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...