My last day in Antofagasta, I meant to go to La Portada.
It’s a stone arch in the middle of the ocean about 30 minutes outside the city.
It would cost a fortune by taxi (I already asked about public transportation
and there is basically no information online), but I figured it might just be
worth it. Upon waking up, though, I found that there had been pretty bad rains
the night before and the power had gone out. That meant time to study some more
Spanish, uninterrupted, but it also meant that I wouldn’t be able to contact my
Couchsurfing host in La Serena. I tried to do some work while waiting for the
power to come back on (I was hopeful – and it even came on for about 5 minutes,
during which I was unable to do anything worthwhile) but I ended up waiting until
late afternoon with no progress. Since there are apparently no buses directly
to La Serena (most of them that stop there use it as a pit stop before going on
to Santiago), it was time to go to the bus terminal before I knew it.
I took a collective (holla @ me!) to the bus terminal, but
when I got there I was really confused. The lady at the counter told me to pay
on the bus, so I followed an employee to the bus. She had given me a seat
number but some other old couple came and claimed I was sitting in their seats.
I was promptly moved to an aisle seat (don’t get me started on why I don’t like
aisle seats), and the old lady sitting next to me turned out to be crazy – she
didn’t even know what city we were in. What?
I was nervous because I hadn’t paid – and when I did, I
wasn’t given a receipt. Luckily, there were no problems. Except that once we
arrived, those of us going to La Serena were dropped off at a random
intersection outside the city center. I had no clue at all where I was, or how
to get anywhere. Luckily, it was already 7:30 am, meaning there was a gas
station open across the street that I was able to ask. (On the other side,
there was a Chuck E. Cheese’s!). I walked to the Plaza de Armas (really empty)
and lamented the fact that nothing is open in South America before 9 am. It’s
intensely frustrating. Not to mention that I had no phone, no address for my
Couchsurf, and no information about a hostel should I need one. It was a great
morning, but for some reason I was more annoyed than worried. I think that
speaks a lot to the South American culture that I’ve absorbed over the last two
and a half months plus.
Luckily, right around 8:50, I found a café with wifi (few
and far between – most cafes don’t have wifi, and the one I went in to ask had
an employee that was extremely rude to me, ugh). I finished the travel research
on La Serena that I meant to do the day before (and would have had I had wifi),
got the address of my Couchsurf, and let my laptop charge (it had died from the
day without power before).
The Couchsurf is probably the worst conditions I’ve ever
lived in – in South America or otherwise. It’s a little out of the city
(accessible by collective), but the house is old and falling apart. He has a huge dog and two small ones, and a
horse. He’s a surfer and has a room specifically for growing weed that he sells
to his friends. LMAO. The room he has for Couchsurfers has a door that doesn’t
quite close, and two beds for three people for tonight, four when Dad gets
here. He’s going to have a blast.
I headed to the city in collective, which was miles cheaper
than the taxi I had to take the first time. I stopped by a travel agency, but
apparently, due to the rain, tours are not possible until maybe Wednesday or
Thursday. There’s not a whole lot to do in the city, so hopefully the weather
conditions clear up. Cities in northern Chile are unprepared like no other for
any kind of precipitation (hence the power outage from the night before and
this canceling of tours), so the timing of my arrival is basically the worst I
could have picked, ever.
Nevertheless, I walked to a museum on a Chilean president,
Gabriel Gonzalez Videla, which had a tiny bit of English that helped me get the
gist of what was going on. Apparently, La Serena developed closely with another
city, Coquimbo, which is the namesake of the region and just a couple miles
south. Just walking around the city, I found several public transportation
stops to Coquimbo and other surrounding towns.
I also walked by a little open market, a long strip of park,
and the beach. They don’t really have a beach for swimming here, but there is a
structure that looks like an abandoned lighthouse.
Since there wasn’t much else to do, I ate some dinner and
headed back. I thought the collective worked the same as a taxi but with more
than one passenger, but I was wrong. Apparently, they have little stops where
people wait for collectivos (or collectivos wait for people) that are
organized, at least to get from the city back to the suburbs. Oops.
At night, I was able to just chat with Cristian a little. He
spent 10 years in Tuscon, Arizona 10 years ago, so his English is really great.
He is also a sort of free spirit, who surfs and smokes and just opened a pizza
shop a couple months ago. His friends and dad came to just hang out at night,
and I chatted with them a little in the broken Spanish that I know.
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