La Serena

So we left La Serena one fine Sunday morning. The spirits were high, we were all eager to get there. We had had a good breakfast in the El Hibiscus hostel, topped with homemade jam and cheese and fresh milk (I'm a bit hungry as I write this, so forgive me if overdo it). We were ten km out of La Serena when we started going uphill. All nice and dandy, some serious hills come to think of it, with some curves but nothing serious. When we got to the big daddy of all hills the car suddenly didn't have any force to pull us uphill. Coupling the 4x4, as absurd an option on a frequented highway, did not help. We pulled over, got out of the car and faced the horrible smell and the awful truth. Now if this happened to you before you might know what it was: the clutch disk was dead.

We turned the car around and headed back (downhill, thank god!) to La Serena. When we got to town I ran over to the hostel to find Mauricio. I was running because he had said that he was going to his daughter's end of the school year bbq. I would not have hurried knowing how long it takes for the people in South America to get moving, but I was afraid that the thought of cooked meat (I told you I will overdo it) will make them faster. Not to worry, I found Mauricio just about ready to go. Mauricio called the rental company to ask them what to do. This was so good of him, because my spanish relied, as I said, on people seeing where I point or what I gesticulate, and I had no chance of doing this over the phone. The rental company said that we were to replace the disc and that they will reimburse us when we returned the car to Santiago. We hopped in his 4x4 Toyota Hilux (Dan tagged along) and headed for the town entrance. He was good enough to tow us back to the hostel.


Alas, we were stuck in the wonderful town of La Serena. We will be stuck there for three days. This is because on Sunday you will find nothing open in La Serena, except perhaps churches and funeral homes. On Monday we took the car to the Nissan service BUT the mechanic that knew how to take down an engine, replace the clutch disc and put the engine back would not come until Tuesday. My best guess was that he started working on the car around 11 on Tuesday, with all our requests that they hurry :) because the car was ready only around 7pm.

What did we do in these three days? Well, Sunday we went visiting around town. We visited Iglesia San Francisco, a stone church that was built around 1600. We visited the museum of La Serena, where we saw a moai from Easter Island. He looked cross-eyed to me, but even so, even out of his natural environment and without his 130 or so friends from the island, it still looked impressive, and well, foreign. We could also see mummified indian (from ecuador) child heads which had their mouths sewn.
We visited the central square, or Plaza de Armas. In every plaza de armas in every town you will find the main cathedral or church. Same here, but we just couldn't take another church. Plaza de Armas was THE place for people in La Serena to hang out and have a chat, old people and young people alike.

We then hopped in the bus for Coquimbo. Coquimbo is a town satellite of Serena, famous though for its seafood. Seafood we wanted, seafood we got. But first, we had to stop at the seashore where a bunch of pelicans and what seemed like an injured sea lion were begging for food. I find this feeding of pelicans and sea lions a practice that is demeaning for humans and birds or fish alike. It teaches the animal to beg for food and forget how to hunt or gather. But let's not get started on this subject.




We had seafood! At a wet market. Well, the wet market was at the ocean and a lot of restaurants were by the ocean side! Which was great! Catalina, Marius and Dan had their now favorite sopa de marisco, Lili had some fried fish and I had sopa de chamaron. It's sort of a baked shrimp with cheese soupy concoction. Really good and really filling. All topped with Aji, the chilean equivalent of chili sauce mmmmmm.

PS I updated the previous post with a picture of a parillada (huge meat grill) we had in La Serena. As you can see, we were still hydrating and protein loading :))