La Serena

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I made a mistake buying bus tickets to our next stop. I must have been tired and got the tickets for San Pedro and not La Serena. We could not understand why the bus was going to take over 24 hours when it was just up the coast. When we found out what I had done it was a rushed trip down to the bus station to change it. It was the hottest bus trip ever, the sun was shining in the front window the whole way and the air vents were not working. Paul was down to his singlet and I would have gone less if it was decent. We could see cactuses all the way, we did not understand why it was like that. We got here and learnt on a tour that they only get 100mm of rain a year. (4inches). The road was part of the Pan American highway and went along the coast.

We did a tour of the Elqui Valley, which is an area up a valley from La Serena that is irrigated by big dams that totally depend on the Andes snow melt. It is very fertile soils, no fertilizer is needed. The area is full of orchards and vineyards and vegetable gardens. The area is much bigger than we could ever have imagined. Very large Avocado orchards on steep slops of the Andes mountains. I would not like to have to climb up to them to pick the fruit. There are very few insects or bird life that eat the fruit, so the growers have no problems with the fruit getting picked at. We visited a papaya and Custard Apple orchard, women have to hand pollinate the flowers.
The dam that irrigated the orchards drowned 3 villages that had to be moved to higher ground by the government. The water behind the dam was 7 km long. At the dam, there were stalls and I bought a cactus fruit, we had been told tasted like a kiwi fruit. It was white in side with small black seeds, you needed to have sugar on it because it is very sour.

Further up the vally we visited a pisco sour distillery, they make 40 million bottles a year and only 3% is exported. It was only one of the many distilleries they have here. A sampling there and then up the road more. We went to the end of the road and had lunch at a restaurant - 3 course meal with pisco sour plus beer or fizzy.

We had been told by a local we met in Valpairiso that there were people up that valley who wore white gowns and had been visited by aliens. We never saw any, but there was a person prepared to read my orocal? Back to the hostel at 1800 and then collected at 1900 to go the the observatory.

This area has 4 inches of rain, 300 clear nights a year and has several observatories. The stars were very clear, we were over 1000 metre high. We saw Saturn , Jupiter, a jewel box with coloured stars, and a nebula.

We had a walk around La Serena yesterday, we leave for San Pedro tonight. We will update again later.

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