La Serena, Chile.

After getting back to Santiago for just a few short hours - just enough to repack and get in a quick nap - I was back on public transportation to go to the bus terminal to go to La Serena, a beach town six hours north of the capital. After five days of organized tourism, my girlfriends and I were looking to just relax and not worry about having an agenda, which is exactly what we did. A lot of sitting around was done in our hostel, which we had all to ourselves, so we indulged in the fact that we could take over the kitchen. Since most of us lived with host families, we have realized that cooking for ourselves back home is something we take for granted, so any chance to use the kitchen is now well appreciated.

Yes, this is actually all the groceries on our first night - or at least all that I could fit in the frame of this photo

Celebrating our friend Andrea's 22nd birthday

With a Rapa Nui statue at the Archaeological Museum in La Serena

The beach of La Serena itself was actually a little disappointing and not too spectacular, but it could've been because the weather wasn't too hot then - literally. It was gray and overcast by the time we managed to get ourselves out to the beach. We had a huge change of scenery when we took a day trip out to Elqui Valley, though, home of the famous pisco liquor. We visited the Mistral Pisco distillery, taking a short tour of the grounds and later sitting down in the distillery restaurant to enjoy some pisco drinks. Unfortunately, this is when I succumbed to a case of heat stroke, coming close to passing out, and ultimately having to be driven around the corner by the generous restaurant staff to a walk in clinic. I didn't think it was that serious, but apparently my "oxygen levels were below normal" so I had to even be hooked up to an oxygen tank! Not exactly anyone's ideal visit to a pisco distillery. Never would've thought that I would be able to avoid heatstroke in the desert and get it the day after on the coast, haha! By the time we were on our way home, I was ready to be back in my own bed with clean clothes, but there were no regrets about the past ten days. It'd just been incredibly exhausting, that's all.

Not the beach I was imagining before I arrived in La Serena, but the calmness and tranquility fit in with the atmosphere and mindset we arrived in the town with

Before heading into the distillery

Grapes! Uvas! Pu tao! Po do!

Pretty much the last good shot of me before I became an unofficial invalid