Pisco me happy

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Trip Start Oct 06, 2010 Previous
Entry Trip End Jul 30, 2011 Next
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  Vicuna, Chile
Sunday, February 6, 2011

After La Serena we headed into the famous Elqui Valley, to the town of Vicuna. The Elqui Valley is famous for it's papayas, Pisco grapes and world class Observatories. On the way in, everything looks barren and bleak. There are small shrubs and a few cactus on the hills, however, in the valley itself there is a large river, lush vineyards and beautiful farms. Vicuna itself gets only a few days of rain a year and has cloudy skies less than 35 days a year. This makes it the perfect place for observatories. It is one of four places in the world suitable for huge telescopes to peak into the history of the stars. They are even building a telescope with a 42 meter wide mirror, to be the largest in the world.... it will be called the E.L.T - extremely large telescope.

    We got into Vicuna, got to our hostel and found out it was much more expensive than we had expected because of it being the high season. It was however a beautiful little place, our own room, private bathroom, great breakfast included and they even gave us fresh fruit for snacks in the afternoon. Compared to some of the places we stayed before, it was a luxury hotel. That first night, we were lucky enough to get tickets to the early (8:30, last show left at 2:30 am) english tour of Mamalluca, a observatory in one of the surrounding hills set up for tourism. It was absolutly breathtaking and amazing. We saw Jupiter, it's stripes and 3 of it's 63 moons (only 3-4 are usually visible with good telescopes), galaxies, clusters, nebulas and learned a lot about constellations, how stars are formed and die, and the history of astrology.

    The next day we went to walk to the Capel pisco factory, got lost, got a minor sunburn, but found it in the end. We did a guided Spanish tour, in very fast Chilean which is hard for many native Spanish speakers to understand. I think we got the basics of how it was made. It is a lot like Italian Grappa, however they will distill it up to twice and they only use 'the best' grapes, unlike Grappa which generally uses the leftovers from wine. At the end of the tour, everyone got a small tester of one of their products, such as Pisco Sour, Pina Colada, Mango Colada, Coffee etc. We, however, being the foreign tourists, ended up talking with one of the girls working there for a while and getting at least 5 or 6 testers each, including their premier line. We settled with a bottle of Pisco Sour Premium, which is their double distilled Pisco, lots of lime and lots of sugar. Delicious! That night we relaxed and drank our amazing drink mixed with a bit of sparkling water while dining on cheese and veggies. The next day we woke up, checked out and went for a day trip to the little town of Pisco Elqui. There, we ate amazing chicken (roasted in a traditional old oven), looked at more artisan stalls and chilled in the town square watching the people go by. That night, we went on what was supposed to be a 12 hour bus ride to Mendoza, Argentina.

Cheers,
Josh

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