Further adventures of a Mess - La Serena
ALBUM - Salad Days by Mac DeMarco
It’s another storytime blogpost today! I finally made it out of busy Santiago to see what else Chile had to offer. What ensued can only be described as madness. As usual with my stories… it’s to be expected by now I guess. So we decided to go to La Serena; my flatmate had found a beach where you could go diving with dolphins and see penguins. What’s not to like?! Nearby was the Elqui Valley where you could go to a pisquero (where they make pisco - the typical drink of Chile) and get great views of the stars at night - it just kept getting better. So we booked an overnight bus on Thursday night, two nights in a hostel in La Serena and a return bus on the Sunday. We wouldn't even miss a class!
Because I was involved, I decided we should go get a last nice dinner and some drinks in Santiago before our bus at midnight. The bigger mistake was probably accepting another round of Pisco sours at about half 10 (it was two for one after all). Looking up about 40 minutes later and realising we still had to finish our drinks, pay the bill, get our bags from the flat and make our way to the bus station, we realised we had slightly fucked up. But only slightly of course. It appears that this blogpost is quickly turning into me having to thoroughly embarrass myself, my friends tell me that my “fight” with a street dog was apparently the funniest thing to happen after two very strong pisco sours. On the run back to the flat we were being followed by some very eager street dogs. The dog was 100% trying to bite at my feet and being 2 piscos drunk I just kinda panicked, thought rabies and in my attempt to run faster, fell over and rolled along the pavement. My assumptions of this feral dog were proved wrong as he kept on running past us as I fell over. Let’s be honest, I looked like a tit and my mates thought so too. But rabies free and safe we made it on our overnight bus.
The buses here are so incredibly luxurious! We had near on fully reclinable seats, an entire leg rest and footrest. We were living the dream! Until my absolute worst nightmare began. The man behind me started to snore. I don’t know what it is about snoring but it drives me crazy. I just didn't sleep at all. So after our 6 hour long bus journey, we arrived in La Serena, in the pitch black on very little or no sleep and we had to find our hostel. This was pretty stress free apart from my friends making some joke about rabies every time we passed a stray dog. It was clear I wasn’t going to live that down. After an hour or so of chilling at the hostel and watching netflix we asked about how to get to the penguin reserve. Oh, there’s only one bus a day, it leaves at 9 and is about a 20 minute walk away. We were hearing this information at ten past 8. I have never known 4 girls get ready in such little time I promise you - one of us even had a shower! And we headed out into a very gloomy morning all kitted out in flip flops ready for our day at the beach. As we were driving out of La Serena we realised we had made a mistake with clothes first and foremost. But increasingly we were beginning to worry about what sort of place we were going to.
It was a 2 hour journey and all we saw was clouds and dry deserts and mountains. Nothing even remotely sea-like or beachy. And when we got there, oh God, it was even less than a one horse town. A few hutches selling empanadas and a boat or two. We paid to go to the penguin reserve which was about a 40 minute journey out to sea on a dingy. It was at this moment that we realised Emma was terrified of boats and the sea and somehow we had to convince her to get on. We did but it was tough. Even though it was cloudy and we did wonder where the hell we were, it turned out way better than we had imagined. We went out on this boat into the ocean and there we saw penguins, dolphins and seals! Just absolutely stunning. We even got to walk around the reserve before heading back onto dry land to catch the only bus home. I’m not sure it is something I would recommend as one of the things you have to see in Chile, but it was absolutely amazing at the end. After wondering where on earth the bus was taking us, things turned out okay.
When we arrived back in our hostel it was a lot busier and everyone was beginning to talk about the night ahead. So we rushed to the shop bought some nasty red wine that comes in 2 litre bottles here (don’t judge our poor student bank accounts) and some pasta and decided it was time to make friends with our fellow hostel goers. On zero hours sleep and too much Red Bull, whatever happened next was never going to be good. Within the short space of about half an hour I had fallen down some stairs and sprained my ankle and also got hit in the face with a cup that was causing some serious blood flow from my eyebrow. I was taken downstairs and iced for a while. It’s always fun going out with new people who don’t know how much of a mess you are and getting to see the realisation dawn on their face (sorry Mum I never meant to be a mess). But, with proper dedication as always I got out of bed and went back and drank more wine and ended up making it to the club. I definitely wasn’t the biggest mess, these English (of course they were English) guys were trying to get through 24 beers each and one of them nearly fell onto the street below from the roof terrace. But this is a blogpost about me and my messy friends. The morning after was not so much fun. My face and ankle hated me, I had lost my glasses and the key to my padlock (my contact lenses were conveniently locked in my bag) and we were being told check out was 5 minutes ago. We had all come back from the nightclub separately for some reason so we were thoroughly entertained with stories for the next part of the journey - naming no names, one of us even woke up with a French man in her bed (now that’s a cameo, isn’t it). Well, it could have been worse. I managed to pick the lock on my bag and was finally able to see, which then meant I found my glasses a lot easier. And after showers, packing, a lot of hungover complaining and a few ibuprofens for me we were ready to head to the Valley!
