La Serena is one of Chile’s oldest cities and is situated on the coast. It is from here you can access the Elqui Valley and today that’s what we did. A minivan collected us from our hotel at 9am and took us out through the valley.
The Valley is traditionally extremely dry and the mountains depict this. The unusual aspect of this that in the valley itself are fields and fields of green. The main industry of the area is agriculture. It once also included silver and copper mining but now they grow a variety of fruits and are most famous for their vineyards and Pisco distilleries. The Valley is also well known for its several international astronomical observatories.
Irrigation of the farms was made possible by the building of the Puclaro dam which was one of our stops along the way. We also visited a family owned and run Pisco distillery in the heart of the valley. This was really interesting as we toured the vineyard and the distillery learning the process of Pisco making and ended with a tasting :-) Pisco is made from muscat grapes which are first made into a white wine and then distilled giving a final product of about 40% which is similar to grappa. After the distillery we had lunch at a restaurant which cooks with the sun, the food was delicious. We then drove into some of the small villages which populate the valley. Of note was the village of Monte Grande where Gabriella Mistral was brought up and then worked as a school mistress. Gabriella Mistral was a Chilean poet, born in Vicuna, the ‘capital of the valley’, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945 and to this day is the only female Latin American to have won the Prize.
We returned to La Serena in the early evening and prepared for our overnight bus journey.
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