Taste pisco and see stars!

Ready for an alcoholic journey to the stars? Our next stop after Pan de Azucar National Park was a seaside city called La Serena. But before I tell you about what we got up to in La Serena, I need to tell you about a little stop we had on our way. 

On the way to La Serena we stopped at the paleontological park Los Dedos (the fingers) where several dinosaur bones were found, including those of a megalodon (a giant shark)! We stopped to visit the park on a quick walk because we heard that it's Chile's most important paleontological site. The bones were amazing and there were models of the dino you were looking at, either in bones or as the dino would have been. On several occasions, near the models, you could see dino bones nearby, either teeth sticking out of the rock or a bone on the floor! The park is called Los Dedos because the sand dunes stretching out looked like fingers and so the palaeontologists adopted the name.

Now back to La Serena which has quite an interesting history. La Serena was founded around 1544 by captain Juan Bohon, who called it Villanueva de la Serena. Around 1549, five years after its foundation,  the natives in the area rebelled, causing the death of most of the Spaniards in the area. Later, in August of the same year, it was re-founded by Captain Francisco de Aguirre on the order of Pedro de Valdivia giving it the new name, San Bartolome de La Serena. La Serena suffered from pirate attacks causing a fortress to be constructed on the seafront in 1700.

Though we didn't explore La Serena much, we did visit the surrounding area and in particular a valley called Elqui valley. Apparently, Elqui valley is the first place in Chile were pisco first started to be made. Pisco is a bit like raki in Greece or grapa in Italy. And because it is a very famous South American drink, we went to a pisco distillery to do a tour, and learn a bit about how they make it. To be honest, I thought it's going to be boring but, actually, I really enjoyed it. Making pisco is quite a complicated process; what I liked about the distillery we visited is that they still try to make pisco in the traditional, slow, hand-made way.  Unlike most other distilleries in the Elqui valley, the distillery we visited heats the machine with wood, which apparently gives it a hint of a smokey flavour. Also unlike other distilleries, this one manually mixes water and pisco together when trying to dampen the amount of alcohol. Dan and Ioanna tried all four of their piscos but Ismene and I also got lucky. The distillery makes a grape musk syrup from the left over grape musk which we of course tried and it was delicious!

Later on that day, we also visited Observatorio del Pangue just south of a town called Vicunas, were some of the clearest skies in Chile are.

Our guide told us that they have over 300 days of sunshine and clear skies at night a year. Imagine that? I heard poor Ioanna sighing next to me when he told us that. I bet she was thinking about going back to England and secretly (or not so secretly) despairing about the English weather...Also, the absence of light pollution in the area makes it perfect for star gazing, and this is why there are many observatories around. The only constructions in the area are observatories, no other buildings for miles and miles.

You might remember that we also did a star gazing tour in San Pedro de Atacama (on the east part of Chile) and in the Tatacoa desert in Colombia. But this one was I thought the most impressive and I think it was because the telescope we used was huge! Our guide told us that it was the largest telescope available to the public in Chile.

We saw loads of different stars on the tour: Mercury (which apparently is really difficult to see); clusters of 5 million stars; twin stars; galaxies colliding; and, at the very end, an incredible moon. 

And I realised how lucky we were to visit on the night we did when our guide told us that the observatory was closing tomorrow until September because the weather changes and there are many more very cold and cloudy nights. I have to say, I think I'll miss these incredible skies when we go back. So maybe I'll join Ioanna so we can sigh together...