January 11-14, 2018
Why Am I On This Bus?
So, how is it that we ended up on a night bus from Santiago to La Serena, then onward to Vicuña, and ultimately the little town of Pisco Elqui?
More than a month prior, Sarah, Darcy and I had been texting about this weekend we’d have before Sarah would head home to the U.S. on the 14th. We’d thrown around the idea of going across the Argentinian border to Mendoza where we’d galavant through rolling hills of vineyards, drinking and cycling between wineries and generally enjoying ourselves. We realized the trip and subsequent flights would be a bit too ambitious for a weekend trip and opted for going north in Chile to the Valle del Elqui, where the national liquor, pisco (a type of brandy), is harvested and distilled. While we were texting, I’d found a really fantastic blog post about a weekend trip to Elqui – how convenient! We basically just planned to follow it and can say that the author totally steered us in the right direction. We were hoping for some tranquility, pisco, and beautiful scenery, and we got that in spades.
The Long Journey North
My first bus experience in Chile was definitely a good one. The seats were pretty comfortable, and at less than $20 for an 8-hour ride, it was certainly good value. After a long day of transit from El Chalten, I passed out rather quickly after we left Santiago around 11pm and made it most of the way through to La Serena, our transit point, when we arrived around 7am. The alternative was to spend a night in Santiago and then fly out to Serena and bus onwards to Elqui the following morning, but cost and time spent were both way higher, so we opted for the bus. It turned out the same bus would be able to take us the next leg to Vicuña, about an hour away for only a few dollars. The bus was mostly empty at this point, so we got to enjoy a bit of luxury on the bottom floor of hte double-decker where the “ful cama” (full bed) seats are. Super wide, comfy and fully-reclinable, this was a perfect way to start the morning.
We arrived ot Vicuña to find that we’d need to wait a bit for the next minibus onwards to our final destination of Pisco Elqui. Darcy and Sarah went in search of a coffee while Adina and I ventured for the ATM. Pisco Elqui, as well as our next destination in the Atacama Desert, are notorious for not having (functioning) ATMs. After our issues in Patagonia, I was going to be sure to have enough cash to make it through.
A Charmed Little Town
We arrived in the little town of Pisco Elqui around 9am, and made our way through the small streets to our recommended hostel, Hostal Triskel. There weren’t many options in town, and this one cost us about $25 pp per night, but we were super happy with our choice once the little wood door from the street opened. Granted, the owner had just woken up (or been awakened by our ringing of the bell…), so we were a bit worried we had the wrong place when nobody showed up for a couple minutes. Eventually, we were greeted and welcomed to this beautiful space full of trees, gardens, sitting spaces, hammocks, and a shared kitchen. Our room was cozy and we decided to drop our bags, and relax a bit. I made a quick grocery run to grab, of course, a rack of eggs (expensive at ~$2 a dozen) and came back to make some breakfast.
Advised by our super helpful and relaxed hostel owner, we made our way down the steep street leading to Triskel and around the bend towards some of the pisco distilleries. Along the way were fabulous views of the valley below – lush green rows of grapes surrounded by sandy mountains to each side. The roads were lined with desert plants and trees, and the homes with some graffiti murals all lent to the vibe of the area. Given that it was the peak of summer in Chile and the lack of shade along the road, we got quite hot and tried to flag down some cars to hitch the mile or so to the distillery. We were quickly successful, as hitchhiking (al dedo) is a bit of a national pastime in Chile, and got us to one of the distilleries in no time.
As luck would have it, we arrived just in time to join the 1pm tour of the distillery, where we learned a bit about the history of this particular distillery, the production of pisco itself, and just got to walk around the beautiful grounds and cellars. I don’t remember a whole lot about it considering it was in Spanish and I was a bit delirious from sleep, but it was a lot of fun and we ended up grabbing a bottle on the way out to enjoy for ourselves.
After the tour, we began walking back and stopped into a little shop selling nuts and dried fruits run by an elderly woman, where we chatted for a bit and then bought a few bags of treats. Everything looked so tasty, but I had to control myself since we hadn’t had lunch yet! We made our way down the road back into town and settled on a delightful looking gallery cum cafe for lunch. I went for the traditional choclo dish, basically like a puff pastry corn quiche, and it was divine. The cafe was set in a beautiful courtyard with gardens along with some live music. We perused the gallery shop after and headed back for some relaxation time as we were all pretty beat and suffering from food comas.
That night we made tasty dinner together from some of the groceries we’d had Adina buy in Santiago and indulged in a few games of cards accompanied by piscola (pisco mixed with Coke) and were serenaded by Sarah and Adina singing duets while Adina played her ukelele. We were pretty pleased all around. Later in the evening, we went out to a bar with live music in their backyard and a fire pit. We enjoyed that for a while before heading back to the hostel and crashing.
