Posted by Lisa on January 8th, 2006 — Posted in Travel
Steve left yesterday for a meeting in DC. He’ll be gone for a week. Today, I decided to have a “me” day. It started off getting up at 645 to feed the dogs (I’m dog sitting for a week), then me and the pups went back to bed for a while 🙂 After getting up to a beautiful warm sunny clear sky I ventured to Totoralillo beach. It’s about 18 miles from La Serena. And how do I know exactly? Because some of the people I went with biked there. I opted to be one of the sane and drove. Totoralillo is in a cove and boasts beautiful white sand beaches and crystal blue water. It also has a bunch of tiki huts on it and a restaurant/bar. It was like being in the Caribbean but for one thing. The water was FREEZING!!! Actually it wasn’t so bad, I would compare it to Maine. We hung out there for 4 hours then went to the restaurant for some drinks and came home. WE had a total you know you’re a gringo when moment though. We got to the beach at noon and it was decently full. When we left at 430 it was starting to get packed. Apparently that’s when all the chileans come to the beach probably because
the sun doesn’t set until about 9. Once I got home me and the pups needed some bonding and went for a nice hike. After that I cleaned the kitchen (not so fun) but Leonor is coming tomorrow and I don’t want her to think I’m really messy, had a light dinner and then some friends came over and we watched a movie. They just left, and now I’m hoping to hear from Steve soon. We have the video camera set up so we can talk on IChat and see each other (he has a camera on his laptop). Fancy! So in total it was a wonderful day, it would have been perfect if Steve was here. Now back to the real world, I have homework to do…
(Sorry the pics aren’t that good, but I’m sure I’ll be going back and getting many more).
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Posted by Lisa on December 16th, 2005 — Posted in Travel
Steve has been working very long hours lately, so today, he decided to take most of the day off. To celebrate we decided to take a little trip to Vicuña, which is about 60 km away from La Serena. Vicuña was once home to Nobel Prize poetess Gabriela Mistral and is located in the Elqui Valley. It boasts a wonderful bug museum “Museo Entomologico e Historia Natural” which is home to a very impressive, albeit scary private collection of insects from around the world. It only costs 600 pesos to enter, and will now haunt my nightmares for a very long time. I have decided after visiting said museum, that I will never visit Thailand (very nasty bugs found here!!!). Vicuña also has a beautiful Plaza de Armas with artesian shops surrounding it. We went to lunch at Restaurant Halley, which according to my travel book, it’s house specialty is Cabrito- grilled kid goat. No, we did not have that. I had a yummy churrasco completo sandwich- which is basically a steak sandwich with tomato, avocado, onion and mayo, and Steve has Pastel de Choclo. When we got home, Steve went to a meeting, and then we took the puppy to the beach to run around. Poor thing, gets car sick, and drools incessantly. Steve suggested we start driving her around more on short little trips, so she can get used to the car. On the beach, we did find tons of jelly fish. I posted a picture of a big one we saw. Makes me not want to swim!! Leyna did seem to love the beach though. I took her for a little run and she did great. Tomorrow we plan on taking her hiking. We had a beautiful sunset tonight with a great green flash. The perfect way to end a great day. Tonight we went to a party and hung out with friends. It’s now a little after 12, and Steve is at work. It’s just me and the dog.
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Posted by Lisa on November 26th, 2005 — Posted in Travel
Despite Steve’s busy schedule, he finally relented to my months of nagging (“I want to go see the penguins”), and we went to the Humboldt Penguin Reserve today. We went with some friends and had a wonderful time. Our guide, Jorge, picked us up at the recinto at 8 am, and we drove for 2 hours to the reserve. On the way we drove through the desert and Jorge taught us how to survive for 2 months in the desert. We ate some cactus- bland but bitter, and learned to squuze water from plants. Once we got to the park, we boarded a small fishing boat, it held about 14 of us, and made our way to the islands. At the first island we saw sea lions, beautiful birds, and yes, PENGUINS!!!!! They were so cute and little. At the second island, we were able to disembark, and hike around the island for an hour. We then headed back to land to the town of Choros, for a lunch of fresh fish, and a shellfish salad. Choros is a producer of aciete de olivia, which I bought at a little roadside stand. At the stand, there was a cute kitten watching over the goods. I even was able to converse with the woman selling the olive oil, which is a good feeling.
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Posted by Lisa on October 24th, 2005 — Posted in Travel
Yesterday Steve and I along with our friends Joanna and Rob, went on search of the flowering desert. In my head I pictured fields of flowers in the middle of the desert. We didn’t find that, but we had a fun time trying. We drove up north for a few hours at first following the coast, and then headed inland. After a while, we took this dirt road back out to the sea, through a Chilean National Park. The only misfortune we had on our 10 hour drive, was that a rock got kicked up into our windshield and cracked it. Oh well, easy to fix. Anyways, more about our drive. On the way up I saw Chilean road kill, mainly cows. I thought it was pretty funny and wanted to take a picture, but it was deemed too gruesome. The desert was beautiful. It had splashes of green with some occasional flowers- mainly yellow, purple, periwinkle and white flowers. While we were driving through the park we saw at least 12 dust devils, which I had never seen before. I had the bright idea that I should stand in one and get a picture, but I think Steve thought I was crazy, and we decided that I would probably get too dirty, maybe next time 🙂 (that would have been a great picture though). After driving through the national park we ended up in this small little fishing village, where I found a cool sea urchin shell- purple with purple spikes, nestled in the rocks on the beach. We then drove south along the coast and ended up back home. We had a wonderful time, and Steve and I are thinking about going up north again in the next couple of weeks in search for my fields of flowers.
