We stayed at a fantastic camp ground, Rancho Elquino, (which we were escorted to by a helpful local on a bicycle) that was green, clean, has a swimming pool and a friendly maintenance man who gave us bags full of fresh tomatoes and chillies, and had grape vines full of juicy grapes that you can help yourself to. We looked up at the grand, spectacular Andes all around us. It is easy to see why people could pitch a tent here and never leave. One afternoon we got on the bikes and headed up the valley to explore. We found a good bit of gravel road to practice our unsealed driving on, and found ourselves at Elqui del Sol – a restaurant with food all produced in solar powered ovens. After a delicious lunch of chicken and rice, we carried on to the pisco factory, CAPEL. We had a tour of the factory, learning about the distilling process for making pisco and did the obligatory tasting. Our evenings in Vicuna were spent preparing and eating delicious barbeques at Rancho Elquino.
Friday morning began with some disappointment. We had decided to attempt to hasten the process of obtaining our padron (to allow us to take the bikes across the border to Argentina legally – the paperwork that was holting our progress) by going to the local municipalidad to see if they could do anything. As in NZ, there was no possibility of bribery and we left the office with confirmed knowledge that we could be waiting for another 10 days to leave Chile. This was a dejecting start to an otherwise wonderful day.
When we first arrived at the camp, we happened to run into a lady visiting the camp owner. Annette – an American woman who’d lived in Chile for over 20 years – is now the local organiser of a project happening in the mountains near Vicuna. Cheekily, I asked if we could come and have a look at the project in the next day or so and she enthusiastically gave us directions and instruction to come up whenever we could. So, after making the decision to stay on for a third night the camp in Vicuna, we emailed her and arranged to go and visit her and see the project. While the site of the project was only 20km off the main highway, it was a spectacular and at times slightly treacherous ride, two up on Jono’s little 125cc motorbike. The gravel road wound its way up the mountains, past an observatory, a lot of cacti, and even more dust, to the site of Annette’s house and the project.
The project is run by an American based organisation called Vocations for Orphans. A group of highly dedicated people, led by Dale and Sandi Boe have been gifted some land to build accommodation and training facilities for teenagers who have been living in orphanages in La Serena. Their work is entirely volunteer based, and they have already constructed lodgings for volunteers, a training centre, and are well through an accommodation block for the students.
We arrived in time for lunch (an amazing meal of corn tortillas, black beans, guacamole and fresh grapes prepared by Sandi), then drove down in the back of a pick up truck to the building site. We helped as best we could for the afternoon along with two volunteers, Wayne and Karson, who had real building skills and were making a big impact on the project. Everything was done to a very high standard, and there was considerable consideration for the environment they were working in – very harsh, hot days, and very little rain. We were asked to come back next week and help, but we are unsure of our plans at this stage. This is a wonderful project, with extremely generous and dedicated people running it, and we were very lucky to see what they were producing. Definitely an inspiration to us.
Back in Vicuna we set off for the Mamalluca Observatory Tour, with the strange feeling of being back on the tourist trail again. After a delayed start, where the tour company ran out of seats for us and coerced a French tour leader with a mini van full of elderly French tourists to take us up to the Observatory, we sat through a long powerpoint presentation, made all the more tedious because it was in Spanish and we had no idea of what was being said. Finally, at about 11pm, we got close to a telescope (with about 100 other tourists) and had a look at some of the stars. Despite the mishaps of the tour, the highlight was seeing the moon through the telescope – being able to see craters and undulations – and seeing Saturn so clearly you could see all the rings.
Much to our amazement and excitement, we discovered that our padron had been accepted and we are now free to cross the Andes into Argentina! Elated, we enjoyed a café cortado (espresso with milk) at Club Social (an old time club for the “who’s who” of tiny Vicuna – including tourists in jandals) and an empanada at the local bakery. We now had the dilemma of whether to stay and volunteer up the mountain, or hit the road and attempt the Paso Agua Negra into Argentina and make some ground after a fairly stagnant period. Our heart told us to stay and volunteer, but our heads told us to make some leeway, as it is fairly slow going on the little blue bikes. Nonetheless, we packed up camp and headed up the spectacular Elqui Valley to Monte Grande and Pisco Elqui. After much searching, up and down the road, we eventually found a lovely campsite by the river (and with a swimming pool!) halfway back to Vicuna, in Paihuano.
We made the difficult decision to carry on to Paso Agua Negra on not go back to the Vocations for Orphans project. This decision simply came down to time, and was something that we were very sorry to have to give up. Looking at the distances, we have a long way to travel, whether we get all the way to Mexico or just to Panama on the bikes.
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