I went with my whole IFSA-Butler group PLUS the 7 intermediate students (who we've never met before... awkward... and who take classes only with each other, starting at 8am every day, at another university)... so there were like 40 gringos in all, plus 3 adults... and everything was paid for (except food) and planned out for us. yessssss
The trip up was about 6 hours on Thursday morning -- pretty uneventful. We got there, decided who was in which cabin (6 ppl each) and bought groceries accordingly (for a few dinners and sack lunches) ... We had pasta (no surprise there) the first night and delicious chicken stir fry of sorts the second night .... ended up with a lot of left-overs, but there ya go. It was nice to be able to pick our meals and cook for ourselves, (more or less) though... I really miss that.
So, Friday we had until like 5 to ourselves, so we saw about all there was to see in La Serena. That's right -- it only took 6 hours. Seeing as it was really cloudy in this beach town, we went into town... It was a cute town, but really not much different than Viña... though it is the 2nd oldest city in Chile, so we saw some historical stuff, a Japanese garden, (???) and some SUPER ghetto museums.. like 11th grade science fair type stuff. Sweet.
Friday night, we went to the Mamalluca Observatory .... it was SOOOOO incredible and so ridiculously worth it. It was 2 hours away (again, nothing at all in La Serena) and we just saw SOOO many stars. I saw 8 shooting stars (I'd never seen one before) and Saturn, and galaxies, and the Milky Way. So freaking cool.
Saturday, we drove 1 or 2 hours to go to this all solar-powered restaurant-- delicous solar food, but kinda a bummer that we wasted so much gas to get there.... but....
On the way back, we went to a Pisco factory (Pisco is a grape-derived liquor that's like the Chilean version of tequilla) -- fun and included free samples.
Thennnn we went to this so-not-worth-it museum of Gabriel ... someone... she was a
Nobel Prize winning author (that like 2 ppl had heard of)... the museum was almost as impressive as she was, and included the Christmas stockings of her and her secret lesbian lover.
Sunday was the 21st birthday of one of the girls in the program (who was on the trip) so we had a party for her...
which made the bus ride back on Sunday a little more fun, as everyone was either tired, hung over, or still drunk. Additionally, the program people some how decided it was a great idea to go to this national park (Fray Jorge) on the way back to go for a little hike. So, we left at 9am and went about 1 or 1.5 hours in the right direction, got off our big charter bus, and got into 2 smaller buses because the way to the park was very "complicado"... sooo it took 2 hours to get up to the park, and along the way, a girl on my bus threw up "due to motion sickness..." yeah. So that was pleasant. So the hike was about 40 mins, (so incredibly not worth it) we had our picnic lunch, made the 2 hour journey back down the mountain (without an encore, thank goodness) and got back to Viña at about 8pm (11 hours after we left!!)
It was all in all a really fun trip, because I haven't really seen/spent time with a bunch of people in my group since orientation or the very beginning of school, so it was cool to all be (force to be) together again.. plus there were the 7 new people, so all in all, a very fun weekend!
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