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Posted by Lisa on October 20th, 2005 — Posted in Travel
Today, four of us went out to lunch in Caleta Los Hornos. Some of you may recall a previous posting on this quaint fishing village which is about a half hour drive north of La Serena. It boasts a wonderful restaurant that sits on the water with outdoor seating offering a beautiful view, from roosters, goats, boats and water. The village is nestled on a rocky cove, and has the most blue pristine water I’ve seen, well at-least here in Chile. Unfortunately, unlike the caribbean, the beach is pure rocks. Not nice to lay on, but fun to walk along. As with most of Chile, the roads are unkept dirt roads. Thankfully we were in Joanna’s high clearance SUV, because the roads are filled with ruts and rocks. On the way back to La Serena, there was a small house on the side of the road, that had the below skins drying on the line. The owners had goats, donkeys, dogs and chickens running around their yard. As you can imagine, a very stinky yard!!!
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Posted by Lisa on October 20th, 2005 — Posted in Travel
Yesterday, Joanna and I went out to lunch to the neighboring town of Caleta San Pedro. Apparently, it’s a town that has mostly restaurants run by women. Basically, there’s a town square with a long building running the length of the square. This building has multiple small window restaurants with in it. We both got empanadas, mine was with scallops and Joanna’s was with shrimp. The weird thing was that the scallops had a orange leg type thing coming off of them. Very weird. Apparently in the US we cut them off before selling. ONe of my Aussie friends said that it’s the best part. To be honest after seeing the orange I got kinda grossed out and pulled them out and just ate the cheese. I wasn’t sure what the orange part was. I imagined it being some type of foot or leg that pops out of the shell to help it move. Any ideas anyone what it really is. I should’ve taken a picture! After lunch we drove around a little bit and went to the beach. The beach here was nice. It had dunes and good waves. You were able to really hear the ocean here. We found this little shrine in the dunes. You see these shrines all over Chile where people have died. Apparently someone had drowned. The nice thing is that family or community members keep the shrines decorated. THere is always fresh flowers at the shrines I see. Someone told me that the shrines are for the persons spirit walking the earth. Steve did say that if I was to die, he would make me the best and biggest shrine ever. Now that’s true love!!
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Posted by Lisa on September 26th, 2005 — Posted in Travel
Being the typical brainiac that I am, I of course forgot to bring my cord to connect the camera to the computer. Luckily, in Nags Head, Al was smart enough to bring his, but unfortunately my parents cord doesn’t fit, so I haven’t been able to post. I’ve been having a wonderful time at home, and can’t wait to share with you all my stories and pics, but that will have to wait until I return to Chile. I’m sure you are all going into withdrawl, so I borrowed my parents camera so I can FINALLY post. My friends Cara and Joel and Joel’s younger brother Tim, came home for the weekend to hang out. We had a great time while they were here. On Saturday, we went to the Big E which is a big fair in Massachusettes (I have pics to share on my camera…), and on Sunday we particiapated in the local lupus walk, which I did bring my parents camera to. The four of us were a team “Lobsters for Lupus”, we wore our cool lobster hats we purchased at the fair (story about hats to come), and had a fun walk. I even think we may have been on TV, since the camera people followed us for a little while. We met our friend, Rocky the Rock Cat, who seemed to have the hots for Cara! I’m not only cool I may be famous too!!!
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Posted by Lisa on September 15th, 2005 — Posted in Travel
Yesterday was the beginning of hurricane Ophelia. It was windy and rainy. Not exactly a good beach day. We were able to take walks, go swimming, and go in the hot tub. So all was not lost. We did have to prepare the house for the upcoming storm, which means, bring in all the furniture, and clean up outside. You would be shocked at the amount of crap people leave at the beach house. Tons of old toys and such.
So you may ask, what do 9 people stuck inside for their vacation do? Well some of us read and relax. Mainly Jay, Lauren and I.
Some of us do puzzles. Mainly Cara, Jerry, Joel. Al and I helped some. This puzzle was a pain in the butt. We found it here, and of course as we do it, we found that 2 pieces were missing. But all was well, they were able to finish it anyways.
When the boys went shopping to prepare for the hurricane, they came back with some fun games. So we play Jenga, and they got yahtzee, which most of you know is one of my favorite!! They also got ping pong paddles, so Jerry made a net out of tinfoil for the table so we could play.
We alsao get to eat tons of yummy food, of course. Joel made his awesome corn dip yesterday, and Jay made our dinner. Her always requested, awesome lasagna. She also made us yummy brownies!
And finally, as always we have our fun drinking games to last into the wee hours of the night (morning)
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