Coquimbo and La Serena, Chile

One of the nicest places that we visited in Chile was La Serena. This is a resort town with expensive holiday homes, nice beaches, universities and no slums (for a change). The standard of living here is high and it looks like any vacation spot that you would find in Florida. The downtown area has big department stores and a nice park, but I went to see the old town square and it's surrounding area.

In the old town, you will find the archaeological museum. (By the way, there is a Scotiabank across the street from the museum. In fact, there are Scotiabank branches all over Chile so if you have an account with them, you can access your money and do your banking without getting hit with service fees. But make sure that you know your banking Spanish because only the first screen on the ATM is in English and Spanish. The other screens are Spanish only.)

Anyway, inside the museum can see an actual moai from Easter Island. It wasn't as big as I thought it would be, but still, this is as close as I was going to get to Easter Island.

Coquimbo is not as affluent as it's neighbour La Serena, but it was still pretty nice compared to lots of other places that we saw in Chile. It's claim to fame (or infamy) is this huge cross that was built for the millennium. Some people think that it's good, but most think that it's just a huge eyesore overlooking the city.