Martin had prepped us for a warm, sunny beach town with temperatures of 30C. We were in for a rude shock: we were in between seasons and the town was foggy, grey and cold - the weather, I believe, played a big part in dampening our spirits and souring our impressions of the town.

With very low expectations, I booked myself on the Valle de Elqui tour (Elqui means trunk of the Andes) just to give myself something to do as it was too depressing to spend a whole day wandering around the gloomy town. I was pleasantly surprised. About 20 minutes out of town, the clouds gave way to sunny and clear blue skies as we entered the valley. This area only gets 5 days of rainfall a year, the effects of which are seen in the brown mountains, covered by cacti and wild shrubbery. The valley in contrast, is made up of healthy green plantations, irrigated by Rio Elqui, which in turn is fed by the meltwater from the Andean snows. We drove thorugh vineyards (which supplied table grapes, wineries and pisco distilleries), and various orchards of papaya, chirimoya, oranges, mandarins and avocado.

Lisette, our multi-lingual Belgian guide who settled here 20 years ago when she came out on a vacation, was a huge wealth of information, and led a very sponataneous. She directed our driver to pull off into a side road, and from the back of somebody's garden, she retrieved 2 tiny soft black balls from a cactus plant - they are cochineal worms - she squished one in the palm of her hand and smudged a thick dark red liquid across her palm. She explained that cochineal is widely used in the cosmetics industry to give lipstick its red colour. It is also widely used as food colouring (eg. to give meat a redder colour) and in fabric dyes. Its popularity in the food and cosmetics industry is due to its natural and anti-allergenic qualities. She pointed out a few cacti plantations in the mountains, which are maintained purely for farming cochineals which feed on the sap of this particular species of cacti.

We stopped at some family residence to visit their gardens, where Lisette pointed out various types of fruit trees: chirimoya (a delicious local fruit, known in other countries as custard apple, a close relative of the soursop in Malaysia), peach, nectarine, aligayote, lucuma, papaya, etc.

Most of the flowering plants are similar to those in Southern California. The bougainvilleas, hibiscus, geraniums, lantana, marigold, etc painted the towns with bright, vivid splashes of purple, red, orange, yellow, white and gold.

We stopped at a couple of pisco distilleries, and a few of the quaint little towns, visited the childhood home of Gabriella Mistral (Nobel Peace poet) and had a lovely lunch at a neighbourhood restaurant - which was really somebody's house with a patio that now serves as a dining area and which seats probably no more than 16 people at a time.

That evening I went on an observatory tour at the Mamaluca Observatory, near Vicuna. Because of its clear skies, this is one of the best areas in the world to view the celestial universe. I have never been a fan of astronomy, and was pleasantly surprised with the tour. We had the opportunity to look through 2 telescopes with 100x and 200x magnifications, to view Venus, Jupiter with 4 of its moons, a few open star clusters, a globular star cluster and a nebular (which is where the life of a star begins). Alfredo, our guide, also pointed out with his laser pointer a few constellations which we could see with our naked eye: the Crown, Triangle, Scorpio, Dolphin, and segments of various horoscope signs, eg. Saggitarius, Aquarius, Capricorn etc. A shooting star flashed through the sky as we studied the stars. We were fortunate that it was a moonless night which enabled us to view many more stars as well as the Milky Way. Alfredo also explained one of the theories of the Nasca lines in Peru: whereby the Nasca images were likened to the Nasca Indians' interpretation of the constellations. To illustrate, he showed how the Scorpion's tail interesected by a line of stars, resembled the image of the Nasca monkey's tail wrapped around a tree branch. Fascinating!

Our next stop is San Pedro de Atacama, a 16 hour ride on the night bus. We drove through some beautiful scenery in the first 3 hours whilst it was still light, starting initially with a drive through the rugged coastal mountains, dotted with sparse growths of cacti and desert shrubbery with pretty yellow, purple and white flowers, and with views of the coastline on the left below us. As we headed inland and started climbing the mountains, we continued to enjoy the beautiful desert mountain scenery, leaving behind views of the ocean in the distance. We passed by the occasional quaint villages, with brief glimpses of the local folk going about their normal Sunday afternoon. Our final views were of the mountains silhouted against the red glow of the setting sun before the darkness of the night set in.