Advertisement
Published: March 21st 2013
Edit Blog Post
This weekend, 10 other people and I went to Valle de Elqui, about 8 hours north of where I live in Chile. It was quite an amazing trip! Though it would be impossible for me to describe everything in detail, I will try to hit on some of the biggest/most important parts of the trip. I am also going to try to write in chronological order, as otherwise I will confuse myself greatly😊
So we left Thursday night at about 11pm. We went on an overnight bus, which doesn’t make for a great night of sleep. However, it beats driving 7 hours in the day and wasting a whole day of an already shortish trip. So we arrived in a city called La Serena at about 5 in the morning. We hung out at the terminal there for a a couple hours until we could catch a bus to a city called Monte Grande, which was about 20 minutes from our campsite. At this point, I experienced one of the few disappointing parts of this trip: I realized I left my camera on the overnight bus!😞 It goes without saying that I was a bit upset, but I tried not
to dwell on it. Two other people on the trip also left their phones on the first bus, one being an iPhone! Good work gringos, leaving all your valuable stuff on the bus. Ha. Luckily for me, I had my iPod with me, which takes pretty decent pictures. A big thank you goes out to my sister Emma who was kind enough to give it to me before I left for the trip! Because of her, I now have pictures from the weekend! Anyway, once there, the only way to get transportation to the campsite area (unless you have your own car, which, believe it or not, we didn’t) is to pay these guys with pickup trucks to bring you out there. They were nice though, so it was fine, just a bit uncomfortable for those riding in the backJ
We arrived at our campsite which is called “Rio Magico.” We selected a site right next to Rio Magico, and it was beautiful! There was a rickety bridge that you had to cross to get the campsite. It seemed pretty sketchy, but no one fell through! To me, our campsite felt like something out of a movie. Right next
some cool, if morbid, taggings
These were at the pisco distillery too. They were in a room like a bar where people used to come to drink. to the river, some big, willowy trees hanging down around us, a mountain view in the background. It was such a pretty place to spend the weekend.
After we were there for a while and were unpacked and had camp set up, we decided to go see a local pisco distillery. Pisco is the most common and cultural hard liquor in Chile. Someone told me it is actually a type of brandy, though I can’t say for sure. At the end of the tour, they gave us little tiny cups of pisco to try. No offense to Chileans, Chilean culture, or their beverage of choice, but I imagine if I were to drink rubbing alcohol it might taste similar. Haha it is very strong, and didn’t particularly appeal to me!
The next day we knew that we wanted to hike, but we were not quite sure where. We heard from the man in charge of the camp that there was a “magical rock” which supposedly has magnetic powers or something. After passing the turn off for it the first time, we backtracked and found it! It was a huge rock, probably about 15 feet tall, 10 feet wide,
and 25 feet long. Some of the people in our group managed to climb on top of it and were taking some pictures when were approached by a worker for the campsite on an atv who said: “Chiquillos, you can’t be on the rock.” As it turns out, there are ancient symbols carved into the rock, and, obviously, they do not want people scrambling all over it!
After our rock adventure, we began an even bigger one. As I have mentioned, the area around the campsite was just beautiful. So, in order to get an even better view, we decided to climb to the top of this mountain. It was not a real difficult (in terms of advanced skill level) climb, but it was strenuous. A lot of the way up was sandy, rocky, and gravelly. It probably took us an hour and a half or so to make it to the top. But boy was it worth it! The view was stunning and it felt so cool to have actually made it to the top! One of the guys in our group set up his camera and had it take pictures of the four of us who climbed
That is me
part way up the mountain to this lookout point near the top. I haven’t seen the pictures online yet, but I look forward to it!
Near the campsite was a cool little convenient store that we visited several times throughout the weekend. We were about a 20 minute ride from the nearest town, so the easiest way to get food was from this place. The woman who worked there was very kind to us. She spoke English very well, and when I asked her where she learned, she told me that she had lived in the US for 32 years! I was certainly not expecting to meet someone who had spent over half her life in the US working at this campsite. It was one of the many times on this trip that I have realized that you can find connections with people in ways and in places that you would never expect.
Well, Sunday rolled around it was more of a relax/pack up to go home kind of day. Our overnight bus was not scheduled to leave until 1230 that night (so technically Monday morning), so we were not in a rush at all. We ended up leaving Rio Magico around 3,
and that is me
further up the mountain. and caught a bus back to La Serena. From there, are group split into 2, with part going to pizza place, and part going to a seafood place. Though seafood may have been the more cultural choice, pizza sounded to me like the more delicious (and cheaper) choice. It was actually really funny for us that went to the pizza place because we realized after we ate that we had nowhere to go. We did not want to go back to the terminal for 6 hours, so we decided to hang out at the “Pizza Pronto.” They had a tv and we watched the entire national treasure 2 movie in Spanish. I loved it, haha. The people working there must have been so confused- “why are these gringos watching an entire movie at a fast food joint” haha.
Our bus to go back ended up being almost an hour late, so we didn’t head out until after 1:30 that night. On the bright side, I didn’t leave anything valuable on the bus! Maybe I learned my lesson. We got back about 7 on Monday morning and I had class at 10. It was a bit of a rough day,
I caught a sunrise!
It was pretty darn bright. but I slept well that night! 4 nights in a row either in a bus or on the ground made me really appreciate my bed! All in all, this was such a fun trip! I am realizing how important it is for me to see as many different parts of Chile as possible. As any Chilean will tell you, the difference in the regions of the country are many, ranging from cultural to geographical and more. In part because of the great experience on this trip, a few of us have already booked plane tickets to Punta Arenas, a city in the way south of Chile, for April 10-16! I should probably get around to letting my teachers know I will not be in class those days… As always, a big thank you to those of you who are keeping me in your thoughts and prayers!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.072s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 12; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0444s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb