Chile 11th June

Flew Sunday night from BA to Santiago, then straight to the bus station for a ticket to La Serena. Midnight bus and arrived in Serena at 6am (the bus attendant had a mission to wake me up!). Then headed off by taxi to hostel that didn´t wake up when I knocked (it´s still dark and I´m very tired . . ) So I went in search of someone who new where another Hotel I´d heard about was. And this is how I met Karen and Alex. Alex had his head between his knees removing the excess alcohol from his system, so they didn´t look pàrticularly threatening. After establishing they spoke no english and I very little spanish and that they weren´t from La Serena so had not a clue where the street was, Karen invited me to stay at her house. So we jumped in a collectivo (taxi with a set fair to set locations) to Coquimbo 5 minutes south and another collectivo up the hill and a quick walk through an increasingly dodgy neighbourhood and we were there. Luckily they had a great sense of humor so after we slept till lunch time Karen and I sat down with my little dictionario and started ¨chatting¨.
So the last 2 nights I´ve stayed in a hotel (my own little apartment thing) because Karen doesn´t have hot water, and met up with them to hang out, see some sights (borrowed a friends car) and generally have a lot of laughs. Ate a loads of places I probably wouldn´t have even seen, saw the lighthouse, japanese gardens, cross on the hill, central coquimbo and serena, and went for a boat ride out in the harbour to look at the views of both cities and seals and birds on the rocks. Also went to the fish market (Mel you would have loved it!) as well as selling your usual whole and filleted fish of every kind, they had ready to go plastic punnets of seafood all chopped up (I couldn´t begin to name them) and you got a spoon and added salt, lemon, onion and chilli to taste and went for it!! So I went back this morning and had seafood for breakfast!!The thing with having a communication problem was that it took a long time to figure out what was actually going on but I´ll sum it up here so you don´t have to go through the pain of every explanation (and I don´t have to relive it!!).

Karen & Alex together 3 months living together 2, Karen has a son (4) and they live in Santiago. She is originally from Coquimbo so was showing Alex (and now me) her home town. The house they are staying in breaks almost every building code I know about and it took some courage to go up stairs to sleep! But I haven´t established who usually lives there as she calls it ¨her house¨but there´s very little furniture (2 bedrooms with nothing in, my room a bed and a wardrobe). She works administration at somewhere that does something with chemicals and minerals and he is a student. They are getting married in Jan/Feb next year and have invited me!

So I´ve been here longer than I´ve planned and done very little tour wise, but had a great time, unfortunately my bible has gone walkabouts so not sure what to do about that, I may have been able to find a dictionary in Santiago but not here . . .

Off to Calama tonight, had wanted to stop in Copiapo but can´t find anywhere to stay and will probably be like here with no gringo tourists, from Calama will aclimatise (2200m) and head out to Atacama and the salt plains.