After a seven hour bus ride from Valparaiso we arrive in La Serena and make straight for the hostel. We check into a private room with a view to getting some undisturbed shut eye in an attempt to cure our jetlag.

We take a walk around La Serena and book onto a tour of the Elqui valley for the following day. We take some lunch at a local restaurant advised by the tour operator and are pleasantly surprised to find lots of pensioners in for lunch too. Must be good and cheap then and it is. Cassulet soup followed by roast chicken with rice or pasta for a few quid each.

Like Valparaiso, La Serena is chocker-block with stray dogs. A lot of which appear to be recognisable breeds and seemingly not in keeping with the typical stray mongrel you would see elsewhere in the world. They are pretty well behaved and by the looks of them fairly well fed too. Seems a real shame the Chileans have a way of buying lovelly puppies and letting them go once they get too big. Helena wants to take about 3 home so far.

That night we met Alex and Melissa who are also on a round the world trip very similar to ours and we discuss the places we've both been to and laugh at each others stories. They're off to San Pedro this evening and we wish them luck as we again turn in early hoping for that elusive full nights sleep.

The next day after a pretty good kip (whoo hoo!) we're picked up and taken up the Elqui valley. First stop is a papaya plantation which is only possible because of the regular morning mist providing the much needed moisture required to grow the papaya. The juice we sample isn't the sweet taste we're used to a recognise the amount of sugar used to sweeten papaya juice.

We stop of at the local city Vicuna and take in the tower which was created in Germany and shipped over by a German mayor of Vicuna. Some umpteen years ago. Anyway that's boring. Next we visited a few pisco distillerys and sample a few varieties of this Chilean spirit made from Grapes. After distilling the grape juice they store the alcohol for no more than 5 years else it would become brandy and herein lies a problem. Maybe they should try for brandy because the pisco just doesn't taste that good. After visiting 2 distillaries and laughing at the amusing repulsed faces of 2 American girls enjoying the various pisco types as much as us we understand why pisco has not made it that big.

We see a dam with great views, eat a cactus fruit and have some lunch in Pisco Elqui. "This is a most important tourist place. Built for tourists. Named after the liquor and the valley" Well we have a look around this place and spot a dog drinking out of the fountain. How we laugh. Anyway we get back on the bus and go back to our hostel.

Next day we check out , dump our bags and go for another walk around La Serena. We browse in some shops, have an great ice cream and head back to the local restaurant we tried a couple of days earlier. Low and behold the same pensioners are in again. You just know its a good'un if they're in everyday.

We stock up on bread and cheese at the supermarket and head for the bus station for a 17hr overnighter to San Pedro de Atacama. Can't wait, for the bus ride that is.