The next stop on our trip was La Serena, a smaller coastal resort town that is a popular tourist destination in the summer months (and the second-oldest city in Chile, after Santiago). The bus ride to La Serena along Route 5 (the asphalt artery that runs north-south through the country) was about six hours and was quite tolerable. Coaches in Chile are comfortable (with several seat upgrade options) and the bus companies are very timely and efficient. We arrived in the late afternoon, got lost walking from the bus depot, oriented ourselves using the sun, and eventually found our hostel (Hostal El Arbol), a converted home nestled in a small, quiet neighborhood.
After being shown around and dropping off our things in the room, we grabbed a couple chairs on the back patio and dove into the empanadas and wine we had hauled with us from Valparaiso. We ended up chatting for a while with a couple other travelers and they invited us to share in the (vegetarian!) pasta, veggies, and garlic bread they were cooking up for dinner. Becca and I walked over to the local Lider (Chilean Walmart) to buy some wine and dessert and as we were checking out, the cashier confiscated our plantains and tried to explain to us (in Spanish) that we couldn’t buy them. (We later discovered that cashiers in grocery stores in Chile can’t weigh produce like they can in the States, so you have to take your fruits and veggies to a separate person at a different counter before checking out.) We left dejected and plantain-less, but still had a nice evening of dinner and drinks with a few of the guys staying in the hostel.
The following morning we embarked on a full day tour of the Elqui Valley, an area known for its good weather, unique vegetation, wines, and pisco. Supposedly, the valley is also known to hippies and crystal worshipers as the most energetic place in the world (in the context of the Earth’s magnetic core), but neither of us noticed anything different. Our tour guide for the day, Gerald, picked us up a bit after 8:00 and warned us that we had the bad luck of visiting the valley on one of the very few non-sunny days of the year. We started the tour with a lesson on papayas and a stop in the small town of Vicuña, known mainly as the birthplace of the famous Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. Next was a history and geography lesson on the Puclaro Dam (on the Elqui River), which was constructed to improve irrigation to various parts of the valley. This part of Chile is in the middle of a very bad drought, so where there should have been a sizable lake, there was instead a barren, rocky landscape with some sparse greenery.
The first real treasure of the day was a tour and tasting at the first and only brewery in the valley (Guayacan). Chile is known more for crappy light lager (as noted a couple times in my previous posts) than small-batch craft beers, but microbreweries like Guayacan are working to change that. Guayacan has less than ten employees and operates out of a few small buildings in the valley. In fact, they’re so small that their master brewer Cristobal took us on a tour of the property and guided us through the tasting. The short version of the company’s founding is that Cristobal was attending university to learn winemaking when he took a brewing class for fun. He loved it immediately and, upon graduation, joined up with two other classmates to start a new microbrewery.
Our tasting was done outside the brewery’s main building in a small hut with the company of two large, friendly dogs that insisted on meeting and playing with all the new humans that had just showed up. The more outgoing of the two was a built-like-a-tank bull terrier that spent the entire time fetching (avocados) and eating (avocados). Cristobal took us through the tasting of his golden ale, pale ale, and stout as he talked about the brewery’s history, their success and expansion plans, and beer making in general. It was a fascinating conversation and it was wonderful to hear about all the success they’ve already had. Chile’s market for quality microbrews seems to be very much untapped at the moment (pun intended), so breweries like Guayacan will have a lot of room to grow. From an actual beer perspective, their (award-winning) stout was very good, but surprisingly I found myself drawn to the golden ale, which was drink-your-face-off delicious. It’s a shame that their beers aren’t offered outside of Chile (yet).
After the tasting, Cristobal took us on a tour of the entire property, starting with the existing facilities and talking about how the beer is made. They are very much a small-time operation, so tasks like bottling, labeling, and packaging are done mostly by hand. The demand for their beer is far outstripping supply, so the brewery has been constructing a new, more modern facility that will allow them to greatly increase their tasty, tasty output.
The entire Guayacan experience was really uplifting and very memorable. The beers themselves were excellent, but the real joy was getting a view into the workings of a small business that is doing very well for itself. Cristobal was gracious and down-to-earth and his passion for his work was infectious. And it goes without saying that two big, lovable dogs will always turn a good time into a great time.
Lunch was at a restaurant that specializes in solar cooking, but since the weather wasn’t cooperating, the cooking was done in the kitchen with natural gas. We had some copao juice with our meal and Becca and I realized we had tasted the same subtle, quasi-bland flavor back in Valparaiso; I had ordered the juice of the day at one of our brunches and neither of us could figure out what it was. Copao is a plant that is endemic to Chile and is found mostly in the Elqui Valley.
