Cachay? Small (fun) facts about La Serena

If there’s an “abre fácil”, is there also an “abre difícil”...?

Transportation: In La Serena (and probably the rest of Chile, too) there’s a funny concept that I have never seen before: Colectivos. Basically it’s taxi-cars that drive a certain route (like a bus), and then you share it like a taxi, only it’s cheaper than the “real” taxis. They have colectivo-stops, but you can get on and off basically where ever on their route. There’s just the thing that you have to know the route, ‘cus the signs on top of the colectivos only tell you the final destination. And there are no maps of the colectivo-routes.. There are SO many colectivos in the streets, and even though La Serena is actually not that big a town, everybody goes by colectivo – not bike. (Except for me;-) )
They also have “normal” small buses – they just work like in any other place, I guess.

When you stop at a traffick light/a junction, you’ll almost always see young boys or young guys doing tricks in front of the waiting cars (expecting money for it, of course): juggling with cones, doing a mime-show – whatever. It’s fun to look at and they are actually quite good, some of them. But I still haven’t gotten used to that way of “begging”, and in a way it’s getting a bit annoying. If you don’t give them anything, you feel bad, but then again: you didn’t ask for the show...

The past few Wednesdays we have been to the cinema – Wednesday is the cheap day (2200 chilean pesos, which is around 22DKR/2,8 EUR/3,8 USD), and it is in deed cheap, compared to the Danish prices (you’d pay around 9000 chilean pesos to go see a movie in Denmark !) We’ve seen “El niño con el pijama de rayas” (The boy in the striped pyjamas) and “Cuentos que no son cuento” (Bedtime Stories) – both very good and also very different types of movies!

Eating habits. The main meal here is lunch, and lunch break at uni is between 13-14:30. Almost everybody have lunch at uni (you can get a wide variety of food at the canteen), and we often get the big lunch: veggie-salad, bread, a main course, dessert and juice for only 1650 chilean pesos (16,50 DKR!). To many people (/students), that’s the hot meal of the day. In the afternoon (around 17-18 o’clock) you get “once”, which is tea or coffee and some toasted bread with whatever you like – often something sweet. Dinner is not such a big thing, and they have it around 21 o’clock, I would say.

These first couple of weeks, you shouln’t be surprised if you see a young guy/girl or a group of them walking down the street with no shoes, ripped clothes, funny looking haircuts, covered in paint, with a stench of rotten eggs and fish begging for money. It’s the “mechones” – the freshmen, “sutterne”, whatever you call them: the poor young guys and girls who have just started their first year at uni. They have a ritual where each campus/educacion cut their clothes, pour paint all over thm and somehow make them smell worse than a landfill – it’s disgusting!! Then they have to do different – I assume – humiliating things, like e.g. walking the streets begging for money, and they also have to kiss a pig’s head!! YES, a dead one!!:-S Luckily we didn’t have to go through that!