El Norte Chico: Roadtrip with Mom!!

My mom came to visit Chile and meet her new son-in-law, and we had a wonderful ten days travelling in a luxury I have become unaccustomed to. Far from your standard tourist package of Chile, though, we managed to have much adventure!

Our first day was spent in Santiago, and Nelson showed my mom around his school.

Then we went up to the top of the Cerro San Cristobal to watch the sun set.

Nelson and Mom both tried their first “mote con huesillo”, which is this strange concoction that is half a glass of a grain called ‘mote’ (like a cross between kernel corn and barley) with a can of whole peaches poured over it. It’s surprising good, and sold on every street corner here. This was the beginning of my mom’s mission to try everything local that you could only get in Chile, and she did a great job.

The next day, we bombed up the Panamerican Highway in our little rental car which was to find a special place in our hearts and get very dirty over the next week, stopping for a picnic lunch on the beach. People were harvesting the seaweed that had washed up on the beach, and we later saw it in the market. I’ve found out since it’s called ‘cochayuyo’, and people eat it as a vegetable – I guess mom will have to come back to try this one!

Our first night was in La Serena in the first of many cute little hotels with lush indoor courtyards. We spent the next morning at the market and in the museum, where we saw one of the moai heads from Rapa Nui (Easter Island). My mom checked out its butt.

We then headed north to Copiapo, where the staff in the hotel LOVED my mom. This one woman kept telling me how beautiful she was, and just had to pinch her on the cheek and kiss the other. People in Chile are a bit more demonstrative than Canada, but my mom took it all in stride! At dinner that night she thought it was pretty hilarious that the “vegetarian” meal I ordered came with ham on top.

We wanted to drive high into the Atacama desert to a national park near the border but when we started to ask people how long it would take, they looked at our car and said, “In THAT car? Oh NO! You’ll need four wheel drive, a guide, supplemental oxygen, extra fuel, water and food because if something happens to you, it could be 10-15 days before anyone comes along...”, etc., etc.

Although the warnings unsettled us a bit, we decided to stock up on food and water and then just turn back if the road got bad, if we had trouble breathing, or the gas tank neared ½. After all, we both grew up on ‘Sunday drives’ with my Grandad down roads that were definitely not on any maps.

We’re so glad we went! The road was all gravel or packed earth but well maintained because of all the mines out there and the scenery was stunning – everything we hoped it would be – barren, vast, colourful and beautiful.

On the way out we saw ruins of an old mining town, guanacos, the southernmost salt flat in Chile (formed by being in a basin where none of the water can ever escape to the sea), and the world’s highest active volcano (which is also the highest mountain in Chile.

After driving for about 5 hours, my mom said “the laguna should be just around this corner” and... it was! It took our breath away, it was such a vibrant blue green.

On its edge were natural hotsprings – at 4535m, the highest hotsprings that I’ve ever been to. In fact, it was a kilometre higher than anything I’ve ever been to!

We were a little out of breath walking around, so we just had to sit and soak up the hot water and amazing views of the laguna and volcanoes.

On the way out, we saw vicunas (similar to guanacos, they are smaller and cuter and live at higher altitude). There was never much traffic, but enough that we didn’t think we’d have to wait 10-15 days for a ride. Ironically, we actually rescued a couple whose 4x4 got two flat tires (maybe from all the extra gas they were carrying!) and managed to get back to town with still more than ½ a tank. It was such a beautiful, magical place and all the more so because it was so remote and they said we couldn’t do it!

The next day, we relaxed on the beach at Bahia Inglesa, stayed in Vallenar, then headed to Vicuna to visit their observatory.

The northern deserts of Chile apparently have the best night skies for astronomers, as it is clear and dry an average of 240 nights/year, and we were able to look closely at the moon (and take its photo!), Saturn, stars, galaxies, nebulas and clusters, plus learn a bunch of the constellations that you can only see in the southern hemisphere.

Then we headed up the Elqui Valley, full of quaint little towns and famous for its production of pisco, Chile’s national drink.

The whole valley produces the special grape that goes into pisco, and we were surprised at how high up the hillsides they were growing.

We toured the oldest and the largest pisco making plants in Chile and learned that pisco is essentially wine that has been further distilled to become more alcoholic.

We also saw grapes drying in the sun into raisins.

We then took a shortcut to Ovalle on another back road that maybe did deserve a few warnings – it took us 3 ½ hours to go 120km, but it was very beautiful.

The next morning we stopped in at the Enchanted Valley were the Diaguita people lived for thousands of years and left petroglyphs carved into, and pictographs painted onto, the rocks, along with small cups dug out of the stone (piedras tacitas) in which food or paints were ground.

We also saw the fruit of a cactus, after all the flowering ones we’d seen.

That night we stopped and watched a beautiful sunset from a restaurant overhanging the ocean, then headed into Valparaiso.

Although I’d been in Valpo before, it was an entirely new experience driving in it! In searching for one of several possible hotels up in the hilly neighbourhoods, we ended up going up and down (literally UP and DOWN) so many crazy maze-y one-way streets, culminating in having to back up a steep street that had gotten narrower and narrower and finally ended in a set of stairs. We finally gave up and headed for a hotel down in the flat part of town for the first night and finding our hotel on the hill the next day.

We had a nice day in Valpo, visiting Pablo Neruda’s house (San Sebastiana), taking in all the colourful buildings and riding our first ‘ascensor’, built to take people up into the higher neighbourhoods.

On the way back into Santiago, we stopped in the Casablanca valley to visit a winery and do some tasting. All in all, a grand adventure!