Winter Vacation (Ha!) and Orientation

I got back to Santiago last night from my 4-day vacation up north. It was a huge success! We left Saturday night at about midnight and arrived in La Serena around 6 30. La Serena is a decent-sized city of about 150,000. After checking into our quirky hostel (Maria's Casa) we explored all day. We walked to the beach (my first peek at the Pacific Ocean from Chilean shores!), got some bread and cheese for breakfast at a tiny shop near Maria's, went to the archaeology museum (I won't lie, I'm not much of a museum-lover, but this one was free so whatevs), had more cheese and more bread (but this time with avocado and tomato) for lunch, went to Parque Pedro de Valdivia where there was a petting zoo (with the goofiest animals, most of which I didn't really want to pet), walked around the Japanese garden (see photo), and watched the Sunday afternoon soccer game in a bar that seemed to be full of locals. There was also an outdoor market, but I'm starting to find that a lot of the products are the same from market to market. That's not to say they're not cool, but it makes me less crazy about buying everything. Actually, that's probably a good thing. We made dinner at the hostel that night because it had a full kitchen for guests' use. There were lots of people from Europe staying there as well, and everyone was really friendly. We met one girl, I think her name was Dee, from England who is traveling the world by herself. She'd been to several places in Asia (Thailand, India, China) and Australia and is now working her way around South America. Bad ass.

On Monday we took a tour of Elqui Valley. Our tour guide was this really neat older man who has lived all over Chile and parts of Europe. He spoke English with us, French with the other person on our tour, and also lots of Spanish. The countryside between La Serena and Pisco Elqui (a small town in the heart of the Valley) is pretty majestic. The photo hardly does it justice (if you click on it, it'll show up bigger). One of my favorite parts of the tour was lunch at a restaurant that cooks using mostly solar ovens. How awesome, right? Below is a picture of the ovens, which sit out in front of the restaurant.


Tuesday morning we woke up early and took a bus a little bit south to Ovalle, a smaller town. We wanted to see Fray Jorge National Park/Forest so as soon as we got to the hostel in Ovalle our host set us up with another tour. This time our tour guide was a 34-year-old named Percy who was pretty lively and carted us around in his tiny car which has to have been from the 90's at the latest. Fray Jorge was cool, we hiked up really high to get to a place where we could see the Pacific again (photo inset). It wasn't much of a forest, but considering the surrounding areas were basically desert, the dense vegetation on the ocean-side of the mountain was a change of scenery. The weather was as beautiful as it looks - sunny and warm and not a could in the sky. We stopped at Valle del Encantado on the way back to Ovalle. Its main attraction seems to be the 2000-year-old petrogliphs but I thought the gicantic boulders that they're drawn on were way cooler. Percy took us to a yummy fish restaurant that night. We were so tired from the day that we went to bed around 9.

Woke up early on Wednesday and went to Ovalle's version of a farmer's market. It was ha-uuuuuge! There were five or six loooong isles with booths on either side belonging to people seeling mostly fruits and vegetables but also olives, fish, and some grains. I bought a Fuji apple (delicious). We bought more bread and cheese from another little store (pattern?) and ate breakfast on a big boulevard. We caught a bus home in the afternoon.

Soooo after an action packed weekend I stayed home last night. It was nice to see Lily again. Today was orientation for all international students. They did a really nice job of welcoming us. There is a student organization that plans a bunch of events throughout the semester which seem aimed at getting exchange students to meet chileans and each other. Tonight they're taking us to La piojera, the bar that serves terremotos. Good thing I already know how much (or how little) I can take. Somebody's got to be the token puker and it ain't gonna be me.

Hooray for the weekend!