#2

Procession in Plaza de Armas, Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

#1

Cordillera de los Andes, taken from the terrace of the Santiago Library, Barrio Brasil

Mystic valley

Valle de Elqui was the last stop on our trip to el norte chico of Chile. As you travel north from Santiago the landscape grows drier and drier, punctuated by valleys made green by virtue of the rivers and resulting agricultural activity of the area. The Elqui Valley is famous for its production of pisco, a distilled spirit made from grapes, usually mixed into cocktails such as piscola (pisco and coke) or pisco sour. As you head up the long valley east from La Serena, the dry hills are lined by the continuous strip of green vineyards whose produce is destined for the pisco bottle. So significant to the local economy is pisco that the town we were bound for goes by the name Pisco Elqui, changed from the less descriptive name of La Unión in the 1930's.

We rented a cabin about a kilometer outside of the town itself, with views over the irrigated vineyards spreading out across the valley floor. Being early Spring, many of them had not yet put out their leaves; I imagine by December the valley is quite a bit greener.  The hillsides, by contrast, are perpetually brown and barren, belying the arid climate of the region.  Sights such as this one demonstrate how essential the river is for life in this part of Chile.

Our cabin was one of several on a small property outfitted with some grills for barbecue, a pool (albeit with water a little too cold for swimming at that time of year), a bar, and some nice common areas to enjoy the sublime climate of the area. With its crisp, clean desert air, Pisco Elqui is a fine place to sit in the cool shade and contemplate the eternal hillsides. In fact, the Elqui Valley is at least as famous for its mystical qualities as it is for its pisco. Several communes are to be found in the area, and the various towns dotting the valley all have an undercurrent at times hippy, at others new age.

At night the temperatures drop quickly, and an impressive panoply of stars emerge in the clear, black sky.  Due to its low humidity, low population and therefore low level of light pollution, the area is also well-regarded for its potential for astronomical observation.  Several high-powered telescopes are located near La Serena, and some observatories even open their doors for tourism.  We didn't manage to see any of them for ourselves, what with the late night tour schedules and our 3 year old companion's early bedtime, but we did enjoy the starry nights, all the same.

As time has gone on we've developed a preference for staying in apartments and private cabins during our travels. Both options give us access to our own kitchen during our stay, which is what has always attracted me to staying in hostels in the past. Going out to eat is one of the pleasures of vacation, but it's also nice (and much cheaper) to be able to cook in the comfort of your own accommodations when you choose to. But if you compare the cost of a private apartment or cabin to that of a private room in a hostel, at least in South America, the prices end up being about the same. All things considered, we've ended up appreciating the privacy we get from having a space to call our own while we travel.

The town of Pisco Elqui is made up of just a few winding, dusty roads lined by old, single story brick houses. A quiet town animated by tourism, especially the during the fiestas patrias of September.  While we were there, the streets were decked out with Chilean flags and red, white and blue banners and ribbons everywhere you looked.

The town square is graced with restaurants bustling with clients, and street vendors selling everything from crystals to coffee mugs.  In the square itself, young South American travelers play guitar and wonder where they'll spend the night.

Besides the simple act of relaxing and enjoying the peace and quiet of the valley, the main tourist attraction of Pisco Elqui is the Mistral Distillery.  It's named after Chile's 1st Nobel laureate - and the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature - Gabriela Mistral. While not born in Pisco Elqui, she was born just down the road, in Vicuña. Vicuña already has the Capel distillery, which cranks out a cheaper and more commercial pisco, so the Mistral name was up for grabs. Here we see big fermentation tanks, where yeast has its way with grape juice under a controlled environment, producing alcohol, carbon dioxide, and warm air. And in the foreground is, for dramatic effect, an old barrel.

