Ryan Greenberg

The plaza in front of La Recova, the largest crafts market in La Serena.

In a recent trip I visited La Serena, which is the capital of Chile’s fourth region, Coquimbo. It’s a small, attractive city on the coast that looks like a transplant from colonial times. In fact, it is. La Serena was built (again—the city had an unfortunate history of being destroyed) by Spanish settlers in 1549 and current laws require that new buildings maintain the old style. The downtown area has no fewer than 29 churches, a quantity that one is hard pressed to find a use for. La Serena is also known for its multitude of crafts markets. The largest market is La Recova, where Elizabeth and I spent a couple hours eating lunch (fresh seafood!), browsing through artisans’ stands, and shopping for her family.

One must-see highlight of the city is its archaeological museum. It has a collection of pre-Colombian pottery, which is nice to browse, though I admit that its significance and beauty is mostly lost on me. The must-see piece of this must-see museum however is kept in an unassuming location. I walked by it and did a double take; I thought this item would be more hyped-up. There it was:

One of the precious few moai that have been taken from Easter Island! I admit, I had seen plenty of pictures of moai before seeing this one in person, but seeing one in real life is bizarre. Elizabeth and I took pictures and posed with the statue. As the only two people in the entire museum, we had this iconic statue to ourselves.

In recent years, La Serena has become the hot summer beach destination. The oceanfront is lined with hotels, and cabanas, though no higher than 5 stories because of the building laws I mentioned. As we visited not in the hot summer tourist season, but in the wintry fall, the beach was practically deserted. But we imagined it being hot and sunny. I got the impression that this town would be a fun summer destination.