The day starts under the grey acres of sky of La Serena. Its well known to clear around lunchtime, but that hardly matters for us. The day revolves around watching Ireland thrash Italy in the Six Nations. It doesn't really care if we watch that in a penthouse or a favela. We have discovered the hostel has ESPN on its tv, and the match is (unusually) on the free channel, rather than the add-on-expensive-channel ESPN 3.
Breakfast in the hostel means one cup of tea or coffee and a packet of biscuits, which is fine for the $6500 we are paying per night. God help you if you want to make food after 11am though. There are clearly more people using this house than just the guests.
Yesterday I said I picked up some charqui de equino on the bus. This is what it looks like.
It looks like marijuana. But its not. Its jerked horse meat. MMMMMMMM. Actually a lot tastier than it looks (or sounds), it becomes moist and chewy in the mouth. That's another animal ticked off my 'must eat' list.
So we watch the rugby, Sarah screams at the tv and I take the opportunity to fire a load more blog online. It's O'Driscoll's final game at Aviva. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth. There are not enough big men crying.We have a wee beer, the closest thing we can find to Guinness, Escudo Negra, a decent black lager. We then watch the Scotland v France game, and drink more tea. I must stop drinking tea here, I think its having an adverse effect on my tummy. Ugh. After all that I decide to go for a long walk, which turned out longer than I expected.
The area just above the pedestrian city centre is not exactly as picturesque as the brochures would have you believe...
These houses on Avenida Juan Bohón were a marked improvement.
This is exciting Ruta 5 (southbound)
And this is the fabulous Avenida Aguirre, the main road down to the beach. It is a bit of a time warp. At one end is a tedious little town with 28 churches, at the other is a beautiful beach and lots of hotels and condominiums.
This is La Serena's faro, or lighthouse. Wooo.
The beach, of all things, is not a disappointment in any way. Shimmering soft sand underfoot, rolling waves accommodate local surfers, and you have almost the whole thing to yourself.
View back towards Coquimbo.
Spotted a little crowd hanging round this, and discovered a dead sea lion, which I didn't really expect. But I guess things like this do happen from time to time.
A few rogue oyster-catchers that, moments later, got a right shock as a big stray dog tried to eat them.
I had walked all along the sand barefoot, occasionally straying into the Pacific (for the first time in my life, that's another thing ticked off the list too) but it was time to head back. Surely one of these little side streets takes us back to Ruta 5? No. So back up the beachfront I head, a mile or so out of my way.
View inland. Uninspiring stuff.
Back onto Avenida Aguirre and all the way along, there's a few parks and an open-air museum, which are ok.
Bored of walking around, I'm tired and dehydrated. Have a bottle of water and head to the hostel to collect Sarah. We go out for dinner and, after a quick scout around, we attempt another Chinese, seven days since we last had one and figured it had nearly killed us. Back on the wagon, I say. It was delicious. Chicken curry and beef with mushrooms, fried rice, a wee beer. Only thing left to do was come home and post a humorous blog entry. Hope you enjoyed the fat boy with the exploding bum, Sarah laughed so hard a little bit of wee came out.
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