Our bus pulled in to La Serena terminal at around 7am. We had arranged to get into our room a bit earlier than usual check in, but that wasn't until 10 so we had some time to kill and we were pretty hungry. The only issue was absolutely nothing was open! We wandered a bit with our bags but to no avail, so ended up just waiting for the owner of the place we were staying to turn up and let us in.

The accommodation was owned by a Chinese family that also owned the Chinese restaurant next door. Our communication was a little stunted given our ability to understand Spanish spoken with a Chinese accent is non-existent! Once we had dumped our bags we set off to a medical centre we had spotted earlier.

Since we were in Santa Cruz in Bolivia Fergus had a red mark on his neck, which over the previous few days had gotten quite a bit bigger and had caused him a bit of pain on the bus trip. We had an inkling it might be a botfly larvae, given it had been there since we were in an area with botflies and looked like what had been described to us.

We got to the medical centre at lunch time and a friendly security guard tried to help us get in to see a doctor but they were all at lunch. He suggested we try more of an emergency medical centre next door but they were quite busy so we returned to the medical centre and made an appointment for the next day.

After spending some time in the shopping centre for coffee and lunch, we made our way down to the beach front to check it out. It was a bit late in the day and getting cool so we didn't swim. The beach was absolutely packed though, and we quickly realise that La Serena is where all of Chile's hideously overweight people go to holiday.

In the morning we went to the medical centre for Fergus' appointment. When we got into the doctors office we explained in our best Spanish that we thought Ferg had a botfly in his neck. We knew we at least had the word right as we had looked it up online before hand. Unfortunately we got a doctor who couldn't have been more disinterested.

He checked Fergus' blood pressure and listened to his breathing and, without even closely inspecting the now rather bulbous red mark on Fergus' neck, decided it was a skin infection and prescribed antibiotics. Since we were unsure if it really was a botfly we filled the script and proceeded with the recommended treatment.

We spent the afternoon at the beach with the rest of the beached whales and had a fairly relaxed day after that. We arrived at the beach early afternoon and it was almost empty, but by around 4 in the afternoon it had completely packed out.

We were seemingly the only people there without a beach umbrella or tent or chairs or esky. It turned quite chaotic in the end with all the people and all the hawkers selling ice cream, bake goods, soft drinks etc. Perhaps a few people around us could have done with fewer of these things.

The next day we decided to have a look around town. There were some market stalls in the main square which we had a look through, then we made our way to Santa Lucia Hill, at the top of which is a huge old castle that is now used as a military base. When wandering the ground we must have taken a wrong turn and encountered some armed military who wanted to see our ID. Fortunately they decided we weren't a threat and let us carry on. Both the castle and the view over La Serena were pretty good.

We had another afternoon at the beach before eating dinner at a great sushi and ceviche restaurant. We went completely overboard and got a huge plate of sushi and sashimi and a big bowl of ceviche. We were stuffed! We returned to our room and streamed the Hottest 100, but since it was really late and we knew none of the songs we decided sleep would be better.

Then it was Australia Day! What better to do than spend it on the beach drinking beer. We took a couple of cans each, since we didn't have any way of keeping them cool. After drinking those and baking in the sun a while we had a couple more at a bar which was right beside the beach. We did nothing else that day so it was a pretty good way to spend Australia Day!

The next day we took a bus to Valparaiso.

LAPFWT