Day 115 - Todays weather: Cloudy

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We woke up when we arrived in La Serena at about 7am. A valley stretches from this coastal town into the Andes, and we had decided to spend a couple of days there. So we caught a funny little bus for the hour journey to Vicuña, and found a great place to stay called Casa del Professor. We don't really understand its history but the lovely owners spent plenty of time trying to explain it. We certainly understand that cowboys used to stay here which accounts for the very tall doorways (so they could ride in on horseback).

One big attraction to this part of Chile is the night sky. It's one of the best places in the world for astronomy and there are several huge observatories. One of them, Marmalluca, offers nightly visiting so we signed up for a 10pm - 1.30am tour. They boast over 300 clear nights a year but luck was not with us - probably punishment for Gemma's act of cruelty burning an ant with her magnifying glass.

Anyway, we went to have a beer to get over it. Here we struck up a football-related conversation with some locals, including the owner, and this turned into an evening playing dominoes until the small hours. They are incredibly good at it and way more sophisticated than us. Though Gabriel and Gemma did beat Sergio and Ed 4-0 (seems to be a re-occuring score recently!). Hopefully we'll get to play some more. One of them has a gift shop on the main square and we popped in there afterwards for a look round. He tore a couple of souvenirs to pieces just so he could give Gemma a present of a bottle of Pisco, the local drink. Peru, and most people, believe Pisco orginated in Peru (in Pisco in fact) but the Chileans disagree. Perhaps they should fight a war over it?

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