Day 1: La Serena, Valle de Elqui

For having planned everything literally two days in advance, my weekend trip was a great success! By the time we went to the bus terminal on Friday to buy tickets, the only available departure time was 11:20 p.m. - we decided an overnight bus trip wouldn’t be so bad. It was $36 round trip for a 6 hour trip on a really nice double-decker coach bus. We all slept through the entire trip and arrived in La Serena at 5:30 a.m. Besides me, four other students from my program made the trek, two of which we entrusted to make reservations at a hostel beforehand. We walked from the bus terminal to the hostel in complete darkness, in a desolate street, in an unfamiliar city. It was a little unnerving.

This was my first experience in a hostel and, I have to admit, it was very disillusioning. I was prepared to share a room with 10 other people, sleep on a bare mattress, and/or see rats crawling everywhere. Instead, I shared a rat-free room with one of the girls in our group, we had our own bathroom and shower, and the beds were stacked with plenty of blankets for the cold night. It was a lot less eerie than I was secretly hoping it would be.

By the time we checked in and everything, it was 6:30 a.m. We had decided to go on a day trip to the Valle de Elqui and the van was scheduled to leave at 9 am, so we all slept for a whopping 2 hours before joining 8 other people for the excursion. The trip through Valle de Elqui was beautiful! The valley is a huge agriculture region and boasts a multitude of crops: potatoes, grapes, strawberries, lettuce, clementines, chirimoya, etc. Our first stop was a huge dam near which a brand new hydroelectric plant was built to supply all of the energy for a nearby town. It was impressive!

Me on the walkway at the top of the dam.

For lunch, we stopped at a remote restaurant on the outskirts of a little town in the mountains. It was neat because they use solar boxes that reflect sunlight off of foil to cook the food. We had a choice between a meal with chicken or goat. I’ve been trying to eat a lot of food that I wouldn’t eat in the U.S., so I opted for the goat. Who knew... goat is really good! It tasted like beef, just a lot more tender.

The solar boxes used to cook our food.

We also stopped at a Piscolería, where they utilize all of the grape crops they grow to make Pisco brandy. At the end of the tour, they had us try some Pisco that was in the middle of the distillation process so it was almost 20-proof over the legal limit in Chile. After seeing the revolted faces of everyone else trying it, I knew I shouldn’t drink it but it was one of those things you have to do just so you can say you did it. So I did. Words cannot describe the disgustingness.

Grape crops in the valley surrounded by snow-capped mountains.

One of the towns we passed through was where Gabriela Mistral, a Chilean poet we’re currently learning about in my literature class, went to school. We went to the museum there, but sadly it wasn’t anything spectacular. The sun was setting just as we were heading back to La Serena and a pinkish sky draped the mountains all around us. It was a nice escape from the city.

We got back to the hostel around 6:30 and we went to a small corner restaurant a few blocks from the hostel and had empanadas for supper. It was the first time I’ve had cheese empanadas that were deep fried – yum! I compared it to a giant cheese curd and got blank stares from the four other students I was with. After supper, we were all craving Chilean pastries so we walked a ridiculously long way to a grocery store. It’s really hard not to be overwhelmed at bakeries here - there are too many choices! I finally decided on a tart with custard and fruit – I still can’t believe I actually made it back to the hostel without devouring it.