Valley Del Elique and north!

I spent 2 days in La Serena before meeting back up with Phillip (the german fellow I met in Santiago). On Saturday we headed up the Valley Del Elique to the towns of Vicuna and Pisco Elique. We visited a Piso distillery and saw lots and lots of grape vines growning Pisco. The vally is famous for prosucing Pisco (traditional liquor of Peru and Chile), and also for observatorys. The sky is very clear with few clouds so the hills are scattered with observtorys both big and small. We headed up to Maraculla Observatory at 10:30, we spent 2 hrs up there looking through various sizes of telescopes and we learned some constillations (in the southern hemisphere). Yesterday we headed up the Pan-American highway (ruta 5) up north to the small National Park ...... where we camped along the beach. We then headed further up north through the desert, stopping at an abdoned mine smelter to snap some photos. We saw more wild Vicuna, and are presently in the funky mining town of Copiapo. We are headed out to Tres Crucez National Park for the next 4-5 days, it's supposed to be amazing and thanks to my new friend I actually get to see it because you can only access it in a 4x4.


Abandoned mine smelter in the middle of the dessert.




Northern Chile is dry... and barren.


This is where Pisco comes from...


Swan in the Japonese garden in La Serena