As an occasional beer brewer, I can wrap my head around fermentation. I've studied and observed how yeast can have a profound transformative effect on a sweet solution, bubbling, churning up sugar molecules into alcohol. It will never cease to amaze and impress me, but I've seen it. I get how it works. Distillation, on the other hand, remains something of a sublime mystery. The vocabulary surrounding it adds to the riddle: Alembic. Retort. Still. Liquor. Esters. Spirits. All evoke an alchemy as much magic as science, and yield a product deserving of respect and admiration, as much for the potent effect it can have as an imbibe as for the time, patience and care it took to create.

Sure, I can grasp on an intellectual level the dynamics involved in separating alcohol from water. That is one thing. It is another to be part of the process, to catch a whiff or glance of some rich concentration of the essence of the grape. In the few cases when I've had the opportunity to visit a distillery, I've yet to be lucky enough to observe the distillation process itself, in action. To see what goes on inside that fat-bellied vat through a glass porthole and try to understand on a more visceral level what it is. These, like all the others I've seen, were empty.

While our little group was unable to observe the process directly, we were privy to the finished product at the end of the tour. Commemorative stemware in hand, surrounded by barrels of pisco in repose, we tasted sip after sip of Destilería Mistral's various offerings, from the youngest to the most premium bottle they produce. I will admit, I'm not a fan of pisco. I've tried, but it's simply not a liquor I can appreciate. While I can accept it as a respectable ingredient in a cocktail, I have never been able to find a pisco that has been palatable straight up, either to shoot or to sip.

Over time I've lined up liquor mentally into two columns, with tequila, mezcal, rum, vodka, and to a lesser extent, whiskey and even raw aguardiente as tasty, attainable drinks with stand up flavors of their own, if you can find the right bottle, on one side. On the other unapproachable one lie gin and pisco, among others, which I can't seem to get my palate around. Maybe I just haven't found the right bottle yet. I'm willing to keep an open mind.

The picture here reveals another quality I've come to appreciate in tours of distilleries, which is the fanciful atmosphere each one unfailingly manages to craft, from ancient alembics on display, consistently impressive facilities and location, and as seen here, creative ways to dispose of old barrels.

All in all, our time in the Valle de Elqui was a fine experience. We greatly enjoyed the town of Pisco Elqui, and in the three days and two nights we spent there, we were able to do, see, and experience much of what it is as a community. My only wish, as is always the case at the end of a trip to a new place, is that we could have seen more. The valley is home to many towns, each with its own character. As you go even further upstream the roads narrow and the towns at the end of them, or so I've heard, are even more peaceful, authentic, and uniquely characteristic of the region.

Coquimbo, and a big party

Close to La Serena in the "short North," (el Norte chico) of Chile, situated on the south end of a calm bay, is the port city of Coquimbo.  It's so close to La Serena, in fact, that it has always vied with its nearby neighbor for prominence in the region, much as Valparaíso does with Viña del Mar along the coast nearer to Santiago.  La Serena is much older than Coquimbo, and today is much more recognized as a tourist destination.  Coquimbo, for its part, is an important center of shipping for the 4th region of Chile, and has even lent its name to the area, also known as the region of Coquimbo.

Because of its history as a port, it received a lot of European immigration in the 1800's much as Valparaíso did.  It's not as recognized for this fact as Valpo, but today you can still find sections of the city with the same kind of architecture you'll find in Valparaíso's hilly historic districts.  Granted, there aren't as many old buildings as Chile's more famous port to the south, and Coquimbo doesn't receive nearly as much tourism, but if you pay a visit to La Serena it's well worth the time to spend an afternoon in el barrio inglés, and then take a walk down to nicely renovated costanera on the seafront.

From there you get a nice view of the sea, the many ships waiting in harbor, the city of La Serena across the bay, and the green hills pictured above.  But if you turn your back to the seafront, you are also treated to a nice view of the city of Coquimbo itself.  Then you realize that the comparison of Valparaíso and Coquimbo doesn't stop with their shared history as ports.  Coquimbo's geography is much like Valpo's, with the city spilling onto and over the hills surrounding the bay.  In many ways - geographically, as a port, for its historic center - Coquimbo can be considered something of a Valparaíso in miniature.

