Elqui Valley

View from the Capel Distillery


View from Mistral's tomb



Barrels of Pisco

The Elqui valley, mountains, and grape fields

All the guys

Picture of the moon through the telescope

Hey everybody. Sorry its been a few days since we've been able to update the blog. We spent the weekend staying in a small town in the Elqui Valley, which is about an hour's drive from La Serena. This town had less internet access and we are only just now getting to a computer.

So, we leave La Serena and arrive in Vicuna around 6 p.m. After eating dinner, we went straight to an observatory that boasted several 12 inch refracting telescopes and a 15 inch in the dome. This was in my opinion one of the coolest things we have done on this trip. We looked at Jupiter and Saturn (Jupiter's galilean moons were in alignment, which was pretty cool. *Dave edit: Man, Matt is a nerd.*) We got the constellations pointed out to us and looked at a few globular clusters and the large and small Magellanic clouds, which are actually galaxies. All this is so cool because the southern sky is completely different from the sky in the northern hemisphere. Of course, to top it all off we got to see the stereotype of the southern skies, the southern cross, which is like the big dipper here. Anyways, after that we went back to our houses, which were really cool, and had bigger rooms, which led to everyone picking one (ours) and hanging out till the wee hours of the morning. Great day.

The next day we woke up feeling chipper after our nearly 4 hours of quality sleep. We had a full day ahead of us. First we went to the museum/ former home of Nobel laureate and Chilean poet Gabrielle Mistral. Riveting, simply riveting. No in all seriousness we would have approached this with more interest if not for the earliness of the morning and the fact that everything was in spanish. Also, excepting T.S. Stretta, poetry is not our thing. Anyways, after that we went to the Capel Pisco distillery. If you don't know, Pisco is a brandy made from a specific type of sweet grape grown right here in the Elqui valley. Only 3-5 percent of the product is exported, making prices for this brandy dirt cheap and it the de facto national drink of Chile. The best way to describe the taste would be strong apple juice or cider. A very sweet taste, but one that will knock you on your ass. The tour basically showed us the brewing process, which involved creating grape juice from grapes, fermenting that into wine, and further fermenting that into the finished product. At the gift shop we all bought a few bottles, which I predict will become gifts for some lucky individuals, owing to the fact that the liquor is delicious and costs about 1.50 American per 750. After the distillery we got lunch, hung out in the town square, and drove into the mountains to the tomb of the aforementioned Mistral. There we actually had the chance to interact with many locals. The tomb is supposed to inspire poetic/artistic thought in people. While none of us felt the call of our inner poet, others brought guitars and we sang native folks songs and some American songs (Let it Be) with a group of native Chileans that rapidly grew throughout and eventually peaked at around 25 people loudly singing Chile's "second national anthem". It was a really unique cultural experience.

That night the leaders of the program bought a ton of meat, wine, beer, potatoes, etc, and we had a barbecue in the grills out back of our little compound. After the barbecue we once again hung out in our place until late into the night. Highlights include (but are certainly not limited to) spirited debate on a variety of topics, a girl who had a bit too much to drink and ended her evening with a rendition of MJ's Thriller dance and being precipitously close to incoherence (not going to name names) and a late night no holds barred bread fight. It was a good night.

This morning we woke up once again perky and ready for the day. We had some early morning horseback riding planned, but none of us were particularly keen on that (due in my case to the natural fear and distate horses have for me that I gladly reciprocate). Instead we went for a hike, saw some beautiful views. Then we came back down and hung out until the buses came. Now we are back. I haven't showered in three days (no hot water in the valley). We are watching Apollo 13 in english and are planning an exciting evening of card playing and a dinner of fried eggs. If we plan to be at all moderate about this trip tonight will be a quiet night.

Thanks for reading, and feel free to let us know what you think of the blog and what further information/insights/zany stories you feel we should share.

Matt Bailey