We rented a car and drove 1.5h north of Santiago last evening after coming back from Easter Island. We stayed at San Esteban in a small hotel ran by an older couple. The place is clean and tidy. She had to walk with a crane even up and down the stairs. After breakfast, we drove for 4h north to Valle de Enchanto. This park is quite isolated from tourists but seemed popular with locals as we saw several families doing picnic there. This valley is listed as archeologically important for its pre-historic petroglyphs. There were no set paths to explore. The whole place felt like a giant hide-and-seek with the treasures scattered and hidden among beautiful desert landscape scattered with humongous stones and giant cacti with a small stream. It would be easy to spend the whole afternoon here but we still had 2.5h drive to our destination Vicuna.
Vicuna is the biggest small town inside the beautiful Elqui Valley just 1h east of La Serena. This valley is famed for growing the grapes to make pisco, the key liquor ingredient to make pisco sour. This is the epicenter of the dispute between Chile and Peru concerning who owns/invented pisco sour. Peru has a whole town named Pisco which we visited three years ago. Chile had a town named Pisco Elqui to counter which we'll visit tomorrow.
We stayed at a hostel with a rustic decorated backyard full of flowering shrubs and fruit trees like avocado trees! The owner did not speak any English at all so we struggled to communicate. Luckily, this guy seemed to be popular with women who can speak English. He kept on calling on his English speaking girl friends just like lifeline in the game show Who wants to be a millionaire!
After dinner, we strolled in the supermarket right in town center square. We were surprised that the food prices were similar to those in Santiago-expensive! Similar to Vancouver prices. With an average monthly income of $1000USD, how could local people afford to buy any groceries?
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