But if there's one thing that sets Coquimbo apart from any other city in Chile, it is the pampilla.  A huge outdoor festival taking place during the fiestas patrias of Chile for several days around September 18th, people flock to Coquimbo to camp, buy, sell, eat, and drink.  Across the open field you can see countless tents set up to form a temporary city, with an estimated 100,000 people or more, coming for the day or for several days in a row.

The city of Coquimbo itself, in fact, was very quiet that day, and many stores and restaurants were closed.  That's because, during the fiestas patrias, so many people relocate from the city to the pampilla.  Individuals, but also businesses.  Restaurants and clothing stores set up outdoor stands.  But also hardware stores, real estate agencies, electronics sellers.  The pampilla concentrates the entire spectrum of humanity into a glorious spectacle of sun-drenched revelry.  Have a beer, have another.  Eat some barbecued meat, and why not?  Buy a power saw, or your next apartment!

We stayed at the pampilla long enough to share a pitcher of beer and lunch fresh off the grill, and left before the sun went down.  As fun as it was, we got the idea after a few laps around the main rows of restaurants and shops.  We never saw the crowning of the pampilla's beauty queen, or any of the live music going on at the main stage.  But I did pick up a bottle of chicha, a sweet, fizzy, boozy, fermented grape juice on the way out.  That way we could keep the party going in our own quiet way back in La Serena, and let things go as they would, with or without us, back in Coquimbo.

La Serena

La Serena.  One of Chile's oldest cities, today it's about 8 hours by bus North of Santiago.  But at the time of its construction, it would have been a far-flung colony, meant to serve as a link between the Spanish colonial center of Lima in Peru further North and the newly founded Santiago to the South.  Thanks to its historic origins, it still retains some colonial architecture much like you can find in other Spanish settlements around Latin America.  Simple, flat-roofed, one-story buildings in an adobe style, or more ornate government buildings and cathedrals such as the ones you see above.

It's interesting that the local government of La Serena, like Santa Fe in the US, made the policy decision in the 1900's to enact a revival of the colonial architecture of the city, restoring some of the older buildings and constructing new ones in a similar style.  Any city in Chile interested in architectural preservation has a special challenge, though, due to the powerful earthquakes that regularly strike up and down the length of the country.  Read descriptions of many of Chile's towns and cities in a guidebook, and you'll almost always read a passage saying something along the lines of "unfortunately many of [insert name]'s historical buildings were destroyed in the earthquake of [insert year]. 

We came to La Serena during last year's fiestas patrias, the week of September 18.  The local equivalent of Independence Day, it's a time of year when everybody takes several days off work to celebrate close to home with family.  Or, as is more and more often the case with Chile's recent economic prosperity, to take the opportunity to travel within the country or abroad.

La Serena was certainly set up at the time to receive tourism, and areas like La Recova, a traditional market today given over to handicraft stalls and restaurants, was bustling with tourists and locals alike.

One of the most popular activities in the area during fiestas patrias is the pampilla.  A sort of outdoor festival, it reminded me a lot of the fonda as it is called in Santiago and other communities further to the south.  Like a county fair, both the pampilla and the fonda feature live music, lots of food and drink, vendors, carnival games, and traditional events like rodeo and cueca, a form of music and dance like what you could expect in an old west saloon.  Chile's huasos, much like cowboys in the US, form part of the historical identity of the country. 

The pampilla is different from the fonda in that people come to the pampilla to camp for several days, The pampilla we attended here was not the famous pampilla of Coquimbo, a port city just to the south of La Serena.  That pampilla we would attend the next day, and which I'll describe in next month's story.

This one, taking place in the hills just outside La Serena, was a little short on activities for people who didn't come to camp.  What we noticed was that people came here in large groups of extended family and friends and set up their own self-contained party.  As for public space, we managed to find a tent serving up cold beer, empanadas and grilled meat.  Once we had our fill, we felt like we'd really gotten what we needed from the pampilla experience for the day, knowing we'd have another one in Coquimbo in short order.

