As we made our way south from Atacama, we decided to take a bus break and spend a night in La Serena.  Flipping through our Lonely Planet for things to do around there, we were excited to learn that the nearby Elqui Valley is famous as a hot spot for paranormal activity, with numerous reported UFO sightings and a population of crystal-power practitioners.  The valley also boasts production of some of the best pisco (a liquor made from distilled grapes) in Chile.  Hoping to get in on the action, we threw on our tinfoil helmets and caught the next bus to Pisco Elqui.

Although we didn't end up meeting any obvious extraterrestrials (we weren't sure about a few of the locals), we did see some excellent starry night skies while relaxing in our hostel's garden.  We also gained some insight into how pisco is made by taking a tour of the distillery just outside of town.  This is what I learned from the hour long tour: pisco has something to do with grapes, and it's painfully boring to sit through a tour when you can't understand what the tour guide is saying.  Although our spanish isn't terrible, we have a hard time making out the Chilean accent, especially when people (such as our mile-a-minute tour guide) speak too quickly.  Despite our powerful desire to sneak away and run, we stuck it out until the end and scored a few tiny free samples.  When you haven't had a paying job in almost a year, your perception of the value of time becomes very skewed.

Pisco Elqui itself is a nice and quaint town, a good place to be chili and enjoy the surrounding dry and hilly landscape. There's something about sitting in the eerie silence while watching the first few stars appear above the neighbouring mountains that makes you feel like there may indeed be something out there... though the bottles of pisco nectar (like a very sweet wine) may have had something to do with it.

After a couple nights of failed alien-spotting, we were ready to get back on the road and continue south to Santiago and beyond!

If someones bein' mean,
Hit them with a bean-
flavoured fart.
~Mandrew

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Have you ever really looked at a map of Chile? Really looked at it? The country is long and skinny, bounded by the Pacific Ocean on the west and the Andes mountains (the world’s longest mountain range) on the east with not too much between them. It stretches 4600 km north to south from the driest place in the world to the most southern city in the world, and is only 150 km wide on average (about twice the length of the Panama canal).  This crazy geometry makes it impossible to look at a map of Chile on a single page, a bit frustrating when trying to plan our travels using our Lonely Planet.

We entered Chile from Bolivia after our salt flats tour and found ourselves in the tourisy town of San Pedro de Atacama, the driest place in the world (it rained for the first time in 5 years just last week).  Immediately we noticed a difference in the culture - the streets were clean, people were very friendly and happy looking, things were much more expensive, there were plenty of good food options available, drivers stopped at red lights and stop signs, and as tourists we didn't stand out quite as much as we did in Bolivia where streets were littered with garbage, people were friendly enough but also maybe, understandably, a little resentful toward travellers, everything was overly affordable, food lacked flavor of any kind and consisted mainly of stale bread and eggs, and driving or walking on any road was a significant risk to your life. Don’t get me wrong; I loved Bolivia for many reasons, but it was not a place that I would recommend travelling to with young children or if you have any kind of personal standards for cleanliness or health.

After checking out San Pedro for an afternoon we decided to spend the next day exploring the famous national park Valle de la Luna.  Although there were many tours offered in town, since it was so close by we decided to rent bicycles and check it out at our own pace.  We grabbed some groceries for a picnic lunch and rode out of town and into an incredibly unique landscape that’s perfectly described by its name “Valley of the Moon”.  We stopped at a number of recommended locations along the park road and did a few short hikes.  I found the area to be very geologically interesting!  Layers of weathered gypsum and caves formed by water and wind erosion.  The surrounding hills looked like they had been painted: sandstones and siltstones, reds and yellows, boulders and sand dunes.  The air was so dry that both of us had bleeding noses by the end of the day (that as of a month later still haven’t fully healed) but it was worth it to explore the alien landscape.  Our legs were very sore the next day but we got some rest on the bus while we made our way south.

Turns out, you can even be chili on the moon,
~Chelsea

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