We woke up Saturday and enjoyed a slow morning, a full breakfast feast (the hostel provided some bread with butter and jam, and coffee and tea) before heading into the town center for the day. One of the other main attractions that we’d hoped to take advantage of was a stargazing tour. Given the altitude and remoteness, Valle del Elqui and further north, in the Atacama Desert, are renowned for their incredibly dark skies, near-zero light pollution and thus fabulous night vistas. In fact, more than half of all astronomical infrastructure is expected to be in the Valle del Elqui in the coming years. Originally, we had scheduled our star tour Friday night, but were notified that the skies weren’t going to be clear (a true anomaly, especially in summer) and so our first stop in town was to visit the tour office and sort things out. We were assured that tonight would be clear, so we paid and arranged for us to be picked up from our hostel at 10pm (sunset is quite late here).
We spent the next part of the afternoon at a spiritual festival that was starting in the central square just as we arrived. Around the central fountain were many tables under tents selling everything from herbs, incense, crystals, yoga accessories, crafts and more. The festival started with a collective prayer, blessing Mother Earth and showing gratitude for all of the abundance we had in front of us. We joined a light yoga class in the shade, followed by a perusal of the tables and ultimately, some ice cream before heading back to the hostel for the remainder of the afternoon.
We got picked up as planned by a German guy who would serve as our “translator”, along with an English-speaking family and our driver. We drove about 30 minutes up and around the mountains adjacent to our hostel and arrived at a little flat area where there was a bonfire going and lounge chairs circled around it. Even though it was summer, it was still pretty chilly at night, especially at elevation, and so we were glad to have the fire. We sipped on pisco sours while the astrologist (?) began her talk, explaining all the different galaxies and stars that we could see with the telescope that was setup for viewing. It was funny to hear the German guy translating to the family next to us while also being able to fully understand (possibly better than he could) what the woman was saying. It was another great affirmation for myself of how my Spanish had been improving, which, when I’m in Sarah’s presence is always a bit tough because she is so fluent. After the talk, we got to wait our turn among the 20 or so other people to take a look inside the telescopes that were set to look at different constellations and galaxies. There’s truly nothing like gazing at the night sky and seeing things that are many many light years away, so large that they dwarf our conception of size and space. And then to see it so up close in a telescope was astounding. The other option we’d had for this stargazing was to take a bus back to Vicuña for an evening and go to the massive Mamalluca Observatory there and see the stars and a presentation from inside, but we rightly opted for the outdoor, more local experience, and were not disappointed one bit!
The next morning we took a little hike up into the hills behind the hostel for some exercise and beautiful views of the valley. We got started on the early side to avoid some of the midday heat, and were tailed for part of the way by a lovely pup. The stray dogs in Chile are often well looked-after and super friendly (apparently some in Santiago know how to use the public buses), so we were happy for the company. We got back to the hostel with enough time to shower up and head out to grab our ride back to La Serena. Sarah had a flight that evening back to Santiago and onwards to Chicago, and Adina, Darcy and I had a 9pm bus in to Calama, the nearest town to San Pedro de Atacama in the norther desert.
The Long Journey … Further North
We arrived to cloudy La Serena, on the coast of Chile, around lunchtime and started to meander a bit through the town. Since we all had all of our baggage, it wasn’t easy to navigate through the crowded Sunday markets, and a lot of the restaurants we’d looked up turned out to be closed on Sunday. Instead, we ended up at a typical burger cafe, where I accidentally cracked one of the floor-to-ceiling windows when I leaned my backpack onto it. Oops! Chilean service, which is chilly to begin with, was not so pleasant from there on as we had our orders taken, and then screwed up, and then continued to ask for what we’d ordered. I think they were pleased to see us leave.
We made it to the bus station and Sarah and I tried to figure out a way to get her to the airport via shared taxi or bus, but were unsuccessful. As this was happening, Darcy ran out of the front of the station calling my name because we’d been able to get ourselves on an earlier bus to Calama. Sarah and I had a heartfelt, albeit fast goodbye, and I saw her off in a taxi to the airport.
I quickly ran back to the station, grabbed my bags and we jumped on the bus. Since we had gotten on the earlier bus, we weren’t seated next to each other, but I was able to get a window seat and surprisingly, we were soon served with a small dinner and drink on trays. In all my bus experiences, I’d never seen this before. Another point for Chilean buses!
As we cruised up the coast to Calama (about a 14-hour journey) the sun began to set over the Pacific Ocean and light up the sky. Normally I wouldn’t have selected a window seat because of my legs, but I was happy for this change of pace as the views and the sky were just spectacular. I had trouble sleeping, and ended up reading most of my book and then watching all of the second season of Master of None, before we got off the bus around 7am in Calama, a small city home to lots of mineral mining, and the gateway to the famous high-altitude Atacama Desert of Chile.
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