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), the sloping glass covers and reflective wings on each side. They are free standing so that you can move them during the day to optimize the sunlight. Bread buns take about 2 hours to cook in this kind of oven (providing you don´t open the door prematurely and let all the heat out!)

The other version is the mirrored disk, which you can change the angle of, where the suns rays are concentrated on a kettle hanging over it. This one is particularly tourist friendly as you can put some paper where the kettle is and watch as it ignites in about 2 seconds!

Martita, the owner, was a very interesting lady. She and her family had been some of the first settlers in the small village "Villa Seca" since the 40s. Collecting firewood up to 3 times a day had taken up a lot of their time and it was quite hard to make a living and grape harvesting only took up 3 months of the year and there wasn´t much going on apart from that. About 12 years ago, some students from Santiago came and taught people about the solar cooking method and now Dona Martita has a thriving business.

The food and wine were delicious, particularly the super fresh bread. We had "Cabrito" some goat, which fell off the bone and had really benefitted from the slow cooking method.

Afterwards we strolled back towards Vicuña, past beautiful vineyards and of course had to stop by the local Pisco (strong alchohol made from musatel grapes) brewery on the way back. Dave and Emily are sure the tour was fascinating, but after a heavy lunch and wine and beer and a lot of sun the Spanish explanation of Pisco making was pretty much unintelligable to them. The machines and barrels looked impressive however and the (very stingy) Pisco sample went down a treat...