beach explorations, whales and...??

Time for a bit of beach town vibes and whale watching. I'm always up for checking out new beaches, so I was excited to see what Caldera and La Serena had to offer. The first is a very small city with a very laid back, friendly vibe. The second was much bigger with a go-go, busy vibe, but most importantly it was where we would be booking trips to hopefully see whales, penguins, sea lions, and dolphins. And of course, we're always on the lookout out for other fauna and cool cacti

We stayed in a pretty, courtyard style hotel, the Montecarlo, in Caldera and spent day one at the nearby beach, Bahia Inglesa which was OK. We did meet a cool couple though, who were selling drinks on the beach. When we first saw them, they weren't actively hawking their wares, but they were both walking around with coolers and not sitting down anywhere. I finally montioned to the guy to come over and I asked if he was selling anything. He said they were selling drinks, but since there were a couple of police officers walking around the beach, doing some PR and trying to be all friendly and shit, he didn't want to be too obvious and were waiting until they cleared out. The not being too obvious part struck Gi and I as a bit funny since he was tall, with a unique rocker/pirate look, and she had a cool rocker/alternative look, both mostly head to toe in black. He even had black latex gloves, a professional server he was. They definitely stood out. Anyway, the cops eventually moved on and I got my drink. They were walking around the area selling drinks for a while and once when they passed by, I had some psytrance playing on my Bluetooth speaker and the woman said, "buena musica". Well, that's our clue to chat them up for possible pystrance events or parties somewhere! My guess was right and buddy soon had my phone and connected me to a friend of his in Santiago who's plugged into the scene.  I spent most of day two wandering around and chilling at a coffee shop while Gi went on a tour of the surrounding area to see some fossils, interesting rock formations and freaky landscape that was once, long ago, underwater. We got a few supplies, did some laundry, and then it was time to move on to La Serena.

The beach there was huge - a few kilometres of fine, light sand and very slow decline into the water. Unfortunately, the city is built a certain way that the centre and anywhere remotely affordable to stay is 2-3 kilometres away - our accommodations, Hotel Boutique Suri, seemed like it wanted to be kind of swanky but mostly missed the mark, was a so-so interesting 40-minute walk away. We did the hike there but took a taxi back which was more interesting than your average ride due to the funky disco lights he had going on inside the taxi.

At the beach, you could walk 50 metres in and only be up to your waist. Walking along the beach, close to the water, we had to walk carefully to avoid stepping on weird, diaphanous, jelly-like things. They kind of looked like jellyfish but without the tentacles. Apprensive but curious we approached one of them, ever vigilant for the slightest movement, and gently poked it. No hidden tentacles lashed out, it didn't move at all and if this thing was once alive it looked pretty dead now. I just used the Google lens feature and apparently, it's something called mesoglea, the "jelly" in jellyfish. It's the last part to decompose after it dies, usually after being torn aprt by fish, turtles or rough water. Strange that in all my travels I had never seen this, or perhaps I have but the memory remains hidden, temporarily (hopefully), within the deep recesses of my mind. We enjoyed the sunset there one evening and decided the city was OK but not worth that much time.

Time to hit the ocean and see what we can see! We booked a whale watching tour from La Serena for one day but decided to hold off on the penguin tour because we heard and read that what had once been a large penguin colony at the Humboldt Penguin National Reserve had dwindled significantly to just a couple of dozen due to a mix of natural and not so natural (human caused) environmental factors, and even that small amount were difficult to see because they had moved locations to protect their young and their eggs from birds and other predators.

But the whales are doing fine and we sighted over a dozen Fin whales during our couple of hours on the water. Unfortunately, we didn't see any Blue or Humpback whales, and no dolphins deemed us worthy to show themselves, but sea lions were there by the hundreds, and boy could you hear them!

Small town vibes and the stars are next 🌌Read more