Further north along Chile's long coastline, we ventured to the medium sized town of La Serena. This is where the Atacama desert begins, and also where you can find a whole lot of telescopes taking advantage of the clear skies. We arrived early in the morning from our overnight bus (again) and were lucky enough to find a nice hostel that let us have a bed straight away, giving us a chance to sneak in a few hours of quality sleep instead of "bus sleep".

The most interesting thing for us in town was a museum that contains one of the famous Easter Island heads. We also took a day trip to the nearby town of Vicuna and visited a Pisco factory, sampling some of the produce whilst at it.