The tour reminded me very much of the tours in Mallorca, Spain, during my youth. In essence you were carted around from one shop with local specialties to the next. 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there... Maybe I should get a car? Anyhow, the first stop was a shop which sold everything made from Papaya. Everything very yummy but I don't have room.
Afterwards we went to one of the few interesting points of the tour, the Embalse (reservoir) Puclaro. This was designed by German engineers.
Already when looking at the area in front of the dam you can tell that this is a rather dry area. The mountains surrounding us are covered by cacti and rocks.
Additionally a tunnel was built so the road could pass the dam. It then goes along the lake towards the end of the valley and into Argentina.
After that we went to a Pisco distillerie. Pisco is the national beverage of the Chilenos. They usually drink Pisco with Coca Cola. The reason being that you can't drink cheap pisco any other way :) Pisco may only be made out of 5 Muskateller grapes. However, as the harvesting season isn't until April all we could see were empty tanks, a caved in roof and the shop...
Then we went on to Vicuña, the birth place of author Gabriela Mistral. As one of two Chilean Nobel Price winners for literature we had to go there... Ok, 20 minutes for the village... That was too little to enjoy the village and too much for the town square. Afterwards we went to the museum for Ms. Mistral, dito.
On we went to a view point from where we were supposed to see the typical Valle de Elqui.
This is what you get when you dump water into a desert valley. The whole valley is a giant green house thanks to artificial watering. They pump the water up the valleys for kilometers because only in the main valley there's a river.
On the left side in the picture you can see nets. They are used to protect the plants from the wind which blows always and oftentimes rather strong. In the middle you can see that a part of the plants are covered in nets. That's done to delay the ripening process. This way the fruits can be sold off season to a higher price. It also doesn't matter how steep the hill is, they plant everywhere...
Then we went to have lunch in the "most touristy" village in the region, Pisco Elqui. I don't quite understand why because there's nothing to see there. Really, nothing... It's probably self marketing or because almost all tourists get carted there to have lunch? The village is owned more or less by the richest familiy in Chile. They also own or owned the Pisco destillerie Mistral Pisco and the bank of Chile... Unfortunately I forgot their name.
The next few days I'm on tour and don't quite know where I'll be. So it'll be a while until you hear from me again.
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