September, being the beginning of Spring in the southern hemisphere, is to Chile as March is to the US.  So for families with young children, one of the favorite activities during the fiestas patrias is to fly a kite.  A side note on Chilean Spanish here.  Chileans often like to say that their Spanish is terrible, citing their extensive slang and non-standard pronunciation.  However, the country also has a wealth of poets and writers, providing evidence to the contrary.  I propose to you here a brief lexical example, and you can draw your own conclusions.

In Ecuador, they say volar una cometa to say "fly a kite."  A quite literal translation if you look it up in a dictionary.  However, in Chile the same phrase would translate as encumbrar un volantín.  Within the Chilean dialect, an equally literal translation, but you'll see that the two phrases couldn't be more different and still describe the same thing.  Does one take more poetic license than the other?  I can't count how many times the Spanish I learned in other countries has failed to convey my intended message here in Chile.  The vocabulary and varied senses of words here is truly different than in other countries.  From country to country, the Spanish varies widely, but still, it's all Spanish.  Is one Spanish more standard than any other?  It depends on things like where you're from, and how you perceive the differences.

Another fun thing to do here is go to the beach.  Between La Serena and Coquimbo, there are some 12 beaches, ranging from crowded to nearly empty, and from calm seas to high waves.  Generally the water of the Pacific Ocean in Chile, even to the North, is too cold to swim in for very long, so most people come to the beach to sunbathe, play in the sand, and in the Spring, encumbrar un volantín.  Our hostel was in La Serena's historic center, a couple of kilometers away from the beach. 

But a shared taxi colectivo along one of the city's main avenues will take you here, to El Faro, another piece in Plan Serena, the revitalization project for the community which I mentioned at the beginning.  Along with the lighthouse, you can also see the high rise condos that line much of the coastline between Coquimbo and La Serena. 

I have to say our own experience there, even during the festive holiday, was a quiet one.  The name La Serena itself, meaning "serene" or "calm," clearly gives the impression of a quiet town, and the traditional concept that people have of Chile's North is just that: small, sleepy towns where people still sleep the afternoon siesta and the only activity is in the mines.  In Chile's recent census, however, the communities of the arid North of Chile, including La Serena, consistently ranked as the country's fastest growing, inevitably giving rise to more modern buildings and modern lifestyle.  But for now, La Serena retains its pleasant, peaceful facade.

Ovalle, and a national park

Late last winter, during the famed 18 de septiembre holidays of Chile, we decided to head north.  Our ultimate destination was La Serena, but along the way we made a stop in a small agricultural community called Ovalle.

Chile's unique shape leads one to think linearly in terms of travel within the country.  With Santiago just about in the center of the country, unless you decide to hop in a plane the limits of your traveling will be predicated on how many hours you can stand to be on the road.  It's for that reason that many Chileans know their own country only as far north as La Serena or so, and as far south as Puerto Varas or Chiloé. That's about as far as most people are willing to drive at one stretch, and those with the money to fly often choose more distant destinations, such as Buenos Aires, Brazil, the Caribbean or other places in the US or Europe, rather than San Pedro de Atacama or Punta Arenas within their own country.

As travelers of modest means, those same limits apply to us as well, and the extremes of the Atacama Desert and rugged Patagonia are, so far, still unknown.  But once we set our sights as far north as La Serena, a little research turned up an oddity of a national park known as Fray Jorge along the coast near Ovalle.  Generally speaking, as you head north from Santiago the climate grows drier and drier, and to the south wetter and wetter.  But Fray Jorge is an exception, a dripping wet forest lying some 7 hours to the north of Santiago and surrounded by arid landscapes.  Why not check it out?

So we got a hotel in Ovalle and started looking for a way out to the coast.  It turns out there's no public transport heading there, and no rental car agencies in such a small rural town.  But a few taxi companies were scattered around the main strip, and boasted turismo among the variety of services proffered on their signs.  After some negotiating I was able to work out a reasonable price for a full day trip to Fray Jorge and another potential destination or two to be decided.  So after a night's rest with cable TV, we got in the backseat of an SUV and were on our way.

