North Trip! (Day 2 and 3!)

Here I am to tell you about day two and three! And part of four! And to supply you with a ridiculous amount of pictures! I was going to write this trip with one post for each day, but that would take me forever to get them all up.

Still in La Serena (the capitol city of Coquimbo. Coquimbo is Chile's fourth region) Breakfast that morning was at 8:30, so my room got up at 8:15. We walked into breakfast at 8:35 and I was so scared. Every single other person was there. So we sat down and crossed our fingers hoping they wouldn't say anything. And luckily they didn't.

After breakfast, we got ready and left at 10 to the Elqui dam!

Here it is!

 Jodie and I:

 Viven and I:

 Me!

Annabel (Germany):

A bunch of us girls!

Group picture!:

 After we had some time to walk over the dam, we went to eat some cactus!

Some people had this:

And some people, like me, had ice cream made of that!

The fruit is called copao (no. not KAPOW! like in comic books, but pronounced the same, with less enthusiasm).

*Flashback to my crime fighting days:

Abbey, I love you. How did we get to be so awesome anyways?*

Back to the cactus. The capao fruit grows on the type of wild cactus found exclusively in the Elqui valley area.

It's also apparently the fruit of love!

Eating cactus ice cream by the cacti!

The path to the dam.

The line of little shops:

And after a while enjoying our cactus, we were on the bus again.

The drive was along a path through the Elqui valley, which is full of pretty vineyards.

We stopped at the plaza of Elqui. They gave us a time to meet at the restaraunt and let us walk around.

With Jessica (Germany):

I thought that I could maybe do a pull-up.

Yes!

Nope, I was sadly mistaken.

A group of us went to a nearby artisenal market. One of the adults was with us. And when we left, the rest of the group had disappeared. No one was sure what restaurant they had meant, so we walked into three different ones asking if there was a group of 40 foreigners eating there. Eventually we found it. haha.

Since we were late, we sat at the table with all the adults from Rotary. But it was fun to talk with them.

Lily and Anika (Germany), me, Jodie, and Victor.

Jodie and I!:

Cazuela! Super delicious Chilean soup. Chicken, potatoes, zucchini, corn, all in this fantastic broth. So, so good.

After lunch, we were off to a museum. Gabriela Mistral is a famous Chilean poet who was the first woman in Latin America to win a Nobel prize in literature. We went to the school she went to. Inside, we couldn't take pictures... But here's a few from outside.

Jodie, clearly estatic to have me hugging her.

Kathrin and Alex (Germany) and Jodie and I:

We planned to go to another museum but it turned out it was closed. So they let us had free time and they bought us all ice cream.

We were all so tired and there wasn't really anything exciting to go look at, so we walked around for a bit and then sat in the plaza.

A few hours later it was dinner time!

Restaurant entrance:

Only one paying attention... yep...

After a stop back at the hotel we were off to go star watching! We went to an observatory far away from the La Serena.

Opening video:

Jessica and I:

The group:

Sadly, cameras can't really capture the stars... so I couldn't take any pictures. But it was such a peaceful time. They had a big fancy telescope and the guide pointed it to the moon, Jupiter, Mars, and a few other things. And we spent some time laying on the ground watching the stars. And we saw 3 shooting stars!

A late night of course but it was a good day!

On to day number three of the trip!

In the morning we headed off to see the "Cruz del Tercer Milenio" (Third Millennium Cross). It's actually bigger than the Christ statue in Brazil!

From the bottom!

Some flag pictures before we went up:

Jodie and I:

Jodie, Jessica, and I:

The church part in the base:

2 elevator rides later we were at the top!

Alex, Jodie, and I:

All the American girls!

All the Americans and our great tour guide, Alejandro:

Jessica and I:

Did I mention we had these name tags? For the first day or two, they enforced the keep-your-name tag-on-at-all-times-so-we-can-know-who-you-are rule.

Elevator selfies with Florian (German):

After the first elevator, we stopped to take pictures.

This is Maggie. She's from the US and lives in the Serena. She was with us for the day. I was sure I'd seen her before but could not figure out where I had met her. As I talked to her, I realized she's from Wisconsin and had gone to the big Grand Rapids Rotary conference in July. 

Some of the group:

Jessicaaa!:

After the cross, we were off for a boat ride!

Picture of the hillside: with the cross in it.

Jessica and I with the Chilean flag! It was super windy and hard to walk!

Most of us!

With Lilly and Grace!

The little island with sea lions!

Again, it was windy. haha.

Jessica and I:

Yay for flag pictures!

We tried doing the Titanic pose... but it was too windy and hard to stand. hahaha.

An old boat!

Yay Chile!

Right off the dock, they had a big feria (souvenir type stuff) and so we had some free time to look around and buy things. I bought some random bracelets and a few presents.

There were lots of these cool shaped bottles:

Then we went to lunch. We had empanadas for appetizers:

We had dinner a few hours later. I sat at a table with all Germans... and didn't understand a thing. haha. We played a ridiculous game of truth or dare (with only ridiculous dares made up by the opposite sex) And then we were off driving! We were in for an all-night drive. Our destination being Calama (in the Antofagasta region, 2nd). It was about a 18 hour drive...

The north of Chile is home to the Atacama desert, which is the driest in the world. So this is what I saw out the window a lot:

On the way:

With our Super 8 bars:

Jodie and I were both sound asleep and Jessica came to wake us up. haha. And we had some fun taking pictures: Including a lot more than these and lots more that are more embarrassing:

Happy pants :) :

Being a duck...

That night in the bus, we slept, stopped a few times for the bathroom, and watched The Conjuring. I finally got to finish it! I sat there and jumped and yelled with Jodie. And Terence and Nick (from Austrailia) sat there and laughed at us. hahaha. We got off the bus for a bathroom break soon after that scary movie was over (seriously, it's scary man.) And it was 11:30 or so at night and outside the bathroom there were a few stray dogs, like everywhere in Chile, and one of them was chewing on the skull of another dog. Canibal dog! That was pretty freaky. Anyways, it was a pretty long night. I didn't sleep that well. My ears hurt from the change in elevation.

But we made it! And we ate breakfast at a restaurant:

When we went to the mall the other day, Jodie bought a fig bar. She was so, so excited about it. I was uncertain, because the only time I really enjoy figs are in Fig Newtons. So we tried it, and it was soooo gross. During the trip, between meals and lots of adventures, we'd get hungry and not having any other food. So we'd say... "what about that fig bar? maybe it's just an aquired taste? I'll definitely be better the fifth time." And like that we went, taking little bites out of it and saying every time that it didn't even taste good. hahaha.

Maybe this time?

Nope, nope, nope. Still nope.

More desert:

In San Pedro de la Atacama we stopped at this old church:

Jodie:

All of us:

We were all so tired and gross without a shower. But we made it! San Pedro de la Atacama was by far my favorite city. Lots of fun adventures there. Oohh. So. The Atacama is the desert in the north. It's the driest desert in the world!

Lunch time:

We did lots more things that day and I'll get to them in the next post! This turned into a ridiculously long post... Hope you enjoy it!