Thursday, 15 March:  When I wrote up Santiago yesterday, I thought we were leaving Chile –  but no, here we are in the Coquimbo region, approximately 295 miles north of Santiago.

With a population of roughly 160,000, La Serena was discovered in 1544 and is located between the Atacama Desert and the country’s fertile central valley, a journey of approximately 30 minutes from the port.

We were given a few hours to explore the central Plaza de Armas, however that didn’t take very long.  There were the usual buildings, cathedral, library, small museum and some other public buildings surrounding a park.  We managed to find the market but there were few souvenirs and it took us a while to find a small keepsake.

Back to the park and sat around until the bus arrived to take us back to the port.  Only a few photos as we didn’t find much of interest there.  Not particularly set up for tourists, in our opinion.