30th April - 2nd May La Serena

Another 9 hour bus trip to get to the seaside town of La Serena. Left Santiago where it had started to rain, through tunnels and past sprawling suburbs heading North. We were travelling into the sunshine and fresh country air. The vegitation changed into desertlike landscape with low lying bushes and many cacti. The views from the bus were fantastic. Deep blue sea on the left and high andes mountains on our right. We made it to the town in the late afternoon. It is another old town founded in 1500s and was the main link to Santiago and Peru. There are 29 churches of which we visited 4. Narrow streets and a few plazas, full of people and cars.

1st We took a full day tour to the Elqui Valley. Everyone came along even Sarah and Laura who are also following our trip after having officialy left in Santiago. The first stop of our tour was supposed to be a papaya factory but as 1st of Mayo is a holiday like Labour Day it was closed, so we headed on up to the dam. We noted that even though we were in a desert area they had many crops planted, papaya, grapes, citrus and avocado to name a few. The dam supplies all the water for irrigation and drinking water for the area. We also visited a Pisco factory where we were shown the steps to making pisco and also sampled some grapes and 60% Alcohol Pisco (They can only sell up to 50%) it is watered down to make it the legal level of alcohol. We drove through picturesque mountains of many colours. Yellows, Reds, Greens, orange, white and brown, with citrus and grapes planted into the hills. The many colours are due to levels of iron, copper etc in the earth. Finished the tour visiting the place where a famous Nobel prize winning poetress lived and died. Headed back to La Serena for a drink at a bar and dinner with a few others from the tour at a place recommended in the Lonely Planet.

2nd. Late start packed and out of our room by 12pm. Updated the blog and set off to see the Japanese Gardens and some more churches and historic buildings. Left at 9pm for our overnight bus to San Pedro de Atacama.