The earthquake on Wednesday was the kind of thing that gets into the walls of a place, not just the foundations. I was at the café, La Taza, when the barista told me about it — a 4.3, apparently, about twenty kilometres from here, at 13:25 in the afternoon, when the whole city was up and about. No one was hurt, she said, but everyone felt it, and it's been the talk of every counter and queue since. It's strange how a tremor like that, small as it is, reminds you that this whole coast is a fold in the earth's crust, waiting.
I'd come to La Serena for the winter sun, the kind that's warm on your face but not on your skin, and for three days now the mornings have been clear and the evenings mild. But the fog, the camanchaca, is never far, and it rolled in off the Pacific before dawn today, softening the edges of the colonial houses, the stone churches, the whole grid of this old city. I walked out after breakfast, after a coffee at La Taza that cost about three thousand pesos, and the streets were quiet in that grey light, the way they are when the sea decides the weather.
This is the city of belfries, they say, and you can see why. Every few blocks there's another stone church, twenty-nine of them, and in the fog they look like they've been here since the beginning, not just since the 1940s when President González Videla, a son of this city, imposed the colonial style in a grand plan. I wandered into the Plaza de Armas, where the cathedral, begun in 1844, dominates the square with its neoclassical face, and I thought about how much of what you see is a performance of history, a deliberate making of a place. The earthquake chatter was still in the air, though, and it grounded the stones in something real.
The mother of the woman selling empanadas outside the cathedral said the shaking reminded her of the big one in 2015, and that thought sat with me as I walked east toward the sea. I stopped at the Recova, the old craft market, where the stalls were setting up under the arches, and I bought a small piece of lapis lazuli, a stone they only find in these mountains, dark blue with flecks of gold, like the night sky if you could hold it. The woman who sold it told me her family had been in the market for three generations, and that the sea had glowed the other night, the bioluminescence, off the beach at 4 Esquinas.
At the Museo Arqueológico, which I visited again because it rewards a second look, I stood in front of the Rapa Nui moai head, a dark, patient face that has been here for decades, and I thought about the Diaguita pots, their black and red geometric patterns, so precise and so old. The museum is a good one, and it costs practically nothing, a donation, I think, or a small entry fee, and it holds the oldest stories of this coast, stories that make the earthquake seem like a recent thing. Outside, the fog had begun to thin, and the light had that winter clarity that makes the cordillera, even at this distance, look like a line of white paper on the horizon.
I had lunch at Natural Mar, a place near the beach that does good seafood, and I ordered a plate of machas a la parmesana, which is the kind of thing you eat when you are by the Pacific and the day is grey and you need warmth. The meal cost me around fifteen thousand pesos, which is a fair price for seafood this good, and I sat by the window and watched the fishermen on the beach, their small boats pulled up beyond the dunes. The waiter told me that the bioluminescence had been strong for a week now, and that families went down at night to watch the waves turn green and blue, and I thought that must be something to see.
After lunch, I walked along the Avenida del Mar, the long strip of apartments and hotels that in summer is packed with people but in winter is almost empty, a sleeping resort in the off-season. The light was flat, the sea a grey sheet, and I walked past the Faro, the lighthouse that is the city's symbol, and down to the beach, where the surf was rough and the sand was scattered with kelp. There is a quietness to this place in August that I like, a feeling that you have the whole coast to yourself, and I remembered that this is a city that doubles in size in January, which makes the empty winter streets all the more a gift.
In the afternoon, I took a micro to Coquimbo next door, the working port, and I wandered through the Barrio Inglés, the restored nineteenth-century merchant houses, and I had a pisco sour at a bar near the Club de Jazz, though it was too early for music. The drink cost about five thousand pesos, and it was a good one, the pisco from the valley where I'd come from, and I sat on the terrace and watched the boats in the harbour, the cranes and the containers, the real working life of this coast. The earthquake came up again, in a conversation at the next table, and I realised it was the closest thing this city had to a shared story this week.
I caught the bus back to La Serena as the afternoon light began to fade, and the fog rolled in again, soft and cool, and I thought about what it means to live somewhere that is constantly being reshaped by the earth beneath it and the sea beside it. The eclipse, the partial lunar eclipse, is coming on the 27th, and the city is already talking about it, the way we talk about the weather here, as a shared event that we will all look up at together. I have a plan to be on the beach, by the Faro, with a bottle of pisco and a blanket, because some things are better done slowly, in the dark.
For dinner, I went to La Escalera, a place on a side street that does good Chilean food, and I had a plate of pastel de choclo, the corn pie that is like a memory of the countryside, and a glass of red wine, and the bill came to about twenty thousand pesos. I sat and let the wine warm me and thought about the cost of living here, about the flat near the centre that rents for around 450,000 pesos a month, and about how this city gives you a certain kind of life for not very much money. The surf crashed outside, and I heard the low hum of the fog horn from the port, and I felt, for the first time in a while, like I was exactly where I should be.
I walked back to my hotel, the Terra Diaguita, a comfortable place a few blocks from the plaza, and the night was quiet, the streets empty, and the fog had turned the streetlights into soft halos. A dog barked somewhere, and a car went past with a low hiss of tyres, and I thought about the small quake again, and about how this city, like this whole country, is a place that lives with the earth. I unlocked my room and stood for a moment at the window, looking out at the dark, and I thought about the eclipse, and about how the moon will darken on the 27th, and about how we are all just looking up, waiting for something to change.
Tomorrow, I'll start thinking seriously about the drive north, about the Pan-American corridor and the Atacama desert that waits beyond this green coast. But tonight, the fog is the weather, and the sea is the sound, and I am content to be here, in this old city of stones and belfries, listening to the night. If you're thinking of coming here, the notes for this episode will tell you about the buses, about the costs, about where to stay and how to get a SIM card, and I'll put everything I've mentioned there for you. Until next time, from La Serena, wherever you are, I'm Tomás, and I'll be here, walking the fog.
Goodnight, and look up at the moon when you can. The eclipse will come, whether the clouds part or not, and that's enough of a reason to be somewhere you love, in the dark, with the sea beside you.
That's all for this week. Take care, and I'll speak to you from the road, soon.
Or maybe from the desert, I don't know yet. One day at a time, as they say here. Hasta luego.