Weekend of Fiestas Patrias: La Serena

The day of Fiestas Patrias (Thursday) was celebrated with the Chinese family who owns the restaurant. We went to the park and had a fatty asado (BBQ), basically eating meat for 4 hours straight. What a unique experience, celebrating a super-Chilean holiday with Chinese people. Funny thing is, none of us could communicate with each other with one language. The Chinese people spoke Hakka among each other; I only speak Mandarin; Richard (another EAP/UCSD student) speaks only Cantonese; and among Cui Xia, Richard, and me, we were the only ones who spoke Spanish. Therefore, there was five languages going on during the entire asado. I come from a family who speaks 3 different dialects, so I was very used to this.

But after Thursday, I had no other plans. I was going to go to a rodeo with my boss, but he canceled on us, so it left me with an entire weekend free and bored. I had to do something or else I was going to die of boredom. So, I planned a trip to La Serena in a matter of 3 hours! I thought of a few people who might be interested in going (Christy and Richard, after I convinced him to drop his literature class in order to come haha), called them, went to buy bus tickets (which was a miracle I even found any since during the Fiestas Patrias holidays all of Chile is traveling somewhere), looked around for hostels (and magically found one since every other hostel I called was full full full), and finalized the plans.

Mind you, La Serena is not close to Santiago. It's about a 6 hour bus ride away, the same distance from LA to Norcal.

We left at 8 p.m. and we arrived at 2 in the morning. We slept in the hostel and the next day, hopped on another bus 2 hours away to go to Valle Elqui.

The trip seemed to be characterized by bus rides. But at least the views were pretty.

We arrived in Pisco Elqui, a small town renamed with "pisco" in its name to popularize the pisco vineyard there. Pisco is a type of alcohol made from a special type of grape. The trip to Pisco Elqui was a bust, in my opinion. The pisco vineyard started charging $4,000 mil (~US$8) for its tours...when it used to be free including a free pisco tasting afterwards. Just for reference, a bottle of pisco that was sold at the vineyard was cheaper than the tour. Total ripoff. I don't even like pisco that much.

We just made our own 5-minute tour. And on our way to Pisco Elqui, we met 3 French people who were on the same route as us, so we quickly became friends with JC, Stefanie, et Loudeau (sp??). I tried to throw in a few phrases en français the entire time but it really hurt my brain! I only speak survival French. :( Sadly, we didn't get a picture with them even though we spent the entire day together. They were so helpful as they took care of the trip planning, getting tickets, getting buses, getting taxis, the bargaining, and basically did everything for us. And over dinner at the restaurant Yo y Soledad in Vicuña, we got to talk French and American politics and culture over goat meat, salad, and tea (well, that's what I ate at least. Goat=yummers). And for dessert, I ate pisco sour ice cream. Yummm.

More views of Pisco Elqui. Tiny, tiny town with not much to do.

Then, 1 hour away from Pisco Elqui is the city of Vicuña, which hosts a really great observatory called Mamalluca. It was such a pain to get the tour reservation since we were all last-minute planners, but the Frenchies came to the rescue and talked with the tour office and got them to get a tour for us 6. To get the best views of stars, it needs to be super dark, so this was the only foto I managed to take that didn't come out all black. It was pretty much pitch black up on the hill, and I don't believe I've ever seen so many stars in my life. I even saw cloudy-looking things in the sky, which I learned were galaxies that I was looking at! We used a high-powered telescope and I saw Jupiter and its moons through the telescope and some other stars (whose significance I do not remember). The Mamalluca observatory is significant because of its prime location in South America. The views weren't possible in any other part of the world, which made me feel very privileged to be there experiencing the sky, as it really looks without light pollution, or pollution in general. Cough cough, Santiago. The tour ended at midnight and we took a very expensive taxi ride back (~$13/person). I tried to sweet talk the taxi driver, but it didn't work in lowering the price. Oh well. We said goodbye to the Frenchies and regretted not getting their phone numbers or Facebook or something. :(

The next day, we explored La Serena. According to Lonely Planet, I had thought this was a more exciting town, but it actually isn't...even the residents I talked to said one has to leave La Serena for fun. Such deception, Lonely Planet! I'm learning to not trust what they say anymore...

