First things first, we woke up showered, and then went downstairs for THE MOST AMAZING breakfast spread i have seen yet!! For the night we paid 5mil or 5,000 Chilean Pesos which is about 10 USD. The room was ok, freezing, but the breakfast was the best part! We were first started with fresh fruit (kiwi, mango, orange) and fresh squeezed grapefruit juice which was super sour, but Natalie sucked them all down cause she loves that. Then we recieved pan tostado, or basically toast with a number of different flavored jams and butter. YUM! The only picture taken of this spread was by the other Abby who currently doesn't have a cord to upload her pictures, nor does she know how to make a facebook photo album.
The goal for this Monday was to take a bus out to Elqui Valley and taste some Pisco distilleries (Pisco, the national alcohol of Chile. They are known for their Pisco Sours. It is a certain type of grape and the way they distill it is special. Peru also claims to be the home of pisco, so once i get there i will have to try it out) The bus was about 30minutes east of Vicuña.
We arrived at a tiny little town with a small park/center. We were hoping to try the Mistral Pisco, because that is the normal pisco that we buy when we go out to the clubs. Turns out it was right in the middle of town, but CLOSED! Horrible. Because it was Monday, most of the distilleries were closed.
the sign of the Mistral Restarant
After checking with a few of the locals they told us that there was one open. It was about 4km ouside of town, that's about 2.2 miles. So we set on our way! There was no way we were going to pass up the opportunity to go to a distillery when we had come all the way out here. So we set on our way, oh and also...it was HOT! The sun was blazing, there were barely any clouds in the sky. and i was packed for cold weather. Whoopsies!
As we were walking we came along many beautiful sights!
The brown things on the cactai are fruits called *tuna* here. Not to be confused with tuna the fish for which they use *atún*.
our view as we walked along
it was hot. no one was coming...so, I decided to take a break in the middle of the road.
beautiful :) and resting in the little bit of shade!
beautiful sign with flowers, for a restaurant that was oh wait....CLOSED.
Finally a car picked us up! There was about 3 cars total that we saw, and a nice couple picked us up about half way and got us to Los Nichos, the only distillery that was open. We walked in, asked the young kid behind the bar who was probably playing video games, and he told us that the only tour was at 3:30pm. It was about noon when we got there, so that was NOT so helpful. We weren't about to wait 3 hours, so we just walked around a little bit, sat on the benches, used the bathroom, and headed back out towards town.
this gives you an idea of the amount of people on the road.
Another quick ride about half way from a nice taxi man who didn't make us pay, and we made it back to town. We walked around a little bit, trying to find a cheap place to eat, or something to do in the town so that we wouldn't feel like it was complete waste of time. But, nothing found. We waited for the bus, and headed back to Vicuña.
Quick stop at the hostel to pick up our luggage from the night before, and then we headed back to La Serena.
It was about 6pm by the time we got back to La Serena, and we had about 6 hours until our bus was to leave a little after midnight. SO, we spent as much time wasting time as possible. Walking around the same markets that we had 3 times before. Spending 2 hours at a cafe and we ordered as slow as possible, with a side of french fries after we were done eating our main course of grilled cheese. After a short colectivo ride to the bus station, we waited another hour or 2 for our bus. We had bought a pack of cards to pass the time, which turned out to be funny. It was a pack of Spanish cards which did not have your normal clubs, hearts, spades, diamonds. Instead there were pictures with numbers 1-12...no 13 though, so there goes the King. So that was interesting trying to play rummie with these cards.
After hours of waiting, it got to be 12:15, and NO BUS. oh Chile. always doing that to me. It only turned out to be 50 minutes late, which i guess didn't really matter at this point. A little after 1am and we were on our way back south to Viña del Mar.
Horrible bus ride. I am too short and my feet don't reach the bar where you should be able to rest them! Not fair.
Got home around 7am, and then went straight to bed :)
Overall a pretty good trip, although not nearly as lovely as Patagonia!
And that's the end of the Chico Norte!
Tomorrow is Monday and that means another 830am class. grr.
Chao for now!
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