Pisco

The shinning sun and the passage of a few weeks since my last excursion prompted an impromptu departure. I didn't have my chemistry lab last Friday, so Tuesday night I headed out to the bus station. A gringo friend of mine and I jumped on board a bus headed north and 13 hours later we were in La Serena, Chile.

La Serena is a desert coastal town that in summer months sees its beaches filled up with tourists. Our visit was in the off-season, so the common gringo sightings didn't happen.

The first day we found a hostal and took it easy, the theme of this trip. The next day we took a bus south about an hour to the small fishing village, Tongoy. There we ate 'mariscos' including 'machas' (clams), 'locos' (abalone or sea snail), 'jaibas' (crab)and camarones (shrimp). I have already eaten these things on a few occasions here, but it was a nice treat to have them come right off the boat. We spent the remainder of the day hanging out on the beach and relaxing before a night out on the town back in La Serena's neighbor town, Coquimbo. The night life is basically non-existant in La Serena, so we took the 15 minute ride next door most nights. We saw a good Bob Marley cover band and hit a couple of discos. Back in La Serena we hung out on the beach and took in the sun.

We ended our time with a trip to El Valle Elqui, the old stomping grounds for Gabriela Mistral and the place where all of the pisco grapes are grown. We left our bags at a hostal in Vicuna at the valley's head and bussed it up to Pisco Elqui for the day. There we went to a small pisco factory and did some tasting. The valley was very dry with a high mountain desert landscape, but the valley floor was a river of green grape plants. Very pretty. Back in Vicuna, we visited the Capel distillery and bottling plant. Capel is the largest producer and exporter of pisco in Chile. As pisco has found a special place in my heart down here, this was a great experience to go to the place that it is born. Salud!

We had made reservations for our final evening to one of the several observatories in the area, but due to a slight overcast sky, the tour was canceled. Darn. As a consolation we drank one last bottle of pisco and got back on the bus the next day.

We rolled into Concepcion at about 4:30am, I jumped into bed, and then it was back to 'reality' once again.

Pictures can be found at this link in the album "La Serena": http://picasaweb.google.com/shirleydan

See you all soon!