The buses to the Valley were a lot easier to use than the solitary one to the penguin reserve, they went every 20 minutes and we were a little bit more certain of where we were going. The Valley doesn’t have much to offer besides the obvious, the walks you could do, the pisco tours and the stars, but believe me it is absolutely stunning. Being all a little bit worse for wear, when we got to the hostel and spotted the pool we decided that was us for the day. Sitting around a pool drinking beers with that glorious landscape was something else, high mountains and endless blue skies trap you into this little oasis of calm. It was just breathtaking. And as the sun started to set we realised we were in for a real treat. I don’t know so much about the science of it, but it seems to be because of the lack of night lighting on the ground and the fact that there is nothing for miles around, reducing pollution and the like, the stars are just amazing. Every time you looked up there were more stars and it just becomes impossible to believe that the sky could get any fuller. I would like to add in here, that one of my travel buddies, Emma, doesn’t believe in space… That’s all I’m going to say on the matter. Moving on…
We really had been mesmerised by our trip, in so many ways. It was exhausting, Jess in fact slept on every form of public transport we took, I was very jealous of this as I felt like I had grabbed about 6 hours across the space of the weekend. But despite our reservations at first, which I want to apologise to Irene for (being the one who had organised things I think she was a bit worried when we all starting exclaiming “Where the fuck are we?!”) it was honestly an amazing weekend. We had a running joke of quoting Travel Man Richard Ayoade for the entire trip - “We’re here, but should we have come?”, which I think nicely summarises our worries about where we were going most of the time. But with all honesty it was a weekend of sights and first and mistakes, but the mistakes were definitely those made by me when I was drunk, and certainly not the weekend away. Job well done!
Just this week gone I went to Valparaiso on another weekend away with my friends Jess and Emma. Hopefully that trip will also be making an appearance on the blog soon. As ever I hope you enjoyed my drunken revelations and hearing about the messes we manage to get ourselves into as young adults, until next time!
It’s another storytime blogpost today! I finally made it out of busy Santiago to see what else Chile had to offer. What ensued can only be described as madness. As usual with my stories… it’s to be expected by now I guess. So we decided to go to La Serena; my flatmate had found a beach where you could go diving with dolphins and see penguins. What’s not to like?! Nearby was the Elqui Valley where you could go to a pisquero (where they make pisco - the typical drink of Chile) and get great views of the stars at night - it just kept getting better. So we booked an overnight bus on Thursday night, two nights in a hostel in La Serena and a return bus on the Sunday. We wouldn't even miss a class!
Because I was involved, I decided we should go get a last nice dinner and some drinks in Santiago before our bus at midnight. The bigger mistake was probably accepting another round of Pisco sours at about half 10 (it was two for one after all). Looking up about 40 minutes later and realising we still had to finish our drinks, pay the bill, get our bags from the flat and make our way to the bus station, we realised we had slightly fucked up. But only slightly of course. It appears that this blogpost is quickly turning into me having to thoroughly embarrass myself, my friends tell me that my “fight” with a street dog was apparently the funniest thing to happen after two very strong pisco sours. On the run back to the flat we were being followed by some very eager street dogs. The dog was 100% trying to bite at my feet and being 2 piscos drunk I just kinda panicked, thought rabies and in my attempt to run faster, fell over and rolled along the pavement. My assumptions of this feral dog were proved wrong as he kept on running past us as I fell over. Let’s be honest, I looked like a tit and my mates thought so too. But rabies free and safe we made it on our overnight bus.
The buses here are so incredibly luxurious! We had near on fully reclinable seats, an entire leg rest and footrest. We were living the dream! Until my absolute worst nightmare began. The man behind me started to snore. I don’t know what it is about snoring but it drives me crazy. I just didn't sleep at all. So after our 6 hour long bus journey, we arrived in La Serena, in the pitch black on very little or no sleep and we had to find our hostel. This was pretty stress free apart from my friends making some joke about rabies every time we passed a stray dog. It was clear I wasn’t going to live that down. After an hour or so of chilling at the hostel and watching netflix we asked about how to get to the penguin reserve. Oh, there’s only one bus a day, it leaves at 9 and is about a 20 minute walk away. We were hearing this information at ten past 8. I have never known 4 girls get ready in such little time I promise you - one of us even had a shower! And we headed out into a very gloomy morning all kitted out in flip flops ready for our day at the beach. As we were driving out of La Serena we realised we had made a mistake with clothes first and foremost. But increasingly we were beginning to worry about what sort of place we were going to.