As we drove through the countryside, we saw some scenery atypical of the area, as our driver told us. The green hills all around were the result of some recent rain a few weeks before, provoking the light, bright coat of grass to sprout up around what was normally bare earth speckled with shrubs.  Like many arid climates, the vegetation is opportunistic and sprouts whenever moisture may come, regardless of the season.

But as we headed up the valley, the hills got higher and the green grass gave way increasingly to brown, until we reached the final geographic hurdle separating us from the coastline.  The line of hills pictured here in the background hold back moisture wafting in from the sea, which coalesces like clockwork every day against the hillside.  By virtue of that heavy blanket of precipitation the vegetation resembles forest seen normally only as far south as Valdivia, some 7 hours south of Santiago.  Also seen along those hills is a swatch of road which would carry us up and over to the other side.

There you have it.  Forest in the desert, how about that?  It was fun to walk around in the woods for a little while.  Our daughter hasn't had too much opportunity to do that in her short life so far, but every time she does, she has a great time.  This hike was well defined by a raised boardwalk, which made it tough to get lost.  Even though it was a bit slick from all the moisture literally dripping from the trees on many parts of the trail.

The cloud of mist hanging over the forest, known in an indigenous language of the area as camanchaca, is the source of moisture for many plants and animals living in the otherwise dry north of Chile.  Similar mists and fog blowing in from the coast grace the landscape of other parts of the northern deserts of Chile as well, and help to explain how any vegetation can exist at all in places with no rainfall in recorded history.

Apparently this forest was once more extensive than it currently is.  In fact, the area covered by real forest is actually pretty tiny.  While fog covers much of the surrounding area, the vegetation is low-lying along most of the hillsides, resembling a much greener, denser and happier version of the same kind of water-starved shrubs, cacti and grasses seen on the opposite side of the range.

Pretty and nice to walk around in, but it was no forest.  Some say climate change is the culprit of such deforestation, while others blame direct human exploitation of the area for timber and firewood over the years.  At any rate, some 100 square kilometers of misty hillsides are now under the protection of Chile's CONAF, and from what I've seen in my limited interaction with CONAF's park rangers and infrastructure, they run a tight ship.

The trail also affords one a view of the sea from a privileged vantage point at around 600 meters above sea level, and while the mist hanging over us obscured the view, it was still an impressive glimpse of the Pacific.  It was a nice reminder that anywhere you may be in Chile, the ocean is never far away.

Our driver recommended a couple of other places we could go.  One, El Valle del Encanto, is a canyon, home to an assortment of pre-columbian petroglyphs and other ancient relics, but would have involved a few more kilometers of hiking.  At another stage of traveling life, this would have been the more attractive option, but with our little girl as part of the troupe, two hikes in one day would have been pushing it.

So we opted for the more relaxing alternative, Termas de Socos.  That was a set of hot springs in a resort.  After a previous experience with some nice rustic hot springs in Pucón, that sounded like a fine idea.  In the photo here you can see a very promising pool, for example, to the right of our little girl.  But oddly, that was not hot water.  It was damn cold, in fact.  Hence the total lack of bathers.  The real hot spring water, inexplicably, was pumped only into bathtubs of the sort you would have in your own bathroom, tiny and narrow, each located in exceedingly uninviting private stalls.  Fortunately, the receptionist at the resort gave us a chance to check out the facilities before we paid, and after a cursory inspection, we promptly headed back to the car.  It was baffling to me that a resort would develop such nice facilities, only to set up the main attraction, the hot springs, in such an unattractive way.  Any resort I've been to before has either built public pools, or designed private baths in a setting more in touch with the overall design of the resort itself.

That was too bad.  But it illustrated a more general observation we had of Ovalle.  The town of Ovalle, too, bustling with activity for a community its size and seemingly a fine place for the local people, was nonetheless at something of a loss for what to do with visitors.  While it is surrounded by a number of nice attractions for tourists in the near vicinity, we were the only tourists to be found in the area, and this during a week-long holiday when literally millions of tourists were in search of vacation spots.  As a destination, Ovalle is decidedly off the map for travelers.  Which begs one of those chicken-and-the-egg quandaries.  Does Ovalle lack tourists because it is unprepared to receive them, or is the infrastructure lacking because no one comes to enjoy it?

