La Serena

La Serena is a cute town with a downtown area that feels like one of those coffee shop college towns.  Nice little market with the typical alpaca gear and handicrafts.  There's a beach here as well.

The main tourist things to do here are to see the valley where Chilean pisco is made (too expensive) and the observatory nearby (this sounded cool).

On my first night, I went with two others in the hostel to find where the locals were gathering to watch the Chile/Ecuador match... And surprisedly found very little.

On the second night, I went to the aforementioned observatory. Skies in Chile are generally unpolluted, so I was hoping for great things.  The trip there took over an hour by car.

The night sky from the observatory was bright and beautiful. The milky way was easily visible, with two other galaxies dimly visible.  Sadly, the center is more for tourism than research, so the telescopes were far from the world's best.  I did see Jupiter and Saturn pretty clearly on it though, and the guide kept up with my questions.  I don't have any pictures of the sky, my cameras aren't nearly good enough.