We had a great nights sleep at the hostel in La Serena and enjoyed a feast of a breakfast the following morning. After only booking 2 nights at Aje Verde Hostel and needing 3 due to no availability on the buses, our first job was to find some accomodation. This was to prove harder than we thought when Aje Verde was fully booked, as were all the others in town. Our saviour came in the form of Pablo, a great guy who worked at the hostel who said we could pay the same rate as the dorm and stay at his place, he had a spare room. Brilliant! Not only did he help us out with somewhere to stay he also took us out for the day with a Chilean couple from the hostel. Initially he took us to the bus station to sort out our tickets (yes people are really helpful in Chile) then off we all headed to Coquimbo the neighbouring town to La Serena. We wandered around the streets and they got us to try ´Mote Con Huesillos´a dried peach cooked with lots of sugar, giving a fresh syrup, with mote, freshly cooked barley which had almost no flavour. Delicious! Pablo left us too it whilst the rest of us went on an hours boat trip to see the sealions. Again the guide spoke only in Spanish so I understood very little but it was great all the same.

On arriving back to La Serena we went for food at a local cafe which served huge churasscos (Ashs favourite) and completo´s (hot dogs). Sandwiches were Chiles thing! We then chilled out at the hostel before heading to the supermarket to cook tea. We were getting used to South Americas later living and ended up having tea around 9pm. We then got a call from the other couple that Pablo was picking us up in half an hour to take us out for a drink. We had a lovely evening in Coquimbos, Playa Des Ingles which is a street cordoned off in the evenings, filled with tables and chairs and live bands. We had our first tasting of Pisco Sours which was amazing! Another fantastic evening with some fantastic company, heres to many more.

The rest of our time in La Serena was pretty relaxed, visiting the main square and museum before heading over to Pablo´s place. That evening we headed out to the beach to watch the sunset and taste the local churros. On our way home Pablo took us on a tour of the casino which was pretty impressive, far too posh for us travellers to be wandering around in! Grecko, Pablos friend joined us for tea and Pablo translated to allow us to have some form of conversation with him. Pablo then headed to work around midnight and I had a nightmare by breaking his tap. At 12:30am the bathroom was flooding as the washer had broken and water was going ebverywhere. After consulting Pablo he told us to turn off the main tap (he didnt know were it was) before we finally got to bed. One way of saying thank you hey!!

All was fine the next day and we went for food at a local joint before Pablo took us to catch our 15hour bus to San Pedro De Atacama, the desert! We were both really sorry to be saying bye to him, he ahd been like a friend the past few days and we hope to see him again someday.