Anyway, La Serena has a beach. A beach that one can't swim in because of dangerous currents. Not very exciting. But there was a lighthouse. Sigh. I miss Lighthouse the church.

Then we ate at Daniela II, a seafood restaurant that has an English menu full of typos. Good thing I read Spanish, haha. I ate merluza, which is Chilean sea bass. I didn't know it was gonna be fried, so I ate around the fry batter. Above is pebre (think Chilean salsa). Yum.

Richard left La Serena for Santiago early, so it was just me and Christy. We explored La Serena and went to Mercado Recova. It was very touristy, I saw so many gringos, and the products sold were all about the same. Meh.

Then we went to the Japanese garden. Shout out to Moon Choi!

Can you figure out what the Japanese romanization is saying, Moo Moo?

The Japanese garden was tiny. Walking around the whole of it was probably less than a mile. The most entertaining was probably the ducks. The green ones, the baby ones. Yeah. Ducks.

Christy and I trying to look ecstatic to be in La Serena.

Thankfully, we talked to some locals to ask them what else there is to do in this fome (boring) town. We had heard on the streets of this Pampilla thing. People shouted it all over, it was written on buses, people waved us own and asked us if we were going to Pampilla. We asked locals, and found it was was this huuuuge and very famous fonda (Fiestas Patrias city-wide county fair-esque thing/party that takes place in cities all over Chile) that took place in Coquimbo, the next city over. We hopped on the next bus to get us out of La Serena!

Getting off the bus, this was what I saw. A huuuuuge gathering of people. Cars packed, major traffic, people all lined up to enter. Christy and I looked at each other and realized that this was where the party was at. Everything about this trip suddenly was worth it.

It was very Latin-American. It looked like it was a scene straight out of Tijuana. I had gone to another fonda earlier this week, but it was in a bougie part of Santiago (Las Condes) where the entrance fee was $8 (geez...) and everyone was upper class, and it was super clean and Illapu (a super famous Chilean band) played. This fonda, Pampilla, was much more down-to-earth and people came from all classes. It was lined with vendors selling pots, clothing, shoes, food, housewares, like a swap meet! Everyone squeezed against each other as there was barely any walking space. And the entrance fee was only $1. I again, was the only Asian in probably the entire fonda of thousands of people, so I got a lot of annoying comments throughout the evening. At the end of the night, I put my hood on to obscure my face so I wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb.

And I rode a horse for the first time! I see now why one needs balance. I felt like I was going to fall off. The huaso (Chilean cowboy) was very helpful and kind. And I think I committed treason by wearing my Argentina jacket during Chile's Fiestas Patrias. Oops.

And this random man was "performing" to try to get money. I started laughing when I saw him because he was so unimpressive. It looked like he took whatever he could find on the floor and just taped it on himself and danced around to get money. I don't think I'm too off in my guess. He wore a Chilean flag banner as a sash (probably hanging from the ceiling), grabbed some weeds and stuffed it in his shoe, and tied plastic bags to make a skirt.

And bathrooms were port-a-potties. 2 for $500?! What a deal! But after going 3 times, Christy and I realized that this port-a-potty deal was just getting too expensive...And we certainly didn't want to opt for the "VIP" baños and pay more.

Mmm, and fatty food like churros were sold.

This is the man behind the churro magic. Squeezing churro dough into a vat of boiling oil. He saw me and Christy and asked us where we were from. Christy told him the US. He believed Christy, but he didn't believe me. Quelle surprise. :(

I felt so patriotic after the singing of the Chilean national anthem followed by fireworks. This celebrating definitely beats out any 4th of July celebration. Chileans know how to party all week long.

And to close off the night, Mexican singer Pedro Fernandez performed! I didn't know who he was, but thankfully Christy knew him. Chileans went crazy for him. He was a really good performer, even if I don't like mariachi music. He played for more than 2 hours. I don't know where he got his energy, but my back was hurting like mad by 1.5 hours.

Just to get an idea of how huge the crowd was. Huuuuuge. And the last foto is a picture of a girl playing with her glowstick, and me playing with the light function on my camera. Yay. :) Okay, goodnight. This was a super long post to write!