The scenic route

Today we decided to head inlands to check out the Chilean countryside and what we had been told was some cool rough nature. We left Los Vilos and drove a couple of hours east until we hit the little city Illapel where we had a slightly chaotic lunch; The waitress was really nice but didn't understand a word of english and even though we tried our best to speak from our dictionaries we probably scared her a little bit.

We continued north and as we drove through the mountains we were treated to amazing sceneries, almost moon like with lots of cacti and the occasional goat and donkey. It's crazy that some people actually live in this brutal environment, though not very many.

After a few more hours of driving through desert like mountain terrain we reached wine country. We didn't stop for samples, instead we headed back out towards the coast.

After a long but very nice day in the car we reached the coastal city Coquimbo, just south of La Serena. We found a room in what used to be the old French Consulate, now Hostal National.

Coquimbo didn't have much to offer in restaurant selection and we made what we thought was the least bad choice. We stuffed ourselves with something that made the Punta Arena junk food seem like Micheline quality and then we had coffee and tea in a friendly Brittish style cafe.

As we came back to the hostel the area blacked out and we had cozy candles in our room. The blackout only lasted 10minutes though and it was a little bit of a disappointment to be able to flick the switch again.

The picture is from Illapel where Ania has just gotten hold of quite a big water melon that we later treated ourselves to on the side of the road.