It was with such questions in our minds that we descended on our lunch spot for the day, in a small town not far from Ovalle.  It reminded me a lot of a town in Mexico I had once visited while staying in Oaxaca, Mexico, with a similar climate, atmosphere and architecture. It was a quiet, unassuming place you wouldn't think to visit, or even know how to get there, unless a local took you there.  It enjoyed a beautiful setting in the same wide, fertile valley as Ovalle, and was home to a local restaurant with an expansive outdoor area with plenty of tables to choose from.

Decked out in the patriotic red, white and blue of Chile's flag in honor of the national holiday we were celebrating, the restaurant served several rustic dishes featuring local ingredients.  We decided on roasted rabbit with salad and rice, and empanadas filled with cheese and farmed crayfish, and weren't disappointed.  Wash that down with some Escudo beer and you've just had a typical lunch characteristic of northern Chile.  In a place truly off the beaten path, it was a fun way to start our trip to El Norte Chico.

Harvest time

It's been awhile since I last posted.  What can I say, sometimes I get distracted.  But with the new year and summer vacation out of the way, I hope to get back into a fairly regular routine of blogging.  I'll be serving up a modest posting of a few short paragraphs and pics this time around, as a way to ease back into things.  Plus, with some luck this will prove to be something of a segue into next month's offering.

About this time last year we took a train to the town of Buin, south of Santiago and in the middle of Chile's heartland of vineyards.  Steeped in wine culture as Chile increasingly is, the time of the grape harvest is marked by festivities all around Chile's wine producing areas.  Buin is no exception, and being conveniently located on the rail line in close proximity to Santiago, it was a natural choice for our first harvest festival, known in Spanish as the vendimia.

The popular Chilean vendimia is fun for all ages, although probably much more so for those old enough to drink.  In addition to the obligatory sale and consumption of wine, there were plenty of other vendors selling food, especially cheese, olives and grilled meats, traditional favorites all of local production and fine accompaniments to your glass of wine de rigor.

In the background of this photo can be seen the stage, idle at the moment of shooting.  Soon thereafter however it became the scene of some good-natured stomping performed by young foreign women from the crowd, persuaded to come on stage and get leg-deep into shallow basins full of grapes. 

Having dispensed with the preliminary surveying of the grounds, it was time to roll up our sleeves and start appreciating some wine.  The two of us sampled four different wines each that day, always selecting vineyards theretofore unknown to us.

I have to say, unfortunately, that I was unimpressed by all of vineyards save one, Viña Richards.  If I remember correctly we had a Pinot Noir and a Sauvignon Blanc from them, and both were, in a word, tasty.  It's rare to find Pinot Noir in Chile, which was enough for us to gravitate towards it once we noticed it.

It didn't take so long for us to get through our four glasses of wine, moderately portioned as they were.  Afterwards we moved on to the grilled meat section of the festival, where we ate some shish kebab, known locally as anticucho, followed by some larger cuts of chicken and beef.  Damn, that's good!  From this particular angle you can see the meat skewers on the grill, as well as where you stick them once you've picked them clean.  Also featured is our daughter practicing cueca from an unorthodox sitting position.

It might seem antithetical to a celebration like this one, but I saw this brewing company on the way in, and couldn't resist picking up a pint draught on the way back out.  The stout was a fine finish to the evening and kept me occupied for most of the walk to the train station.











We concluded our evening with a sleepy train ride back to Santiago's nicely appointed Estación Central, which connects conveniently to a subway train taking us within two blocks of our apartment.  A fine way to travel, and best of all, the conductor is our designated driver.

You'll have to forgive the low light on this one, but I'd like to think it gives an indication of that soft, warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you ease into your seat on the night train.  It's getting to be vendimia time again in 2013, so I hope to share more soon.