Day 14: 23 June 2002 - "Everybody's a winner. It's just like Chuck E. Cheese's."
We arrived at La Serena between one and two in the morning. I could hear the ocean, but I couldn't see it. We took a taxi to where we were staying, a place with vacation cabins (which were not very much in demand during the winter!) where the family always stays in La Serena. To get in, you had to go up the stairs, onto the deck (which was on stilts above the ground) and in through the second floor. Pato remarked that he hoped we didn't have an earthquake that knocked the deck down. We dropped our stuff off, then went back to the taxi, which was waiting for us.
Serena and its twin city, Coquimbo, are popular for their beaches, but they're also popular in the winter for the casino. So around 2am, we went to the casino. It was quite full for being the off-season, but there was room for little tiny us.
Pato had warned me to bring ID, because I look so young and might not otherwise be allowed to enter. But I was never asked for ID. Clearly my cold, steely gaze as I entered the casino told them that I was not someone to be bothered with ID checks. I was a winner and I was here to play.
Yeah, or something like that. Over the two and a half hours I played, I spent a total of $9,000 between the slot machines and the roulette table, but I won $29,000, leaving me with a tidy $20,000 profit. Sigh. It is very distracting and saddening that the Chileans use the $ sign for pesos. US$20,000 would be a lot more satisfying than about US$30, but I was still very happy to be a winner and gloated to Pato about it all evening long.
We went back to the cabin and went to sleep. Sometime during the night, there were some tremors, just as predicted by Pato. It was nothing serious enough to knock down the deck or to even wake us up, but it was still funny that he'd called it.
When I woke up in the morning, I had a sore throat to go with my earache. Yuck. A cold. I was to suffer from it for several days hence. Or thence. If "thence" isn't a word, it should be.
We went to the beach, touched the Pacific Ocean, and walked down the way to the faro or lighthouse, which is the most famous one in Chile. After taking lots of pictures, we took a taxi downtown to the market area. They had a lot of crafty-type things for sale so I was able to pick up some souvenirs and see a lot of Chilean crafts. We went to lunch at another cafeteria, with a lot of wooden ducks as decoration.
After visiting downtown, we went to the mall and the three of us wandered around the stores for a while. Paris Almacen was full of signs that said "Super Wiken" which I couldn't figure out until Pato pronounced "wiken" for me not as "wye-ken", as I'd read it, but as "weekend". Then tía Amada went back to the casino and Pato and I stayed at the mall and went to see The Sum of All Fears at the mall's movie theater. Pato was duped by the concessions staff into buying the large pop and popcorn because they were only a little bit more than the medium. Silly. Guess who got stuck eating all that popcorn?
After the movie, we all met up again and had dinner. I was full from the popcorn and sick-cranky from my sore ears and throat, but they were trying to convince me to eat something because we were going to be on the bus for such a long time. So finally I gave in and had chicken nuggets and tea. I don't think the people at the fast-food place were used to making tea, because I'm pretty sure they made it with carbonated water. It was pretty bubbly, anyway...
We got onto the bus to go back to Copiapó. Vendors kept coming on the bus when we stopped and tried to sell us papaya candy, a specialty of the area. I almost gave in, but it was time for the bus to move on and they had to get off. Our movie for the trip was The Fast and the Furious, which we made a lot of fun of. Later we looked out the window and saw a truck on fire on the side of the road. We wondered if he'd been illegally drag racing.
srah - Sunday, 23 June 2002 - 9:46 PM
Tags: chile, travel
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