March 28th Punto de Choros

The destination today was Punto de Choros, a 'Chile Highlight'....with supposedly beautiful white sandy beaches and islands that can be visited on a boat tour. The journey there again led through the familiar 'Nothingness'. However, we saw many herds of donkeys along the way, which live there. But they are probably the only animals that can survive there. The road to Punta de Choros was unpaved and quite bumpy. When we finally arrived at the coast, our enthusiasm was somewhat subdued. Wolfgang said he had never seen such terrible beaches....trash was everywhere and the villages were just a collection of run-down shabby houses. You won't find paved roads here. Occasionally, you see dead animals and you have to be careful not to accidentally run over one of the many dogs lying on the road.

We had rented a small cottage here (for a lot of money). As usual, the reality did not match the pictures on the internet at all. We had planned to stay here for 2 days!

We hardly slept at all during the night. While Wolfgang reduced the number of mosquitoes with his baseball cap, I kept an eye on the ant trail, which was taking a threatening course towards our bed, and considered possible attempts at diversion. The previous sweeping up of the running ants had not had any visible success in terms of the number of these trails. And the many ant corpses that were already found in the corners before we moved in did not give rise to any optimism. And all for a mere $140 US per night without breakfast. In short, we didn't like the whole hotel!

The next day, we packed our things again on impulse. Our hostess agreed and luckily didn't give us any problems.

Before continuing our journey, we of course took the boat trip to Isla Damas, which was the main reason for this stop. The boat trip was nice, but there were also a few points of criticism. You pay for the boat trip to the islands, but you are forced to pay about €10 to CONAF to get to Isla de Damas. You have no choice but to skip this part. On the island itself, there is actually nothing to see except for a few seagulls. Once you have walked your (marked) path in about 40 minutes, you have to wait for your boat. We were able to take some nice photos of the islands, but it wasn't that spectacular....a handful of dolphins and sea lions, some pelicans, cormorants, a few penguins, and a lot of seagulls. For those planning a similar excursion, I can only recommend staying in La Serena and driving to Punto de Choros in the morning. Most tour operators only go out if they have enough tourists for their boat. If you want to play it safe, book with 'Willy', who is slightly more expensive but will definitely go out even if the boat is not full. In any case, we enjoyed the tour with him.