Another whirlweend weekend...

So this said whirlwind weekend actually took place last weekend, but I was too lazy to upload pictures and fill people in. Oops. Well, my excuse is that my camera doesn't have a zoom button, so I was waiting for other people to load their pictures so I could steal some of the better ones. But I think we were all being a bit lazy on the picture side....

Anyway. It was another travel-though-the-night trip, starting on Thursday and getting back to Viña on Tuesday morning. Thursday, though, I had been kind of sick, and for a while wondered if I'd even make the trip at all. THEN! After Juegos Mapuches, I started feeling better . . . woohoo!! So we got on an 23:15 bus and headed out of Viña, towards the north. We got to La Serena at about 5 in the morning, but took another bus at 6 a little futher east to the small, sleepy town of Vicuña.


FRIDAY

We had barely slept the night before, and I still wasn't feeling 100%. Regardless, I really wanted to go explore the city (instead of slowing down, like a normal sick person), to see the museums and things that the 3-block down had to offer (it was a 4x8 grid. Tiny!). The main sight of the town is Gabriela Mistral's house. So that was our first stop, and it was..... CLOSED. GAH!!! We came to this teeny town for essentially nothing! Oh, the irony...

After that, we went back to our creaky hostel (might be the sketchiest hostel I've stayed in yet. But at $10 a night, I guess I can't complain? I will anyway), and got the rest of the group, and went to tour the Capel Pisco Factory. Funny sidenote: we somehow ended up on the same tour of a bunch of retirees. Then, we went out to lunch. I got sick again. The flu is no fun, especially not when you're in crazy dry heat and you're traveling, and supposed to be enjoying yourself. But I finally gave in, and went back to the hostel where I slept for about 3 hours straight.

That night, we went to the Mamalluca Observatory. This area of Chile is known for exceptionally starry skies, skies that did not disappoint. This observatory is located on a hill maybe 20 minutes outside of Vicuña. We were treated to a short presentation that made me feel insignificantly small, and THEN we got to use their telescopes! We say Jupiter and its three moons, and then we zoomed in on our moon, and were able to see all the craters and things. At the end of this photo slideshow are some of the photos that were taken (courtesy of Sarah) through the telescope. All in all, a good day!




SATURDAY

Saturday was a cool day, mostly because of how we chose it. We knew that we had exhausted the city of Vicuna, and wanted to go a little further west into Pisco Elqui. So we legitimitely just looked on a map, and said "THAT ONE!" and went to Monte Grande for the day. It's the home of Gabriela Mistral's first house, her burial site, and.... that's it. It's amazing, though, to see the hills. It stil never ceases to amaze me, and I hope it never does. To see these HUGE dry hills, covered with cacti, but irrigated by man to create small fertile patches... I don't understand how they do it.
Saturday afternoon, we headed back to La Serena, and explored the Japanese Garden there. We also went down to the beach for a little bit, a HUGE long sandy beach :)




SUNDAY

Sunday was nothing short of amazing. We booked an excursion through our hostel to go visit Humboldt penguins! The Humboldt current is a bizarre current along South America that brings with it exceptionally cold water in comparison to the rest of the ocean's temperature. THUS! Pinguinos!

It's hard to see the little penguins in my pictures (they're about 20 inches tall), but they exist. I promise. We also saw sea lions (lobos marinos) and dolphins (delfines). Matthew would have LOVED IT! There are also some videos below of those two creatures, which shows how close we were able to get in our little boat.









MONDAY

Monday, we hung around La Serena a bit more, and explore the artesanias there. I bought a llama wool sweater. No big deal. We went to some of the museums and churches the city has to offer. La Serena is cool, because it's the second oldest city in Chile (after Santiago), and has kept with the colonial tradition. All of the buildings look like they would have in the 1600s. No skyscrapers here! One of my friend's host sister lives in La Serena, and she took us to a lookout in Coquimbo (one town over). We had a lot of time left over, so we went back to our hostel and did some homework (lame). Got back on a bus, got back to Vina around 7:30, wrote a paper, and went to classes!