La Serena

We decided to take a weekend trip up to La Serena, a very Americanized coastal town about 7 or 8 hours north of us. The company originally intended to buy land for the olive farm in that area and so they have a beautiful office/house in a gated neighborhood (where we stayed). However, after setting up a corporate office for all the South America operations in La Serena, they couldn't find suitable land. They looked further away and found land for the olive farm about 2 years ago. It was originally a grape farm (table grapes, not wine). So they tore all the grapes out and began the process of planting olive trees (another post). Now the corporate offices are being moved down here. There will be new houses in a gated community and new offices.

But this is all in the future, for now let's go back to La Serena and see how much fun we had.

First, let me just say that we had NO idea how far away La Serena was. North of Santiago you go through a rocky, dry canyon and then it is pretty much a dessert for hours and hours. A few hours south of La Serena you hit the coast and the road winds through rolling hills and dense trees, then suddenly the coast will be there: frothy waves beating against stalwart black rocks and soft moist sand and behind that grey-blue water spreading out to eternity on the horizon. Then like that it is gone and the trees are back hiding the mysterious ocean from our view.

You can imagine that part was nice.

We got to the house late Wednesday evening and went out for pizza and groceries. Although the pizza was nothing like home, it was better than any pizza we've eaten here. Or maybe we were just hungry.

The next morning we went to the La Serena museum, which like most history was incredibly creepy.

 Left: Family outside the museum. Right: The narrow overcrowded streets of La Serena

 Paul and Joseph pretending to be babies in some sort of ancient hollowed out rock.

We got in trouble for this.

If you aren't allowed to play in a rock, I suggest you put it behind a wall and not right by a bench...

 Creepy mummy heads. I couldn't read enough Spanish to read what everything was, but we could still enjoy the disgustingness of it all.

 

 Paul checking out the mummy. I do know that the Incas mummified their emperors and basically treated them as if they were alive. They had special servants who fanned the flies away and offered them food and told people what the mummies wanted to say. I don't know if this is one of those lucky mummies.

 It's a good thing silky was there to make everything okay for Becca.

 

 Look! We went to Easter Island too! Actually this statue is like a smaller version of the statues on Easter Island. Nobody knows why it was in La Serena or where it came from, but they found it and put it with all the other creepy stuff in the museum.

One of the many old buildings in downtown La Serena.

 

 

 

We ate lunch at a ridiculously overpriced place by the coast. We ordered a meat and a seafood parrillada. I was brave and tried all sorts of seafood. Bad decision. This wasn't the crab legs and shrimp that we usually think of, it was a lot of squishy, chewy stuff. The fried fish was pretty good, but next time I'll just have a nice safe pork chop.
 

 Then we walked across the street to let the kids play in the sand. They had these awesome exercise machines. I've seen them at parks in a few towns here, but we've never stopped to play on them before.

 

No matter how many activities you plan, the sand is always the most fun - even when it's cloudy and cold.

I love this picture of Becca pensively staring out across the ocean.

Building little castles and waiting for the waves to attack them. It never gets old.

 

The relief society. I think Sam and I just told a funny joke.

 

Mando took these 2. Good job Mando.

You can see the hotel behind Paul. The beach is very touristy.

Mando found this piece of rock with little creatures living inside the holes. I hope I didn't eat any of these earlier at the restaurant...

One of the guys with us told us this was called Agua Muerte, or dead water. It's not alive or anything, just a piece of jelly water. Even Wikipedia doesn't know what it is.

 

That night we went to a famous observatory near La Serena. We met the tour group at 10 pm and followed them up a windy mountain road. When we got there it was pitch black and very late (both necessary to see stars). As you can imagine that is not very fun for little kids, but I loved it. We walked up a spiral staircase to a dome building. The ceiling could open slightly and then rotate so the opening was pointing the direction you wanted to see. An English-speaking guide told us a little about the stars we could see and then let us all view a few famous stars/clusters. Did you know the constellations are upside down in South America? The telescopes we were looking through were so powerful that we were looking at things like one star in a cluster or part of a different galaxy. It was kind of hard for the kids to grasp. Then some of the little ones started crying and we had to go. Too bad. Here's a really grainy iphone picture of the big telescope. You can't see the dome top, but it's the best I could get in the pitch black.

 

 

The next morning everyone was tired and we thought we would just go back to the beach for a few hours. But then it was cold, so we just hung around the house for a little while and then headed back.

Some flowers from the beautiful garden around the house.



Sam lounging on the carpet.

He loved to suck his lip like this for awhile, but he's kind of outgrowing it. I miss this face.

 

Sorry to go crazy with pictures of Sam, but he's so cute and chubby. I just can't resist.

We drove by tons of these windmills on the way home. It's hard to judge their size in a picture, but they're HUGE. I looked them up and they are apparently part of Chile's plan to provide power for the growing technology use.

It's probably good that Chile has a plan to upgrade their electricity - we see power lines like this all over the place.