Friday, July 06, 2007

Bus ride to La Serena and Valle Elqui

This last weekend was a three day weekend and it was a great time to get reintroduced to my camera that I just had repaired. I went up to the north of Santiago in search of penguins - keep in mind that heading north down here is like heading south in the US. Saturday, I went to a city named La Serena which is located geographically about the same as San Diego. There are a few islands that are protected because of the penguins that live there.

My friend Lilly joined me on this journey north on the bus. When taking long bus rides I always prefer to travel at night so that I can save the precious day time to take pictures. Shortly after the bus departed the man behind us started snoring. We tried to ignore him but after an hour and a half we couldn't stand it any longer. I didn't know what to do ... I've had friends in the past that have snored and if I yelled at them they'd stop snoring, but this bus was full and I couldn't make noise without waking everyone else up. Another thing I'd do to my friends is throw a pillow at them which would bring them slightly out of their sleep and make them stop snoring. Well ... I didn't have any pillows so I grabbed the next best thing ... Lilly's scarf. I took one end and held it tight. I slung it back like a whip to hit in the face - the first attempted was a miss. After trying to control ourselves from laughing too hard I slung it back again for a second attempt. I hit him on the head and quickly brought it back. This guy didn't even skip a beat, he kept snoring. I tried a few more times but this guy didn't even feel a thing.

We finally moved to the back of the bus far away from the snorer and then the heater came on, which was located right below our seats. This was welcoming at first because it was a little cold but once we started sweating because it was getting too hot we started to wonder if they were trying to cook us. This last for a half an hour. Once it finally turned off the man across from us started to snore and we couldn't help but laugh at our bad luck. Fortunately he stopped and we were able to get to sleep.

When we finally arrived in La Serena Sunday morning at 6:00 am. We ended up finding a few beds at the local hostel and sleeping till 12:30. It was too late to catch a bus to were the penguins were so we decided to check out the Valle (valley) Elqui.

We had a good time on this stretch of the trip a we took on another bus that took us winding into this valley.

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I found this picture really funny because there is a funeral services next to a hotel. Little scary.

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As I was taking this picture the own came up and we chated for a while and I told him was really admiring these oranges. He picked some off the tree and handed them to me. They were really tasty.

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Well these are Sunday's pictures. Monday we went to Punta de Choros where we took the boat to the island. I have more pictures to come. Let me know what you think of these.

Have a great day!

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