I was picked up for the Elqui valley tour and ended up in the worst seat on the minibus - at the back with the wheel arch and two large chilean girls with no idea of personal space - one of their arms was right on my boob the whole time I was on the bus.

So on the tour we went to:

Elqui dam - used for hydroelectricty and windsurfing

Monte Grande - home town of Gabriela Mistral Nobel prize winning poet. The musuem was fukl to the brim of tourists and not much else. Tried Mote con huesillos (dried peaches and wheat in sweet nectar) favourite chilean drink - not to be repeated!

Pisco Elqui - full of tourists - anyone would think it was Easter weekend!

Solar restaurant - they cooked all their food using the power of the sun

Vicuña - potter around looking at more shops

Back to La Serena with only half an hour before my next trip to the Mamalluca observatory. Rushed to the supermarket for snacks and arrived back to find the tranfser was ten minutes early. Ran to get on and was then taken back to Vicuña - so I could have just stayed and had a nice meal and a mooch raterh than a crisp tea and running like a loony.

We were driven up into the hills to the observatory and were divided into to English and Spanish speaking tours. The English tour headed to the telescope with a quick lesson on constellations before going in. The guide used a laser pointer to highlight everything and made everything very easy.

In the telescope we took turns looking at a nebula in the belt of Orion, Jupiter and four of her moons and Castor one of the two stars in Gemini. Both the nebula and Castor look like a single star but are in fact loads or stars and two stars respectively.

We went outside and used a smalled telescope to look at one of the stars in the Southern Cross and more about the stars. We finished off with a demonstration of Stellerium software that shows you the stars every day for 10000 years!

The tour was amazing and the guide Luis was wonderful - I felt so small and insignicant and wanted to learn more.

The next day was Easter Sunday and some shops and the museums were open in the morning but everything shut in the afternoon. I bought my bus ticket, got food and visited the archeology museum meeting one of the Maoi from Easter Island before chilling the rest of the day and catching up on my blog.

My last day I explored La Serena more, had lunch then back to the hostel for an hour or two before heading for the night bus to San Pedro de Atacama. I had splashed out on premier and the seat almost fully reclined and there were only 6 of us in the section, all travellers, all going to San Pedro so was hopeful of a good journey.