After lunch, we drove to a few more vistas with great views of the valley and then to a small town to stop for souvenirs and gifts. In lieu of souvenir shopping, Becca and I played on the children’s playground in the main square and also played with some of the local stray dogs. One of them gave me a kiss as we were posing for the camera, but deserted Becca on the steps of the church when it was her turn for a photo. Ice cold!
We left the town en route to our final destination of the day: Fundo Los Nichos, the oldest pisco distillery in Chile (that is still operational). We were given a tour around the grounds and the usual fascinating history and chemistry lessons. The distillery still maintains a historic, authentic feel with its open-air buildings filled with old concrete, wood, and copper.
At the end of the tour, everyone had a chance to taste two of the distillery’s four piscos: the 70-proof special pisco and the 80-proof reserve pisco. Neither Becca nor I had tasted straight pisco before and we were both very, very impressed; each pisco had pleasant fruity notes and not a lot of burn. Truth be told, it also helped that we were tasting one of the world’s best piscos (according to tastings.com). We inquired about pricing and Gerald told us that the 70-proof special and 80-proof reserve bottles cost $6 and $10, respectively.
Let me say that again. $6 for a bottle of some of the world’s best pisco. Is that Kenny Loggins I hear in the background?
After Becca and I silently exchanged Are you fucking kidding me? glances, we politely bought a bottle of the 80-proof reserve to take on the road with us. In retrospect, I wish I had bought a case and shipped it back to the States. With our gorgeously designed and packaged pisco in tow, Gerald drove us back to La Serena. We broke into the bottle a little bit before dinner, which was a peaceful meal of veggies and empanadas at an outdoor table at a downtown cafe.
The overcast and rainy weather had washed out our hopes of a northerly boat excursion to see penguins, so the next day we slept in and ambled over to a nearby organic and mostly vegetarian cafe (Ayawasi). Just as was promised in all the reviews we read, the place was charming, the owner was super friendly (and spoke English), and the food was ridiculously good. This place seriously rivaled any cafe or veggie restaurant in San Francisco, which is a damn good compliment. As we sat there with our coffee drinks and listened to the rain outside, we seriously considered spending the entire day reading our books by the fireplace. But as the rain began to let up, we decided to venture out and go for a walk on the beach.
We ended up walking all the way to Coquimbo, a neighboring city about the same size as La Serena. It was about a 9-mile walk, which occupied the rest of our afternoon as we leisurely made our way along the coast. There wasn’t much to see besides a battleship on the horizon and the occasional stray dog that would accompany us for a bit. One dog in particular stayed with us for a good while, so he and I played fetch with whatever I could find. It brought back memories of playing with dogs at Fort Funston in San Francisco (with the same weather too).
We arrived in Coquimbo just as the sun was setting behind the Third Millennium Cross, which sits high atop one of the hills in the city. Can’t be a legitimate Latin city unless you have a huge cross on top of a hill.
We wandered around Barrio Ingles for a bit until we settled on a small sandwich shop (La Marraqueta) to grab some dinner. We treated ourselves to some veggie and potato tortilla sandwiches, fruit juice, and beer, and also had some really nice conversation with the owners Ernesto and Lali. Ernesto spoke English, so we talked about traveling and Chile and photography; Ernesto is a photographer and some of his work was hanging in the restaurant. I showed them some of the photos from my Galapagos trip and before we left, Ernesto took a photo of the two of us for their Facebook page. Lali, bless her adorable heart, even wrote out the URL of their Facebook page with pen and paper and gave it to us before we left.
By this time it was dark out, so we hired a shared taxi back to La Serena and walked back over to Lider for our daily bottle of wine and second attempt at buying plantains. I also bought a box of dog biscuits so I could do my part in nourishing the country’s canine population. After mastering the protocol of buying produce in a Chilean grocery store (great success!), we walked back to the hostel, only to discover that the neighborhood was experiencing a power outage. We spent the evening drinking wine and playing cards by candlelight and chatting with some of the gap-year kids who were cooking dinner. Once everyone else had turned in, we took our groceries to the kitchen and made ourselves some homemade plantain chips; thankfully the stove was natural gas and not electric.
The next day we were leaving for Caldera (another port city on Route 5), but had some time before our bus left, so we visited the nearby Japanese tea garden. After two dreary, overcast days, the weather was finally sunny, so we spent some quiet time in the garden to enjoy the scenery and read before going to our favorite local vegetarian spot for another meal. After lunch, we hopped on a coach for another six-hour ride.
