La Serena (the town the size of Sandhurst yet has 29 churches!!)

We arrived In La Serena after our 6 hour journey and were looking for a nice hostel, we found a few nice ones but they were too expenisive. We arrived in a strange one, the owner couldn't speak english, we agreed that we would stay 2 nights. We got settled in our room which smelt like petrol and Kla went to the loo. When Kla came back from the loo (which was horrible and had the most discusting shower ever!!), she decided we had to leave, so we sneaked out quietly 10 minutes after. Whooops!

We found a better one, which was a mans house with rented rooms. It was really nice, we had our own kitchen and court yard. We found a local supermarket like Tesco nearby. When we were walking back to the hostel a tramp shouted, saying 'You are not welcome in Chile, go home!!!' hahaha this was the first bit of abuse we have had in 5 months!

We found a cheap place for food, we had 'Cazuela' a Chillian meat stew which we ended up eating for 3 nights running as we couldn't read the menu. We originally ordered this by pointing at another mans dinner, luckily it was only 1.50 per meal!

The weather was amazing, we headed to the beach and to the market stalls, it was a really nice little town. We really liked it here.

We were planning our trip to the Bolivian Salt Flats which is meant to be really cold, so we bought some warm clothes from the 'Back To School Range' at the supermarket.

We left for our 17 hour journey to San Pedro De Atacama on the last night at 1.30am.

xxx