Elqui Valley Tour

Our tour guide, Marcello, picked us up at the yacht club and we drove through La Serena to the Elqui Valley. The Elqui Valley is the fruit and vegetable basket of Chile. Everything is grown here from avocados in groves of trees numbering 10,000, to lemons, grapefruit, oranges, papayas, grapes, especially those used for making Pisco, pumpkins, potatoes, etc. Marcello took us by the dam and reservoir of the Elqui River that serves as a water source for the drip irrigation that is used throughout the valley. Unfortunately the area is suffering from a drought and the reservoir is maybe a third of its normal size.

Elqui Valley, a small triangle field on the left side has 10,000 avocado trees. 

Resevoir for Elqui Valley, note that it is very low as there is a drought

Our next stop was the town of Diaguitas to see the pottery. This pottery is hand made in the style of the Incas with features such as human and animal faces, lizard like shape with legs, tail and head as examples. The pottery maker has an old 1956 Morris in his yard which he still drives.

1956 Morris, still runs. Artist and our guide Marcello

 

By now it was time for lunch so we stopped in a small restaurant that has a solar kitchen.  A student project at the local university figured out which location has the most sunlight and formed a cooperative of the local women using traditional recipes and solar ovens to cook the meals. They are only open for lunch (duh) but it was a delightful place and we had a goat casserole, with a salad and flan for dessert. Yummy. The goat cooks for 3 hours in the solar oven and it was tender and tasty.

 

Rich at the Solar kitchen restaurant

Solar oven for baking flan

We drove through the valley and stopped in the village of Montegrande, the former home of Gabriela Mistral, one of two Nobel prize winning poets of Chile. They are extremely proud of her and her name graces roads, bridges, buildings, churches, schools, etc.

Mistral Pisqueria also produces 3Rs brand

 

Next stop was Pisco Elqui. The town was previously named Union but by state decree it was renamed to help prove that Chile was an originator of Pisco and not Peru with their city of Pisco. I believe that Peru has a stronger claim but as an outsider, I will not take sides. We stopped at the Distileria Pisco Mistral which produces the Mistral and the 3R’s brands of Pisco. The owner is a very wealthy Chilean who has a mansion not too far away. We went for a tour of the Pisco making process and a tasting of two varieties, one fruity and the other a more sipping version which is aged in oak. I am definitely not a Pisco connoisseur but I did enjoy the Pisco Sour on the patio afterwards. We met a couple, Eric and Nicole, on holiday from Belgium, who we chatted with at great length. They joined us on the next two stops of our tour.

We retraced our ride through the valley to the city of Vicuna. The four of us had dinner at the Club Social de Elqui. The meal was okay but the service was at a snails’ pace. Marcello rounded us up for our 17 km drive on a dirt road into the hills to the Observatorio del Pangue, run by a group of French and Chilean astronomers. They have a 32 cm reflector on a computer controlled telescope. Just as we arrived we saw the bright space station pass overhead. We were here for about 2 hours, looking at the twin stars of Orion, nebulas, galaxies, the Milky Way, Subaru (the stars, not the car), Jupiter and her moons and off course the Southern Cross and Alpha Centauri. Billions and billions of stars as Carl Sagan would say.

On the drive back we dropped Eric and Nicole off at their hostel in La Serena and Marcello took us back to the yacht club. It took a bit to find the security guard to let us in. He did not seem very enthused about taking us back to Windarra in the launch as the wind and waves were a bit raucous and coming from the direction of Windarra so we had a wet ride. By 2:30 am we were ready to go to sleep.

We had a fun day and have a new perspective of Chile.