Day 58 - 01 Feb.2012 - La Herradura / Coquimbo

Today was to say good-bye to Javier and his family and to Santiago. We went further north along the Ruta 5 towards Coquimbo, a city just south of La Serena, a big beach resort. As we drove out of town, the countryside changed dramatically. It seems that all the green fields were located south of the city. Here in the north desert like vegetation took quickly over with some spectacular valleys to drive trough.
Often along the road people are trying to sell goods to the cars passing by. In one particular village they have developed an advertising technique in which they swing through the air a stick with some white stripes attached to it. It is a quite effective method of calling for attention but we have seen it only in that particular village. In XXX we stopped for lunch directly at the beach. In fact it looked like an open air church with a cross and benches. Te benches served us well.
We continued our way and the vegetation became drier with cactuses appearing. We arrived in Coquimbo and went to search for a nice hotel. The one suggested in the guide did not appeal to us too much and so we drove through the town. On our search we went up to see the cross of the III Millennium, a massive concrete structure in which a lift goes up to the horizontal bar where people must have a spectacular view over the nearby towns – we gave that a miss and went on to search for a place to stay.
The city of Coquimbo was too crowded and noisy and so we went a bit further south to La Herradura and found this fantastic apartment with view over the bay. We cooked some pasta for dinner and had a relaxed evening on our private terrace.