Hola from La Serena.

So we were only here for a night. I think the reason why the place was added into our itinerary was because we had to stop off somewhere perhaps?

As you can tell I, Becky, was not that impressed. We got to see a proper Chilean town but well, it was tedious.

The beach is supposed to be one of its highlights and I´m sure it is in their summer time but Kate, Becca and I went laden with shopping bags (the straight road to the beach was pretty long). The beach was grey, the beautiful lighthouse was graffiti´d (as is most of south america) and well it just wasn´t that impressive. Actually the view of the hills was nice. At the top of the biggest hill was another religious symbol that the South Americans cherish. It´s nice though that they make an effort in maintaining something.

We spent most of our time in the shopping mall eating and speaking to our loved ones on the computer.

I almost forgot. Something that will always remind us of La Serena. We arrived on a sunday and not much in terms of eateries were open so our tour leader took us to a cafe/restaurant that we had been to earlier in the day for coffee. At this point I was having trouble stomaching the fact that I knew the food that was to come would not be all that great. It wasn´t. We all had a nice chat at the table though and got to know eachother a little more. After the meal was finished however someone decided that we should all pay seperately. A good idea in some cases, in this case it wa´s not well thought through. The rest of the group decided to wonder off around the block for a little wonder but Kate, Becca and I decided to head back in the opposite direction back to the hotel. Big mistake. We were almost at the hotel when the waiter from the restaurant tracked us down and started to talk to us in rampant spanish. We don´t talk spanish. We kind of got the gist if however. Something to do with there not being enough money paid. So the 3 of us had a choice. Go try and find our tour leader or just pay the extra, take the receipt and tell the leader when we saw her next. We decided to pay it. By this time the waiter was getting alittle frustrated with the language barrier. The difference was about 7 english pounds. We told the tour leader, nothing was really done about it for a few days but then they offered to put some money towards our next meal to reimburse us as we had no way to tell who had made the error of not paying.

Not an overall positive blog for La Serena. I´ll talk to kate and see what her views were, so watch this space.