So it is a wonderfully sunny day here, and i woke up to a wonderful graduation so i have a feeling its going to be a GREAT day! Congrats to all my UNH Graduates, Adam, Pickle, SarRUH, Rambo!! I'm going to miss seeing your faces on UNH campus next year!
So here is Day 2 of my weekend trip last weekend!
We woke up in La Serena ready to go to this museum that was free on Sundays. Yes we saved 2 dollars by waiting until Sunday instead of going on Saturday. So we set off for the Archeological Museum, or *Museo Arqueologico*. Museums in Chile are pretty small because they don't normally have a lot of space. There was quite a bit of old stuff, the coolest I found was a massive head that came originally from Easter Island.
this is the massive head. this one specifically has been to Italy, France, and is now settled in this museum in La Serena.
After our museum, it was time to hop on a public bus and head to our next stop, Vicuña. This was where we were planning to sleep on our 2nd night. We knew we had our reservation for the observatory, but other than that we had no plan. We had an idea of where some hostals were from the guide books, and we started that way. We rang the door bell of the first hostal we saw and it turned out to be pretty awesome! 5 mil for each person, thats about 10 dollars each, and our room was private with our own bathroom. This whole no heat in the rooms though, this is getting to me. I think Chile should invest in some central heating. But anyways, we dropped off our stuff, rested for a few minutes and then made our way out to walk around the town.
Abby and I resting a little bit. Our pillows were almost non-existent as you can see.
This place was a small town, with the main center didn't even have stop lights. We stopped into a little hand made craft fair, which they call a *feria* here. They had a painted map on the wall, so it was easy to see where we were in relation to La Serena.
So here's the map. So over on the left you can see La Serena, and then there is us in Vicuña.
It was so great to be out here because the scenery is so different than where I live in Viña del Mar. It is amazing how different the country of Chile is. I am excited to see as much of it as I can!
This is what it looked like!! Lots of mountainy hills with towns settled in the bases.
We spent the majority of Sunday just wondering around Vicuña. We of course had to try the gelato which was ehhh ok, but not the best i've had in Chile.
We were super excited for that night because we had made reservations to go to an observatory that night. It was almost a full moon, so we didn't get a great clear view of the sky that you would normally get, but we got some great sights.
We started off by meeting at the office in town, and they took us to the observatory by van. About 15 minutes later we were at the top of a hill and we separated into English/Spanish tour. We decided to go with the English tour because we wanted to actually learn something, and we thought we would get more out of it in english, which i think we did.
We started out with a presentation to learn about the history of the universe and we learned how absolutely HUGE it is! amazing. I was really excited to get outside and look in the telescope! First we went up to the large one in the dome where we were able to see Saturn. Pretty cool, but super small. Next we moved outside, got a lecture on all of the stars and then we were able to look!! We saw things like the Southern Cross, from which you can always tell where south is. There is also a fake southern cross, and you would get VERY lost if you tried to follow that star. We also saw the constellation Leo!! wahhooo August birthdays!
Then, she let us take pictures of the moon. Very COOL!
almost full! the moonlight was so bright you practically didn't even need any lights to see where you were going!
Overall it was a pretty great experience. Sort of wish we could have had a clear sky with little moon so that we could see those bright stars that the north of Chile is known for, but it was still a great night!!
and that's it. CONGRATS AGAIN TO UNH GRADS!!
Chao!
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