Sitting in the picturesque plaza at Pisco Elqui listening to pan-pipe music, I began to appreciate just how long the summer lasts here - it seems never ending. I'm currently travelling with Layla, and yesterday we were invited to spend the day at a rustic picnic spot by a river with a Chilean family who had befriended us the previous day. Rudolf and Anita, and their four-year old son Vicente were on a week's vacation from Santiago; they showed us how Chileans typically spend their summer. We travelled by bus with them through the dusty and winding roads of the Elqui Valley, arriving at Pisco Elqui in the middle of a month-long festival of folk music. Here they treated us to an asado (barbecue); the food and beer being punctuated by the occasional dip in a nearby pool to cool off. The friendliness and generosity of the Chilean people still amazes me, and with each one of these experiences, my Spanish takes another step forward. These were particularly nice people, and I hope to keep in touch.

The scenery has changed dramatically since passing through Santiago, with dust and cacti replacing the greenery of the south. The altitude in the mountain villages is gradually getting higher. It feels like a different country altogether, and since leaving the chinchillas to fend for themselves, there has been a noticeable lack of English speaking tourists in these areas. The first stop was Ovalle where I was almost shaken out of my bed by an earthquake. It turned out that it was 4.9 on the Richter scale, with the epicentre under Ovalle itself. I heard it coming before I felt it, like a wave of noise as the surrounding buildings shook and the dogs barked. Other than this, the only real highlight in Ovalle was the huge market. Rickety buses came from distant towns and villages to bring people to one of the largest fruit and vegetable markets in South America. We bought some of the wares, including two types of cheese - a shopping spree that fed us for two days.

Besides the scenery of the Elqui Valley, there were two reasons that I was attracted to this region. The lesser reason was to visit the distilleries that produce pisco sour - a distilled wine, or fruity brandy that is fairly unique, and barely exported outside the country. The greater reason was for the night skies. I have been enjoying views of the cosmos for the last few weeks, but the full moon was spoiling the party until now. Luckily, it is now on the wane and doesn't rise until a few hours after darkness.

Dozens of high-tech observatories litter the hillsides for over a hundred miles, for the simple reason that these are reputedly the clearest skies in the world. Unfortunately the real observatories can only be visited during the day, so instead I opted for a visit to one that is purpose-built for tourists and amateurs. We were driven through the darkness on a winding desert road, gradually climbing to the top of a hill where we were greeted by two men standing in the darkness and whispering (though I didn't work out why this is necessary). The only lights were some dim red ones on the ground, showing where the paths were. They led us up a staircase onto a platform where we spent a couple of hours using their high-tech telescope to find a few objects of interest - star clusters, galaxies, dead stars, nebulae, exploding stars and supernovas. I have been watching the course of Jupiter and Venus for a while, but as they are now close to the horizon we got to have a good look at two other planets instead. The first was Mars, with a clear view of its polar icecap, but the highlight of the evening was Saturn with its rings and moons. I also learnt a few things about the stars of the Southern Hemisphere, which turns out to be rather more interesting than the north, since there are a few important objects that can only be seen from here, such as our closest star Alpha Centauri and a large galaxy that is the only object outside the Milky Way that is visible to the naked eye.

Posted from La Serena, 18th Feb 2012.