Pretending to Be Real: Pisco Elqui

This weekend I went with some friends to Pisco Elqui up north. It's a long narrow valley that is east of the beach cities of La Serena and Coquimbo. It is the most striking and beautiful valley. The mountains are insanely steep, dry, and covered with cacti. The valley, however, is very green as it is filled with grape vineyards for making Pisco... Chile's national liquor. It's a really striking contrast. The town is incredibly cute and the surroundings cannot be beat.

Getting there and back was a bit of a chore, but definitely worth it. We took a 6 hours bus ride to get to La Serena. We then went to a friend's boyfriend's grandmother's house (she was awesome!) to eat empanadas and drink juice. We then went to our hostel which proved to be a bit of a problem. Although we had made a reservation there was a problem with the website we used. They managed to squeeze all five of us into a room that smelled like cats and fish (ew) but at least we were able to sleep.

The next morning we took a bus into the valley. The bus was crazy hot and took forever (it was supposed to be about an hour and a half but it took about three), but we finally made it to Pisco Elqui. We wandered around a bit to find a campsite (there was a moment there when we thought we wouldn't even have a campsite!) and then shopped around the town for some vegetables (more on that below).

The trip back was equally as tiring. We took a bus back to La Serena and then walked to the beach to watch the sunset. It was beautiful (pics below) and then we ate dinner before heading to the bus station to take an overnight bus back to Santiago. We booked "salon cama" tickets, which is sort of like the business class of bus travel. I slept (ish) and arrived in Santiago at 6am this morning.

I'll let the pictures do the talking... [Side note: I brought my camera and charged it before leaving only to find that it was dead upon my arrival. TRAGEDY. So instead I took my pictures with my iPhone... so excuse the lackluster quality.]

A street in the town. Lots of colors! And you can see how dry the mountains are in the background.

Our campsite was amazing. It was right next to a beautiful river and surrounded by willows. The campsite was very Chilean--lots of people playing traditional Chilean folk music (so beautiful) and all of the campsites were really close together. I'm pretty sure that if the campsite were in the states people would complain about the close proximity of campsites, but it was really fun.

We made a campfire on our own! We cooked sausages and a HUGE piece of steak. We were very proud of ourselves. We also cooked some of the best corn I've ever tasted, some peppers, and zucchini. A Chilean asado without a Chilean (just a Mexican, a Welsh, and three gringos)!