La Serena

La Serena and Humbold resort




We skipped class on monday and replaced it by a weekend full of sun, fun and impressions. After we arrived in La Serena at 5 o'clock in the morning and selpt some hours in the sandy beds of a hostel we went to the beach to get some tan before going out in the evening. Looking rather like lobsters than well tanned we enjoyed a bit the nightlife before we started our trip through the desert on the next morning.




Here, I didn't know yet how painful a sunburn on the butt can be...





...of course I couldn't lie still on the beach the whole time. By the way, I'm taking gymnastics classes, now. After almost 3 years without doing any gymnastics I'm really happy to satisfy my addiction again. (@ Kilian: no, not EVERYBODY lets me fall on my head!)







... what you cannot see on this pic is that one of the guys peed on the cactus, so it will probalbly carry some more or less beautiful flowers now...


On the road, baby! ...we hired a car in La Serena and then rode through the desert for a couple of hours until we reached a small fishing village.


With one of those fishing boats we went out to some small islands which are all natural reserves.


I lost a bet since I didn't want to believe that there would be pinguins right behind the desert...


...but we actually even swam in their crap (have a look at the white spots around us)!



The dolphins were a bit too fast for our cameras...


...as opposed to the sea lions, which probably still lie in the same position on the same cliffs.



I'm really fascinated by the desert... it changes its appearance every few meters and sometimes it seems so unreal that it's hard to believe that it is only a product of nature and time but it rather seems like there were giants playing around with rocks and sand. And then the clouds lie down on the hills as if they tried to guard this beauty for themselves.

Having luch in the car (eating seafood in a car with five people in it while driving through the heat leaves a very remarkable smell in your memory) we went to an observatorium. Unfortunately, the real big observatories are only open for scientists but not for tourists, but as we all were so tired that we almost fell asleep anyway, it wasn't too bad.
The next morning we visited a pisco farm, but it was actually rather boring. Well, maybe we were all more interested in drinking pisco (I think pisco is for chilean people what vodka is for russians) than in seeing the jars in which it is kept.
Next day in university we told our teachers that we unfortunatly missed the last bus home to Santiago...

Chile & Chocolate

Although the big cities in Chile are quite well developed and differ not much from Europe, it`s still verry hard to find good chocolate, here.
When I found a bar of "Sahne Nuss" cohocolate, I thought everything was perfect, but soon I had to find out, that the name is all they took over from german chocolate tradition, the knowledge about how to make good chocholate still waits to be established.

...this was before I tasted the chocolate...

Vamos a la playa

From Santiago it is just 1,5 hours to Vina Del Mar, a beatiful city at the coast. As we all had no language course or university yet, we decided to spend our friday at the beach and relax a bit from doing ...well... from being on holidays.








Yesterday, a new girl , Lotte, arrived at Casa Amarilla. She is really funny, and because she's dutch, our language of conversation has switched from german to dutch... but next week we will definitely start to speak spanish... for sure!





The sea is quite cold, but once you're in, you don't want to get out anymore . And the waves are really amazing. Although they look quite harmeless, they pull you under water, spin you around and upsite down until you lose any sense of orientation and then, when you can stand up and catch breath again, you notice that they also pulled of your bikini...



Compared to the rest of South America, Chile is a very modern country...




...but it is hard to describe because it has so many different faces.

Santiago

Santiago is really a huge city: 6 million people are living here. On the picture, you only see a part of the city. I took the picture today, when I was on a hill called San Cristobal. From there one can see the whole city, encapsulated by the mountains. But well, actually one cannot see the whole city, because it's so huge that its "end" blurres in the distance.
The weather is really nice. It's summer here and I even got a litte sunburn on my nose, today. The smog is not as bad as I expected it to be, but it's hard to find a piece of green, here.




Yes, this brown thing is a river. On my first day here, I was standing on a bridge, starring at the dirty river when an old women came next to me, threw a plastic-bag full of waste into it and went away. I mean, cultural differences are one thing, but these are things that are really hard to understand for me.




But there are also good things about Santiago, for example I like the colorful houses in Barrio Bellavista.


Many of those cute houses are bars, pubs or discos...maybe I'll try them tomorrow...

Das Klo schlägt Blasen

There I am.
Yesterday, I arrived in sunny Santiago de Chile. If you want to know a bit about what I am doing here, you can check out this site, I will try to keep it updatet. By the way, the title is dedicated to Killroy (alias Kilian) who sent me the link to this site.


My journey started as usual: chaotic.
First I wanted to go to Aachen to Anna's place to say goodbye to Babsi, Luci and Brina and to pick up Anna, there. But as many streets were blocked because of Karneval, I could not find her street until I was finally brought there by the police.
Then, at her place, I needed to charge the battery of my mobile phone. As I was afraid to forget the phone there, we decided to span the wire from the outlet to the tabe, but of course, one minute before I wanted to leave, someone (no, not Anna!) stumbled across the wire and dropped a cup of tea and my phone (which fell into the tea). The phone got wet and did not work anymore, so Babsi placed it in the oven. Yes, it really works: 50 dergrees for a minute . Well, now I found out, that I can't use my phone here, anyway.

...I love you too, Babsi!

After the phone was dry again we went to my car and I noticed that I had forgotten to lock the car (where all my luggage was in). But as I always have more luck than mind, nothing was stolen. From this point on I knew that luck would be with me again.


Although I don't have a visa for Chile, it wasn't verry difficult to get in. Waiting for my flight was funny because AnnaMo & AnnaRudzi were with me (Timmmmmmyyyyyyy!!!). The flight was calm and I am quite happy with my little room here in Casa Amarilla (and especially with the fact that there is a garden).


...beautiful view on the Andes






...a door at Casa Amarilla