La Serena, Vicuna, Valpariso and drinking lots of Pisco!

La Serena is another nice town, with lovely buildings, and yet another festival (I have seen 4 festivals in 1 week in Chile!). I didn´t feel settled here though, so after staying one night I caught a bus to nearby Vicuna.

Vicuna is in the heart of the Elqui valley, the first proper green landscape I have seen since I arrived in South America, it makes a nice change from the desert so far. Vicuna is surrounded by beautiful rolling mountains, and as all the buildings are one storey high, wherever you are the view is great. The hills remind me of Scotland a lot, as does the weather, my woolley hat and newly acquired alpaca wool gloves came in useful.

I went on a free tour round the Pisco distillery, Pisco is the national drink here and very nice, especially Pisco sour, made with lemons. Unfortunately the tour was completely in Spanish, but luckily a guy also taking the tour was bilingual and translated for me. He was very friendly, as are all the locals here, and even bought me a small bottle of Pisco at the end.

I was supposed to go on a tour round an observatory that evening. The observatory was built because Vicuna is supposed to have some of the clearest skies on the planet. Unfortunately I managed to go there on the two days of the year that it is extremely cloudy, so the observatory was closed.

The next day was a Sunday, and as everything in the town was closed, I went for a walk in the hills. Up there you can really appreciate how beautiful the setting is; a perfect sized town amongst lovely hills & vinyards. If I was going to design a town I would base it on Vicuna. That day it seemed like the whole town had the same idea - to go walking in the hills. Everyone was very friendly and insisted on talking to me, when they realised I couldn´t understand me they just carried on anyway. I felt like a local celebrity, being stopped all the time. It was good fun.

Back in La Serena I met 3 nice backpackers travelling together; English, Irish & Scottish (not a joke). I caught the bus with them to Valpariso. We stayed in the coolest place in Valpariso, it was a very old fashioned victorian-style house, run by an old couple (Maria & Hector). There were only 4 of us & another Scotsman staying there, and the owners treated us like long lost relatives. They made an amazing breakfast (my 1st proper cup of tea with cold milk in 3 weeks), and made us stay up til well past midnight, teaching us new card games & making us drink Pisco & wine. They talked to us incessantly, all in Spanish, and between us we managed to understand most of it. It was like staying with a mad old uncle & aunt, it was great.

Valpariso is fantastic. The town is built on a steep hill which arcs around a busy port. The houses are a complete hodge-podge of styles, all clinging to the hill as if about to fall down any second. Smart houses are built next to ramshakle ones, the only thing they have in common is they are all very colourful. There are 20 or 30 Ascensors, or little funicular railways, to help you climb the hill. We spent hours just wandering around the colourful cobbled streets. The only bad thing about Valpariso was the scratty flea-ridden dogs, they kept following us around and we had to escape into shops a couple of times to get rid of them.