Elqui Valley, Chile

April 29 - 5 May

Picture links:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lotanc/ElquiValleyAndLaSerena

Arriving to Santiago after a long bus drive (around 11 hours) we (Limor and I) decided that the best idea would be to take another long bus ride!!!

Yes, I know it sounds stupid, but at the time we were all packed, ready to go, did not feel like staying in the big city of Santiago, and it did make sense.

Continuing another 7 hours we arrived to the city of La Serena. The city itself is a nice city besides the beach, but the main attraction is the Elqui Valley which is close by..

After spending an afternoon and a night in the city we went into Elqui valley.

The Elqui valley is known for several things:

1. A picturous valley, due to the nice mountains and the vineyards that grow (see next points)

2. Almost all days are sunny (not many cloudy days) this makes this region ideal for observatories.

3. An ideal climate for vineyards that are used to make Pisco*. (see point at the end)

4. A famous center for alternative medicine.
5. Not having many Israelis (This just might be the greatest attraction of this area - it is a hard to find thing in many of the nice places in South America). We even met some people who were excited to meet Israelis, and some said that we were one of the first Israelis they met..

*Pisco is a alcoholic drink invented in Peru and heavily consumed in Chile as well.. It is made of grapes, sweeter and more alcoholic than wine (around 35-40% alcohol) it is almost always consumed as a mixture, where the most famous is the ¨Pisco Sour¨. The Elqui valley produces most of the Pisco for Chile.

The first night in the valley we went to an observatory. The tour was very interesting, and included observing through several telescopes (another picture of the moon can be seen in the picture link):

The next day reaching the city of Pisco Elqui we rented bikes to ride around the valley, visit a pisco distillery plant, art center, a place where they dry fruit (they had amzing raisins - not surprisingly), seeing their old ways of growing the vines - they still use very old, organic ways in most of the valley (except for parts in which they grow for exportation purposes), and generally seeing amazing scenery.

Buying pisco in the distillery plant we decided to make our own Pisco Sour. Getting some advice from locals (including the hostel owner and her friend) we actually made some pretty good Pisco Sour :-)

One of the great benefits in Pisco Elqui is we had a very nice hostel (the owner did not speak any english, but we got along with my almost non-existent spanish).. Feeling not overly well in parts of the visit in the Elqui valley I also decided to rest for a day in the garden of our hostel, laying on the hammock and reading a book was great..

The next day we returned to La Serena, and after spending a night there we took a bus to Valparaiso..