Vacaciones del Invierno 1!

Bus Travel:

This was the first time I've gone on an overnight bus ride. Considering, it was pretty comfortable. We sat in the front row of the second level, and it was like being on a rollercoaster, it looked like we were going to hit everything,

Bus travel unique to Chile:

When engines of buses don't start, some s

trong men go to the back and push.

People stand in the aisles of coach buses, if there are 3 seats left, at least 8 people will be let on

Buses stop every five minutes, letting people off at their houses on the side of the highway/dirt road

Not unique to Chile, but still as annoying:

The snapping, humming, singing man who decided a one man band at 1 am was a good idea.

Small children kicking seats, playing music without headphones ( an extensive repertoire of about 5 Michael Jackson songs)

We spent about 5 days in La Serena, about 6 hours from Santiago. There were a lot of little towns nearby, and since there wasn't that much to do in each town, we traveled to four. It was a lot of bus rides, but fairly easy.Every town had a plaza de armas, and in these plazas were more little motorized cars than I have ever seen in my entire life. It is a four-year-olds paradise, with all of them driving their monster trucks and barbie jeeps. In the artisan markets, they had a lot of very interesting things such as aloe vera jam, papaya rum, rose petal alcohol, as well as bags not only that I have seen all over Santiago, but in places all over the world.

One of the towns, Vicuña, is where the famous poet Gabriela Mistral, the famous poet lived. There's a museum there, streets named after her, and also a creepy huge statue of just h

er face staring up at the sky. One night we went to a planetarium and got to look at Jupiter, and learned all about the 'andean cosmovision' We looked at a lot of really cool things in the telescope, I had no idea what I was looking at though. The Andean music show at the end was a plus, but the fact that the coffee shop was closed and it was freezing outside, not so cool.

Another town, pisco Elqui is home to a pisco distillery, pisco a type of alcohol made in a similar way to wine. We took a tour, watched a thrilling video about the tough life of a grape being made into pisco, and then got to use our souvenir glasses to try a little bit.

The last tour, Coquimbo, is a big port city, but was probably my favorite. We walked around for a while and almost walked into a 'mens only' cafe, at around 4pm. It was a Sunday, so more things than we realized were closed, but it was a town that seemed like it would be very busy if it was not a Sunday...we'll just have to come back.

Tonight it's off to Pucon, colder, rainier, but hopefully with some thermal baths/volcano walking. And maybe some young people? Maybe it'll be our lucky day...