Day 1:
-We took the bus up to La Serena, about a 6 hour ride along a beautiful blue coastline and rugged rolling hills
-La Serena itself is an odd sort of city, sort of a conglomerate between old historical arquitecture and a relatively new sprawling boom in beach homes
-We had a relaxing time on the horseshoe shaped beach, flanked at one end by a large cross on a hillside, even venturing into the water a bit, playing “futbol” and taking walks past gigantic mounds of shells
-Our delicious dinner of pastel de papas, a casserole with mashed potatoes and meat featured a delicious local specialty for dessert, papaya tinged ice cream!
Day 2:
-We started the day off with a visit to a colorful church and cemetary
-To get to our destination of Valle de Elqui, we drove through the desert, the bleakness of which was offset in places by the artificiality of brilliant patches of green agricultural fields. Because there is sun year round, it makes a perfect place to grow grapes. Minus one thing: water. Combined with increased agricultural pressures and climate change, the pressures for water in this region are increasing, as supply falls. We saw one consequence of this, an albeit beautiful dam that covered what previously had been fields for growing. Although it generates a little bit of electricity, it’s main purpose is for irrigation.
We traveled on through the valley to the town of Pisco Elqui, home to the tourism center of Pisco Mistral, one of the higher end makers of pisco in Chile. Pisco, practically the national drink of choice, is essentially wine that is processed down, making a stronger alcohol. We had a tour of the process and got to try some pisco, although it was by our judgement a little too strong to taste test without some sort of a mixer. After a wonderful lunch, we headed back a ways to visit the grave of nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral, who sadly, while extremely popular in Chile, is largely unknown outside her homeland. (Likely) A lesbian schoolteacher and later stateswoman, she lived much of her life in poverty and obscurity, which is somewhat reflected in her poetry. However, she was also a woman of very strong faith, and many of her writings reflect a religious element. Some of her most well known poetry is for children: as a schoolteacher, she wrote many songs to teach Christian themes.
After a ride back through the valley, we arrived at our beautiful hotel in the town of Vicuña, where we relaxed from the heat for a bit next to the gorgeously landscaped pool. After a gracious afternoon and a lovely dinner, we headed out to an observatory up in the mountains for some stargazing. This area of Chile, due to the relative lack of light pollution and the extreme dryness, is home to many of the world’s scientific observatories.
Unfortunately, due to the light thrown by the incredibly full moon, the stars were not quite as clear as they had been when I was further North in San Pedro, but they were still phenomenal. With the aid of a telescope, we were able to see a close up on the moon, the Pleiades, a nebula and planets, including Jupiter and some of its moons. It was a magical night.
Day 3:
We started our last day with a trip to Gabriela Mistral’s house and museum, which I really liked, because it gave me several perspectives on her life that I had not previously known about. She had a beautiful quote in one of her books that falling in love with a country was something akin to marriage, which really summed up how I felt about Chile at the time. I’ll have to find it at some point and share it with you all...
For something completely different, we stopped by a solar restaurant! Using mirrors and special boxes, this restaurant only uses heat from the sun to cook all their food, which is tremendously tasty because of the slow way it is cooked.
We made our way back towards Santiago, but not without one more stop: in the beach town of Guanaqueros, a beach town with beautifully colored ocean on one side and desert on the other. We had a nice lunch of shrimp empanadas and fish before heading back for a long ride home.
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