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Coquimbo is the port city where we docked today. It’s our last stop in Chile. We’ve no shore excursions planned for today. Instead we’ll head out on our own for a few markets in La Serena. It was a 30 minute cab ride to La Serena, a mostly Oceanside resort town. In the cab, we rode along the beach for quite a while. The big sandy beach had nobody on it. The water is pretty cold, we’re told, and it was weekday on the first day of Fall. The promenade along the beach was well used with people strolling, jogging and rollerblading. Every mile or so, the city had a complete work-out station with primitive elliptical-type equipment. Seems pretty progressive to me. The view out the other side of the can were hotels, condos, bars and restaurants. Later on we passed small amusement parks and go-cart tracks, like an American beach town.

Drove through the University of La Serena in the cab, with lots of students outside enjoying the sunshine in the university plaza. Was told in Puerto Montt, while primary education is free, the schools are often very underfunded, and private schools fill in the gaps for those that can afford it. Secondary public schools are often trade schools. University is not free, but nothing like at home price-wise.

We arrived at La Recova Market, along with numerous tour busses. It was a bit of a disappointment, too much souvenirs, not enough craftwork. We did sit down in the front plaza to have lunch, in my case, an empanada and real Coke. After a little of bit of walking around, we’d seen enough and found a cab to take us back to the ship.

Contrasts between rich and poor were very visible here. here majestic towers are surrounded by corrugated metal shacks in fist picture. In the second picture, this is the hilly point out from the harbor as seen from our ship.

I did want to try to see the Southern Cross constellation while in the Southern Hemisphere. Called Crux, it is akin to the North Star in the northern hemisphere. I was able to locate where it should be using my Starwalk app, but at 9PM it was still too light to see stars. An hour later, clouds had come in blocking my view. I’ll try again tomorrow. We’ve got two days at sea to reach Peru, where we disembark for a 3-day overland excursion to Cusco and Machu Picchu.