Friday, September 21, 2007 La Serena y Valle de Elqui

Friday, September 21, 2007 La Serena y Valle de Elqui

Around 6:15 I awoke to the news that we were already in La Serena. The trip had been really fast and I’d slept the entire time. I felt much better, not perfect, but better and was thrilled to already be there. We got off the bus and while we were trying to figure out how to get to our hostel, a sweet old man approached us and asked us if we were the three North American girls staying in Hostel Jofre. We were quite surprised by this, but he was carrying a binder with the Hostel’s name and picture and introduced himself as the owner. Calli had talked to him to make the reservations, so when he told us he had come to pick us up, we jumped in a taxi with him to the hostel. Before hand we’d arranged to go on an all day tour of Elqui Valley, the beautiful, well known valley about 30 miles east of La Serena and the owner told us it left around 8:45. So we climbed into bed in our lovely hostel room and slept for almost another two hours.

Around 8:30 the owner knocked on our door and told us our breakfast was ready (surprise!) so we ate quickly (I managed to drink some tea and toast, the first food since my food sickness last night) and then jumped into the mini bus for the tour which had come to pick us up!

I’ll just give you a quick run down of the tour. It was all day and we did a lot. So here is the summary:
1. Papaya and chiramoya (Custard Apple) orchard. A cold front had come in and killed the entire crop in the north, so no papayas this year. It was depressing.
2. Huge Dam. They built it 10 years ago to assure there would be enough water to save the crops for 5 years of drought. Quite impressive and amazingly beautiful.
3. Ruta Norte Pisqueria. Where they make pisco. It was a little too touristy and I don’t really like pisco, but it was still interesting. It’s at an old Jesuit monastery and was a beautiful facility.
4. Vicuna. The biggest town in Valle de Elqui. We went into the Cabilido and walked around their main square (the Plaza de Armas). They had a cute market set up for the Fiestas Patrias and I bought a notebook.
5. Almuerzo. We ate at a restaurant outside of Vicuna that uses solar power to cook all their food. They have large, aluminum rimmed boxes that directs the sunlight, converts it into heat to cook the food. It was delicious and everything was surprisingly hot.
6. Montegrande. Birthplace and childhood home of famous Chilean poet Gabriel Mistral. We also visited the beautiful old church. Calli bought a huge bag of raisins from a woman outside. They were literally the best, biggest raisins I’ve ever eaten.
7. Pisco Elqui. The birthplace of Pisco. (That fact is still under debate; Peru claims to have invented it. We’ll leave them to argue.) We visited Los Nichos (The niches) which is what they call their above ground grave sites, but it’s the nickname for where they stored all the bottles of wine and pisco.

Wow, we did a lot! We got back to La Serena around 5:30 and took a 30 minute stroll down the main street in La Serena to see more of the town. When we got back we asked our hostel owner if we would be able to go on the observatory tour. He told us that the tour had been canceled because it was too cloudy. So instead he told us how to take a bus to the next town down the beach Coquimbo to go to the Pampilla. Calli had heard about it and told us it was the biggest and longest running (as in all the way until the weekend afterwards, lucky for us!) Fiestas Patrias festival in all of Chile. So we jumped on a bus and headed over.

I thought the Fonda in Parque O’Higgins was crazy. That’s because I hadn’t seen the Pampilla! The event was huge, packed and bustling. There were all kinds of vendors selling everything (clothes, shoes, kitchen supplies, toys, etc. I felt like I was walking through a mall), of course the many food stops, and one of the biggest stages (and crowds) I’ve ever seen in my life. We walked around, ate yummy treats, and wound our way to the huge event at the stage. We watch the M.C.s joke around, sing, and dance for about 25 minutes until they started the “swimsuit competition” for some contest that was going on. We had no idea what it was about, but the huge crowd seemed quite pleased. After 5 stick skinny models strutted around on stage half naked while being projected on many huge jumbo-trons, we decided to head out and check out more of the Pampilla. What we didn’t realize was that they were only about 1 hour from crowning the queen of the Pampilla, which is apparently a huge deal in all of Chile. The queen is always super famous that year and all over the magazines etc. So that explains the huge huge crowd and why everyone was so excited. And we missed it by about one hour!

After walking around just a bit more, we decided we’d seen and eaten enough. We’d only been there two hours, but we were all ready to head back. We took a bus back and when we got to the hostel decided we were ready for bed. We ended up girl talking for a long time and then we watched V for Vendetta with Spanish subtitles till we fell asleep around 12:30!