Pisco Sour, the disputed national drink of both Chile and Peru. Made from Pisco (alcohol distilled from muscatel grapes) Lemon juice and sugar. Peru like to throw an egg white into the mix, Chile does not (hurrah for Dave!) We enjoyed some Pisco Sour in Peru a few months ago and today we went to a small town called Pisco Elqui deeper in the beautiful Elqui Valley. This place is where Pisco was originally distilled in the early days and the original name of the t...

On the recommendation of our lovely German hosts, we decided to visit the local "solar kitchen". We were accompanied by a lovely Californian couple we got chatting to over our shared avocado enthusiasm the night before. As you can see in the photo, the kitchen is quite an unusual sight! For one thing there is no electricity or gas being used. Only the power of our friendly sun. Most of the solar ovens are black lined boxes (which you open from the back...

At 20:30 on the warm evening of 10th January we, along with about 25 other people jumped into a shuttle bus to take us up into the hills to the Mamalluca Observatory. Built to allow the general public to gaze through telescopes into the night sky. This part of the world has the clearest skies, and as a result a vast number of professional observatories from many countries are located here to do their research. This is the only one in the area were you can look f...

Here we are now, out of the city and back into sleepy villages. This place is called Vicuña. A tiny place tucked into a beautiful valley region in the central mainland of Chile. A short 1 hour bus ride (1 hour you ask! surely not?) from La Serena brought us here and we checked into our lovely Bed and Breakfast for the next 4 days. This place took our fancy when we came across it on the internet and we worried that it would be sold out a such a short notice, how...

So with San Pedro behind us wuith a memorable a few days in the (wet) desert, next stop was the coastal city of La Serena. A 17 hour bus ride south. After our bus experiences in Bolivia we were expecting a night of no sleep but then we remembered that we are now in Chile, which is a more developed, safer and better organised country, The bus was very comfortable indeed, and you can not believe the pleasure of driving on tarmac roads again, oooooh sooo smooth! ...