Serene La Serena

                        Not sure where to start with this one. I think that this port was tossed in “just because”.  They did have a spot for us to dock so I’m confident that they have a semi-permanent Cruise Ship presence there. But I’m not sure what the draw is. I need to be careful here and not come across the way that I’m afraid of sounding……. like some snobby travelers.

                        The town is La Serena, and it is as nice a big/little town as you’ll find anywhere. Large central plaza, local cathedral, good sized market, and friendly people. If we had had more time here it would have been the perfect town to spend a day in trying that “immersion” technique, but we really only had a half day here as “All Aboard” was around 1:30pm. We needed to leave by then to make our next Port, that of San Antonio (not Texas!) for the city of Santiago, Chile. In San Antonio we will end the first “Voyage” or “segment” of the larger 51-day full voyage. So about 800 passengers are disembarking here and about 1200 new souls will be boarding. This “leg” will go for about three weeks and disembark in either Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires, I’m not sure which one. But it allows people to take a smaller voyage without signing up for the whole thing. In this case, this voyage is particularly interesting for locals as they can board the ship on one side of the continent and disembark on the other, not needing a long-distance flight to get back home.

            Anyway, back to why we may have called in La Serena.

                                                My Theory:

                                    I’ve tried to understand how Cruise Lines even stay in business as the expense side of the ledger is prohibitively large (in my un-informed opinion). One of the decisions that need to be made when planning a Cruise Ship voyage is a very important one….. which Ports will be called at.

                                    While this may seem to be kind of fundamental, there are a lot of factors that need to be weighed in. Some Ports are a must have, some are tossed in to help fill in some time and I suspect that our last one, La Serena, was one of those. From what we’ve experienced there seems to be a 50/50 ratio utilized i.e. 51-day voyage equals about a twenty+ schedule of Ports, or like the World Cruise, 111-days equaled 50+ ports of call. Other mitigating factors:

• Availability …… Don’s Cruise Line wants to pull into Friendlytown, on the island of St. Chocolate on February 14^th but they find that there are already three other ships in Port that day and that is the capacity of their Cruise Dock. They can check if the Port will allow them to Tender in, but that is unpopular with the passengers and the Port may, in fact, have a limit on how many “Invaders” they allow in Port at a time.
• Cost …… All Ports are not created equal and there are costs associated with docking. A Port does not invest quadrillions into special docks, tugboats, Immigration Personnel, etc. without expecting a return on their investment. I think we can be reasonably assured that it costs more to pull into a larger, more popular Port like NYC, than it does to pull into Friendlytown. How much that difference is I have no idea, but the fact remains is that there are costs involved into pulling into a Port.

Pulling into La Serena, which would seem to be on the less expensive side, allowed the Line to add another Port of Call onto the 51-day Cruise even though we only spent a few hours there.

Just a theory.

                                    Our excursion for the day was “La Serena on Your Own” or in other words, a Bus Ride into, and back out of, Town. We expected to get on the Bus, be dropped off, and told what time we needed to be back at the pick-up point. What we received was much more and in fact, the kid that was “in charge” of us “made” the trip in our opinion.

                                    Matias is a History Teacher by trade and that teacher thing came roaring out the minute he picked up the busses microphone. We were peppered with facts, figures, anecdotes, and helpful information on the way in and even had a song (he played a local stringed instrument akin to a ukulele) on the way back to the ship. In the meantime, we had the choice of being “On our Own” or just following him to the Museum and then the Market. We were then expected to wander back to the pickup spot that was conveniently directly down the avenue from the Market. No chance of getting lost!

                                    The Market was a good size, many Tourist Shops all selling the same goods and the “pestering sales pitch” was thankfully at a minimum. The museum was local and had quite a few indigenous examples of former civilizations including a Moai from Easter Island. I’m sure that you’ve seen examples of these in photos. I’ve always wanted to experience a real one, so we took this opportunity to see it. Easter Island would have been fantastic but that will have to wait for one of those “Expedition-type” cruises!

                        The “Yellow 12” stickered group was well-behaved and quite punctual as we left our pick-up point directly at 12:30, our appointed time and the ride back to the ship went quickly as we did not have the mornings traffic like we had on the way in.

                        So, that was our Port for the day, La Serena lived up to its name as we experienced nothing that wasn’t serene in nature and when travelling, maybe that is the goal!