Magical Mystery Geysers

Right here, folks: Geysers del Tatio north of San Pedro. If you visit the area, do not skip the daybreak geyser tour, even thought it does leave in the middle of the night (4 a.m.). Truly a gorgeous, near-mystical place.

We arrived just before sunrise, the optimal time for geyser activity.
Not an optimal time for my activity, but we sucked it up, and it was worth it.

  

Hard to miss the dozens of steaming holes in the earth, but thanks.

This is copper (and salt) country, and lots of pretty colors show up.

Calcified deposits? I think?

I was simultaneously freezing, being steamed, and standing in recently boiling water.

Stopped for a dip in these hot springs

Grazing vicuñas on the drive back.

Llama kabob-- delicious!

My water bottle after the drive back to town-
slight elevation change, apparently.

Valley of the Moon and Death-Mars

The final leg of our farewell tour brought us to San Pedro de Atacama and surrounding area. There is much to say about unearthly beauty and life in the world's driest desert and how Atacama is constantly trying to turn every living thing into a mummy, but I can't get my mind around expressing it well right now. Instead, I give you: some pictures.

Do you see three Marys? There are supposed to be three Marys.

I dub this one, "Crabby Sea Monster That Doesn't Like Birds"

One of many volcanoes in the area (Ring of Fire, after all). The white stuff
on the ground is not frost but a micro-organism that shows up if there's been
any moisture at all, and it had actually snowed a few days earlier.

 

Yep, it's a desert.

Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon)

Moonscape with moonbus driving through

Salt caves with cool salty formations

Artful salt

This was named Mars (marte) Valley by the local Belgian missionary priest/
nature enthusiast, but his Spanish accent was so bad people thought he was
saying Death (muerte) Valley. At this point, take your pick.

Moon over Mars

The rock formations of Death

The Stars of Elqui Valley

By far the biggest local hero of the Elqui Valley is Gabriela Mistral, winner of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Literature and first Latin American to win, either man or woman.

Her childhood home/school/post office
 in Montegrande

 La poetisa was apparently a rather sober woman, and more often than not she is not smiling in photos. That said, the expressions that her proud homeland has chosen to immortalize in stone range from mildly depressed to downright sinister.

Thinking about an unhappy childhood?
Or maybe someone just ate the last empanada

Still pensive overlooking her own grave– okay, free pass for that one

Here's where they cross over into "did the sculptor actively dislike her? Was he traumatically forced to read her poetry in school?" I mean, just look at those arched eyebrows, those soulless laser-beam eyes of stone...

Bow down! Bow down to your Supreme Evil Overlord of
Reflective Social Activist Poetry!

And what is the deal with death masks? Why immortalize not the life of the dearly departed, but specifically their dead bodies? Actually, I can only assume this is a death mask; that wasn't specified. Given her track record with sculptors, maybe they just chose to make her look dead.

This has to be a death mask, right?

But you know what's wrong with the above (assumed) death mask? It's too small. Saaay, I think the town square could use a new fountain.

 That's more like it.

More pensive staring, this time in the vague direction of happy children

If I were Sra. Mistral, and I were faced with both a lack of photogeneity (is that a word?) and an army of grudge-bearing sculptors, I think I would prefer this little piece of homage that I found tastefully Sharpied on a back corner of her grave site.

However, Gabby is not the only star in the Elqui Valley. With frequently clear skies, high elevation and little light pollution, it is also a favorite location for actual stargazing, both casual and professional. On a cold, clear night, we took an "Astro Tour" from the top of a desert ridge.

The moon was distractingly bright, about five days shy of full, but we were still able to see a sky full of beautiful, strange stars. I say strange because I don't go south of the equator very often, and the scene above me was only vaguely familiar, like running into someone's cousin at the grocery store.

The moon, at least, was the same, and it turns out that telescopes and iPhone cameras are a workable combination. It made for a marvelous final snapshot from the Valle de Elqui.

 

Pisco pride in the Elqui Valley

Vicuña, Valle de Elqui
5-8 June 2014

With our jobs at the preschool freshly wrapped up, we packed our not-quite-so-enormous-as-heading-home bags and boarded the bus north for the other half of our bookend tour of Chile (we went south the first week we arrived). First stop: the Elqui Valley (Valle de Elqui), home of many avocado and fruit groves, as well as many, many vineyards, useful for the making of wine and pisco. If you've never heard of pisco (I hadn't before we came), it is a liqueur (technically a brandy? maybe?) made from distilled grapes, and it is the official national drink of both Chile and Peru. If you want to ruffle a few plumas, go to either country and imply that the other one is the true original home of pisco. Watching that particular border battle play out is good for at least a few minutes of free entertainment.

Besides producing lots of grapes and stuff, the Elqui Valley is pretty and nice to visit. 

See what I mean?

We took a tour of the area that included the Fundo Los Nichos pisquera, the oldest active pisco distillery in the country. They still do things pretty old-school and small-scale, relying on their carefully-maintained tourist-friendly quaintness to pay the bills.

...not quite this old school; here's some retired historic equipment

wood-heated boiler...or heater...or whatever you put grape juice in
during the distilling process.

The bubbling nectar of pre-pisco

Early stages in the barrels, with a little exhaust port in a bottle.

Barrels in dark corridors

Here's where we come to the "nichos" mentioned in the name. That's nichos, not nachos. Sorry, nacho lovers. But this is fun and delicious too!

One of the early family member/owners, Don Rigoberto, would host a drinking, gaming, poetry, drinking, philosophy, and drinking club (there was a lot of drinking) for his friends. They would sit in this corner of the pisquera, drinking, surrounded by little niches filled with bottles of pisco.

Many of the niches have little rhyming dedications posted over them. Apparently, whichever of the club members got the most drop-dead drunk each year was "buried" in a niche in the form of pisco, and eulogized in the form of droll poetry.

This one's for a dentist. A drunken, philosophical dentist.

 

Later in the week, we took a tour of the Capel plant. Once you discover that pisco exists and you try to find some, this is the brand you will find, and this is the largest facility they have.

No wood fires here...

...but they do use "oak add-in cubes"
somewhere in the process.

Big tanks-o-pisco

Area de embotellacion: Industry, working for you and your beverage!

I don't mean to knock Capel simply for being big, and they do make a fine product. It just made quite a contrast with Los Nichos.

Also, Los Nichos did not mark any step of their process with a skull and crossbones:

No! Don't drink the pisco from THESE grapes!!

Once you have obtained a bottle of pisco you may ask, what do I do with it?  The answer is almost always: make a pisco sour. It is both my goal and Kat's to perfect the pisco sour this summer, because man, are they tasty. Our pre-trip attempt to make one tasted okay-ish, but properly made by a bartender in the town where they make pisco, it is a zingy, tasty thing of cocktail beauty. I eagerly await an email from local informants.

For the record, we did see other things besides pisco, but I will save dour-faced Nobel Prize winners for another post.