Trip to the 4th Region!

Valle de Elqui!

(soooo, now that it is actually Nov 15 I am going to tell you about my trip to the 4th region that ocurred from October 22-26. sorry about that. )

Friday - 10/23

OK! so, we traveled through the night, as always, to La Serena (a six hour bus ride from Viña) and then took the 6:30am bus to Vicuña. Vicuña is a very small town - even smaller, way smaller, than my town of Perry, GA. That being said, we found a hostal, had breakfast and coffee (essential), and planned our time in Vicuña. We saw basically the entire city in the morning....but the one museo that I really wanted to see - the house of Gabriela Mistral (a Nobel Literature Prize winning Chilean poet) - was CLOSED! I was a sad little girl. but life goes on.

we went to a Pisco plant in the afternoon, Capel, had a tour, taste tested some deliciously flavored pisco and walked back. yes, we walked like 45 mins each way. it was kinda hot too. But we made it back, had lunch, and went to an entomology museo (which, if you were wondering, was simply full of BUGS!). I had no idea what entomology was before that trip, but now i just looked it up:

–noun

the branch of zoology dealing with insects.

that explains everything. there are like ten million pictures of this museo because Colleen got sick and couldn't go, so I told her that I would takes pictures of it ALL. and i did.

That night we went to the Mamalluca observatorio and saw some pretty stellar things lol! oh dear. the moon, Jupiter and its three moons, and some crazy stars. even one that reflected light like a rainbow. pretty cool. end of day 1. we crashed hard in our little (really gross) hostal.

Saturday - 10/24

Early morning we headed out to Monte Grande in order to see the tomb and house of Gabriela Mistral. This town had like 3 buildings in it. that was all. the tomb was pretty, the house was like 3 rooms, but we enjoyed our picnic lunch and bought some macrame and copper jewelries from vendors outside the church in the little plaza.

We then headed back into Vicuña, got our stuff and took a bus back out to La Serena. Overall, Valle de Elqui was very arid but it was amazing to see how green it was due to all the pisco vineyards and manmade irrigation. It was a very cute city and great experience.

Now, we are in La Serena. Our hostal here is AMAZING. private bathroom, nice kitchen, computers, CLEANNNNNNNNNN! just the way i like it :) we dropped our stuff off and then set out to explore. We went to el parque japonese - very beautiful and tranquilo. lots of pictures with me playing with patos (ducks). We also walked out to the beach. (these pics are under La Serena).