La Serena

We are staying in a gorgeous B&B here, feels just like home! After getting our bearings and finding Lider, the Chillean version of Walmart (we get excited when we find normal foods), we were quite in love with Chile's second eldest city! We are on the coast but it's too cold to swim, so we hired bikes for the day and enjoyed the 12km of pathed bike way along the beach to the next town Coquimbo. It was only 1 week ago that the 8.3 magnitude earthquake hit Chile, and we discovered that Coquimbo was one of the worst affected towns! The roads and bikeways where completely destroyed, along with the beach side restaurants and nightclubs. We saw large fishing boats 50m inland on roads, and the fish market was a rubble mess! It was quite distressing to see, although the locals were in positive spirits and we enjoyed the sunshine and picnic lunch. Our bums sure were sore after the 24km round trip.