It was a 2 hour journey and all we saw was clouds and dry deserts and mountains. Nothing even remotely sea-like or beachy. And when we got there, oh God, it was even less than a one horse town. A few hutches selling empanadas and a boat or two. We paid to go to the penguin reserve which was about a 40 minute journey out to sea on a dingy. It was at this moment that we realised Emma was terrified of boats and the sea and somehow we had to convince her to get on. We did but it was tough. Even though it was cloudy and we did wonder where the hell we were, it turned out way better than we had imagined. We went out on this boat into the ocean and there we saw penguins, dolphins and seals! Just absolutely stunning. We even got to walk around the reserve before heading back onto dry land to catch the only bus home. I’m not sure it is something I would recommend as one of the things you have to see in Chile, but it was absolutely amazing at the end. After wondering where on earth the bus was taking us, things turned out okay.
When we arrived back in our hostel it was a lot busier and everyone was beginning to talk about the night ahead. So we rushed to the shop bought some nasty red wine that comes in 2 litre bottles here (don’t judge our poor student bank accounts) and some pasta and decided it was time to make friends with our fellow hostel goers. On zero hours sleep and too much Red Bull, whatever happened next was never going to be good. Within the short space of about half an hour I had fallen down some stairs and sprained my ankle and also got hit in the face with a cup that was causing some serious blood flow from my eyebrow. I was taken downstairs and iced for a while. It’s always fun going out with new people who don’t know how much of a mess you are and getting to see the realisation dawn on their face (sorry Mum I never meant to be a mess). But, with proper dedication as always I got out of bed and went back and drank more wine and ended up making it to the club. I definitely wasn’t the biggest mess, these English (of course they were English) guys were trying to get through 24 beers each and one of them nearly fell onto the street below from the roof terrace. But this is a blogpost about me and my messy friends. The morning after was not so much fun. My face and ankle hated me, I had lost my glasses and the key to my padlock (my contact lenses were conveniently locked in my bag) and we were being told check out was 5 minutes ago. We had all come back from the nightclub separately for some reason so we were thoroughly entertained with stories for the next part of the journey - naming no names, one of us even woke up with a French man in her bed (now that’s a cameo, isn’t it). Well, it could have been worse. I managed to pick the lock on my bag and was finally able to see, which then meant I found my glasses a lot easier. And after showers, packing, a lot of hungover complaining and a few ibuprofens for me we were ready to head to the Valley!
The buses to the Valley were a lot easier to use than the solitary one to the penguin reserve, they went every 20 minutes and we were a little bit more certain of where we were going. The Valley doesn’t have much to offer besides the obvious, the walks you could do, the pisco tours and the stars, but believe me it is absolutely stunning. Being all a little bit worse for wear, when we got to the hostel and spotted the pool we decided that was us for the day. Sitting around a pool drinking beers with that glorious landscape was something else, high mountains and endless blue skies trap you into this little oasis of calm. It was just breathtaking. And as the sun started to set we realised we were in for a real treat. I don’t know so much about the science of it, but it seems to be because of the lack of night lighting on the ground and the fact that there is nothing for miles around, reducing pollution and the like, the stars are just amazing. Every time you looked up there were more stars and it just becomes impossible to believe that the sky could get any fuller. I would like to add in here, that one of my travel buddies, Emma, doesn’t believe in space… That’s all I’m going to say on the matter. Moving on…
We really had been mesmerised by our trip, in so many ways. It was exhausting, Jess in fact slept on every form of public transport we took, I was very jealous of this as I felt like I had grabbed about 6 hours across the space of the weekend. But despite our reservations at first, which I want to apologise to Irene for (being the one who had organised things I think she was a bit worried when we all starting exclaiming “Where the fuck are we?!”) it was honestly an amazing weekend. We had a running joke of quoting Travel Man Richard Ayoade for the entire trip - “We’re here, but should we have come?”, which I think nicely summarises our worries about where we were going most of the time. But with all honesty it was a weekend of sights and first and mistakes, but the mistakes were definitely those made by me when I was drunk, and certainly not the weekend away. Job well done!
Just this week gone I went to Valparaiso on another weekend away with my friends Jess and Emma. Hopefully that trip will also be making an appearance on the blog soon. As ever I hope you enjoyed my drunken revelations and hearing about the messes we manage to get ourselves into as young adults, until next time!
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