La Serena

From Valparaíso, we continued along the Pacific coast to La Serena, a colonial city founded by the Spaniards, which had to assert itself against indigenous people, pirates, and earthquakes in the past.

Here, mainly Chileans vacation, as we hardly encountered any foreign tourists. A big highlight during our stay was Valentine's Day. The entire city was decorated, with flower arrangements and giant hearts set up at every corner for romantic photos, and everywhere flowers and gifts were being sold and bought.

From here, we actually wanted to go to one of the observatories in the beautiful Elqui Valley to stargaze, but unfortunately, this experience flopped completely. Instead of going to the booked observatory (the agency had already tried to sell us some Valentine's gimmick beforehand), we ended up in some small place 2 hours away from our observatory. There, a quirky guy gave us a superficial PowerPoint presentation with stolen slides in his living room, only to then show us planets and stars through a few hobby telescopes in his front yard (while the neighbors were comfortably grilling next door) that we could also see with the naked eye, all under the streetlight. The highlight was supposed to be astrophotography in front of an old garden wall (where, presumably, the amazing starry sky was photoshopped in later). The event was so bad that it was almost funny. When we complained, they tried to shift the blame onto us (claiming we had taken the wrong bus, although we were picked up directly from the hostel), but in the end, we got our money back. It's just a pity that we didn't make it to the observatory!

What was fantastic, however, was the boat tour to Isla Chanaral, where we FINALLY saw whales - something neither of us had been able to experience during all our travels.

And besides the fin whales (it was soooo great), we also saw dolphins, a few Humboldt penguins, and a huge colony of sea lions (>1000) living closely together on the rocks, raising their young. They made an enormous racket and noise! It was so much fun!