Let’s Get Pisco Elqui’d

G’day Travelers,

As per usual we’re Michael J Foxing it back to the future in our proverbial Delorean all the way back to June 2010.

Its a Saturday, not that we’d know thanks to Travel Time which has it about “not long ago”, a bright and sunny Saturday. We have just come from the surfing town of Pichilemu on the coast of southern Chile.  We’re on a bus, possibly made in the mid-70′s or at least the seats smell like they haven’t been cleaned in that long. We’re flying past the the fields and small hillside towns on the way too Santiago, Chile’s smoggy capital city.

We’ve been to Santiago before and along with what we’ve read and heard from other travelers its a city best served as a pass through point. It’s actually quite a nice big metropolis right on a doorstep of the Andes with a lot of European charm, much like most of the cities we visited in South America. But it is big with a LOT of people everywhere at every time and due to it’s location a very bad pollution problem.

We spent the day and most of the evening exploring the city, we found ourselves spending a lot of time around the neighborhood of Barrio Bellavista. Barrio Bellavista is a lovely, lively part of Santiago. Its colourful streets are lined with pubs, restaurants, art galleries, dance studios, night clubs and cafe’s.

Did i mention colurful?

The modern section of Barrio Bellavista

We could of spent more time and money eating our way around the cafe’s and pubs of Santiago but we had a bus to catch. This bus was heading into the great unknown, otherwise called Pisco Elqui at around 10pm.
Pisco what-eee? ye that’s what i said when Jesse first mentioned it. She managed to translate, fairly direct translation, from a Spanish travel magazine that Pisco Elqui was a pretty awesome off the beaten track place to visit. Jess has a surprising knack of filtering through travel articles and taking us to the middle of somewhere to see something. When you get to this place, its usually a cow paddock or empty town with spinifex rolling through then around the corner is an amazingly brilliant something.

So we piled on board another night bus, this time full cama(first class roughly $35) with Turbus, for our 8 hour journey up to the port-side town La Serena. From there, at 6am on a Sunday, you get on a small football team bus, you know the small 20 odd seat buses that the footy coach drives the team around in. The footy bus, is empty and brand new surprisingly. We hop on.

Map of La Serna and Pisco Elqui

It’s another brilliant sunny day around 22 degrees and we’re now heading inland from the coast. On the winding way up through the valleys and mountains Jess explains to me why we’re going to Pisco Elqui.
“Elqui Domos” she says.
“Great!! A Spanish delivery pizza place. But is it that good.” i respond.
“Noooooo silly. It’s aparently got some of the clearest skies in the world. There’s a hotel there that actually these dome things.” Jess replies
“What tents?!” I butt in.
“No these” Jess shows me a photo:

“Looks like a big tent to me! We’re paying this much to stay in a tent?!” i retort
“Look, you love tents, well Yurts.” Jess quips
“Yurts!!!!! Yurts are awesome…..
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48 minutes later i’m very much looking forward to staying in a yurt, i mean dome.

Back to the bus ride. After hugging the sides of some steep mountains, looking down upon the lush valleys below and about 17 questions of “are you sure we’re on the right bus?”. We arrive in Tuscany, Italy. Surprised?! We were.
I figure the Chilean earthquakes were so viscous that they shook Pisco Elqui to Italy and slid Tuscany through the centre of the earth into Chile. Dont believe me?

Just outside of town:

Elqui valley

Town Church

This town blew us away. It was a extremely beautiful little town, with people gathering around the town square singing and playing music. The bus pulled up, the driver kicked us off and told us to walk up the road.
We grabbed our bags and started our walk up the windy road marveling at how clear and blue the sky was.

Pisco Valley so blue:

Down the meandering road

After about 10 minutes we arrive at Elqui Domos. I think to myself, “this is a hotel!” And it very much is, there’s everything you’d expect of a hotel, people collecting your bags, a delicious restaurant, a pool etc etc. Everything but a brick and cement walled room.
Elqui Domos is one of only seven astronomic hotels, fancy term for hotel based around Astronomy, worldwide. The domes themselves are two storey on the inside. The first floor is a lounge area and bathroom, then climbing up a ladder is the main bed with a detachable roof over it. Yup you can sleep literally under the stars, now this is camping!! One thing we did find is how the sound of what seemed like hyenas mating permeated through the thin dome walls. It made comments like “Sleep well” or “Did you have a good night” to our fellow guests childishly funny in the morning.

The main large dome reception and restaurant by the pool:

Looking down on the domes:

More domes:

The main dome:

First level:

Second level:

After more talking about Yurts, Jess decided it was time to shut me up and put food in my mouth. So we walked off down the quiet country road and found a restaurant. As you do.

Down the stairs to our table:

Want a lunch and we also discovered something new. Pisco Sours! Pisco, as it turns out, is a local Chilean/Peruvian clear tasty and alcoholic drink. They generally mix it with juices like lemon to make cocktails. And as it turns out Pisco Elqui is a major manufacturer of Pisco! Who would of thought!!! Yurts and alcoholic cocktails……heaven.

We wander our way back after a few Pisco Sours and bump/stumble into a Pisco factory!!! Brilliant! If you’ve ever seen the Simpsons were Homer goes to Chocolate Land, it was exactly like that. If you havent, watch this:

They even had Pisco in the walls:

One bottle of Pisco

She wore Lemmoooonn

We asked the bloke who owned the joint “Show us ya vineyard” snigger. So he did:

Pisco in hand we finally made it back to our dome in time for dinner! Dinner is served and prepared by a local lady from the town and it is 3 courses of delicious tasty goodness plus some more Pisco.

Jess enjoying dinner:

After dinner, it’s off to use the telescopes and have the local Astronomer give us a tour of the night sky. We look at the moon, Orion’s Belt and view the rings of Saturn in wonderful clarity.  With our pisco’s full of belly we head off to bed to watch the stars dance across the sky. It was truly awe inspiring, peaceful and beautiful to watch the planets and stars perform for us without a cloud or light to hinder its act.

In the morning we wake, enjoy a fresh breakfast and begin our trek back to La Serena.

Cheers

Hutch