Today we went downtown again and found this really cool army base camp (an old Spanish fort), one of the few tourist attractions in la serena. There were some cool looking tanks, cannons, and monuments, but the best part was a gazebo from which we could see all of downtown la serena and all the way to the beach (as the army base is situated on a very large hill, the very outskirts of the Andes). A gorgeous view! We’ve been told that the core of the city is packed with churches on every block, and it was certainly evident from that elevation, and it was really cool to see the church steeples peaking up everywhere in amongst the city. The downtown core is completely void of any high rises, by the way, with the tallest buildings being about 5 stories high. We found a cafe and decided to have a coffee, and discovered that the cafe we picked is apparently a tourist hotspot. It was jam packed full of North Americans (all of them seniors pretty much), and throughout the day we saw a lot of large tour groups parading through the city as well. We were surprised, as we haven’t seen many tourists at all since we’ve arrived.
Cathy (Trevor’s Aunt) asked an interesting question about how expensive the food was. A typical dinner would usually be between 3,000 pesos (6$) for something like a burger, pizza or sandwich and as much as 7,500 ($15) for that fish, prawn, crab, oyster and cheese plate that we raved about before. One nice thing is that there is no sales tax and a customary tip for good service would only be 10%. For drinks it is usually around 1,000 pesos (2$) for a beer coke or our espresso’s (spelt expresso here). It is usually about 2,500 ($5) for a pisco sour.
All is going well and our trip has so far been a big adventure yet very relaxing! We’ve become regulars at a little cafe/bar across the street from our apartment, and go there to have tasty espresso on the beach every couple of days. Other than that we spend our time going downtown or to the mall/grocery store, enjoying Chilean wine, reading or playing cards on our patio, going out to dinner and getting a taste of la Serena’s “mariscos” (seafood), and going for super long walks along the beach. Two days ago we found a gigantic sea lion washed up on shore, which was kind of gross but really interesting!
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