COQUIMBO (LA SERENA) CHILE
Today we are visiting the port city of Coquimbo and the nearby City of La Serena. The population is about 200,000 in each city. Some of you might remember the rescue of the 11 Chilean miners a few years back, this was in Coquimbo. When you sail into Coquimbo, you can’t mis the enormous Cross on top of the hill apparently it is 100m high x 40m wide. Today we decided to take a 2.5hr busride in the area to get an idea of the lay of the land. First we travelled to La Serena. La Serena is a university town. One of the main subjects studied at this university is Engineering and subjects related towards mining. There is a major Iron mine just north of the city owed by CAP mining. La serena has a beautiful beach area. Many visitors are coming down from Argentina (Mendoza) for their vacations. Many of the Condo buildings are bought up for investment purposes and rented out to holidayers by the day. There was still a lot of graffiti all over town from the protests against the government they had in October, also most of the traffic lights were missing the lights. Apparently, they don’t plan to fix these lights and clean up the graffiti till after the elections which are scheduled for March. After returning to Coquimbo we wandered around the market for a while. We also got into the local fish market, what was quite the sight. Fishing is a very major source of employment for this City. After getting back on the boat, we set sail by 5:30. We really notice, that with the 2hr time change and going further south, the days are getting considerable longer. Sunset is now close to 9:00 PM
Cheers
“South America” “Cruising” “Coquimbo”
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