We spent the first day orientating ourselves to the town. Which did not take long...the town center was just a few streets away, we had exhausted the sight seeing of the town center in a few hours. In the afternoon we thought we would head down to check out the beach. Again with the Humboldt current heading up the coast it was a bit of an overcast day. With no sun to warm us up we sat on the beach while Doodles contemplated going for a surf. After the sky had cleared a little in the afternoon, the rolling waves got the better of him and he headed out in a rented holey wetsuit and a long board. He got some waves, but soon the freezing cold water and strong currents got the better of him and was pooped within half an hour.
It felt so strange as we sat on the beach and watched the sun set over the water, it felt as though it was actually early morning after a dawn patrol surf, the sun rising and contemplating a tasty bacon and cheese meat pie with some tasty tomato sauce (Boos Boos was craving a fix) and an ice break. No such luck :)
One notable day, with Boos Boos in bed sick with a mega head cold that Doodles had so kindly given her and the pressure to blog mounting daily. We spent hours reminiscing about Japan and getting it all down on paper, well....in 1's and 0's. By the end we were a little stir crazy ready to punch each other in the face. Unfortunately in Chile, as in a lot of other places in the world this is "socially unacceptable" so we decided to go for a stroll. About a hundred meters down the road a stray dog decided to befriend us and follow us for the rest of our journey. This would be the start of a week long friendship, forever with The Simpsons on the brain (and drawing inspiration from Doodles recently acquired Los Simpsons T-shirt) we named the dog Homer. It wasn't until a few hours later when "he" had stopped in front of us to scratch one of those hard to reach places that we were forced to rename her Homeretta. From then on while out and about somehow Homeretta would find us and hang out with us, we weren't sure whether we smelt like food or whether it sensed we were white gringos that needed protecting. It even went as far as her waiting outside a restaurant while we had diner, then outside the movies for 2 1/2 hours. She was never aggressive towards us, but on that particular walk home she bailed a dodgy looking guy up against a fence when we were still 20meters behind. She was a legend!
Close to La Serena there is a small fishing town called Coquimbo which was built at the end of the beach and out onto a rocky headland. We had hired bikes for a few days and decided to ride along the beach front to check it out. Funnily enough we ran into Homeretta on the way and she took it upon herself to run along side us for the whole 25km round trip. The town of Coquimbo itself was pretty industrial but the rocky headland was amazing. Made up of a plethora of sandy coloured limestone crags (maybe - geology not our strong point...), and mostly covered in guano (bird poo for the uneducated ;)) it was a rock climbers/boulderers/rockhoppers dream. To our delightful surprise basking not fifty meters away from us was a giant, fat male sea lion (Boos Boos thought it was Doodles in a wetsuit for a moment :)) Having seen these things in zoos it was amazing to see them in their natural environment. Funnily enough Doodles was having a David Attenborough narrated vision of great white sharks chasing seals through the very waters he was surfing in yesterday.
We spent a few hours watching the sea lions and exploring the headland, there were even a few bolted climbing routes on some of the bigger faces. Would be an awesome trip for you climbers out there.
We had organised a local tour to take us north to the Resevar Penguin de Humboldt (Humboldt Penguin Reserve). After driving 2 hours north us and 11 others jumped into a significantly smaller boat than expected and headed off to 2 of the 3 islands in the reserve. One of the islands is impossible to land on by boat was teaming with wildlife, Humboldt penguins, albatross, a red beaked bird that could smash shells and eat the inside as its main source of food. There was also a bevy of sea lions and seals playing in and out of the water. The highlight of the trip though was when we spotted a giant pod of dolphins. No joking...GIANT!!! The size of the pod stretched over 500m long and 50m deep of large bottle-nose dolphins. It was hard to estimate but there was at least over 250 dolphins. Once we approached them in the boat they decided to check us out and proceeded to jump and play around us, it was incredible! We will put up some video of it soonish :) but here some pics.
The second island we were able to access and was extremely beautiful but due to human influence there was very little wildlife to be seen. Unfortunately Boos Boos + open sea + small boat = seasick. So she spent her time on the island laying on the beach trying to stop the bobbing in her head while Doodles went to explore the island. There was an awesome point break which has been added to the bucket of notes to surf.
Soon it was back to the main land for a menu del dia, then a bumpy trip back across the desert to La Serena.
In total we spent 7 days in La Serena but we had to get moving so jumped on a bus bound for Copiapo, 5 hours north. Arriving in Copiapo we sat down and realised that we would have to spend at least another 3 days in the area to see anything worth while. Since we had spent a fair bit of time in Chile already we jumped on a night bus and travelled another 13hours north east into the Atacama desert to San Pedro de Atacama just inside the Chile on the border of Bolivia.
Ciao
Peace and Love
Doodles and Boos Boos
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