October, 2011

Leaving the flowering desert behind us...
“Desierto florido” is how they call this phenomenon that occurs only every three to ten years, when the parched land of desert wakes up to life after a long period of inactivity and starts to blossom, due to the correct mixture of humidity and temperature. We were lucky this was the year! Now, we are back in Valparaiso region (which we visited this spring - for you, fall for us), precisely in a modern yacht club, in Concon, about 20 minutes by bus from Vina del Mar, and we are waiting for a weather window to go either to Valdivia or directly to Puerto Montt. The spectacular shows of bio-luminescent plankton during the nights, as dolphins raced along Nikan, or of any other fish which disturbed the water, slowly disappeared as we moved south and for days we have observed no sea life, except several sighting of whales, one just few meters from us, but on sighting us diving down, to be only seen again from some distance. The spring here is in full progress, and all the flowers everywhere and trees in blossom confused me to such a degree, that for a while I thought the Santa material in stores is some leftover from Christmas, until it hit me that Christmas is not gone, but just around the corner! On the way down we stopped in Yacht clubs of Caldera, on the edge of desert, and than Coquimbo, both of them very welcoming with friendly, curious people, as they don't see too many foreign boats. From Coquimbo we made a little excursion to La Serena, Chile's second oldest city with some beautiful colonial architecture and churches. From now on (latitude 33 South) the weather is going to be influenced more and more by southern depressions, so J-P is going to be quite busy with weather charts!