a restaurant that makes food with only solar power. The food was, well ... cooked all the way through, not particularly spectacular but still a novelty to have these little solar cookers. We also had an amazing drive through the valley and spectacular views of the landscape. The view from the solar restaurant.
I don't think I've mentioned anything about Pisco in my previous entries ... it's the national drink of choice for Chileans, and Peruvians interestingly enough. It's a type of liquor distilled from grapes. Usually mixed with coca cola or lemon lime. My thoughts on Pisco are that it's not bad but if I were to drink as much of it as the majority of the Chileans I know ... I'd be sick of it. Well, we went to a Pisco factory after lunch ... you knew I would get there eventually ... It wasn't particularly a fantastic tour but we had a little taste test and I found a birthday present for my Chilean friend Rodrigo.
On the last day we were all ready for a nice relaxing day with a long trip back on the bus ... first we had a stop at a national park located outside of La Serena. This fox pictured was one of 5 that were basically hunting around the picnic sites for scraps ... yikkkkes! They were never further than 20 feet, nice and cute ... and lethal! Ok, so other than the foxes ... we waited an hour for our guides to show up, something that our program director was less than pleased with ... and we made our way up the hills of this park into a naturally formed rainforest, of sorts.
There are persistent clouds which form a blanket over the ridge of one of the hills/mountains and the condensation from the clouds creates this type of rainforest. It was pretty amazing to see how the entire plant life changed within a matter of minutes, really within a matter of a few hundred feet. I'm not sure if you can tell by the pictures but it was a pretty neat experience and I think very few places like this exist. This kind of shows the type of plant life in the basic on this ... whatever this is ... and the clouds to the right on the hills, that is where the rainforest is.
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