Bing Trip: Saturday

Saturday was definitely the most packed day of the trip. We left the hotel at 8:30am for the Valle del Elqui, a few hours inland from La Serena. We first stopped at a nearby papaya and cherimoya farm. We got to see the rows of fruit trees and sampled some fresh fruit juice. We all slept on the drive into the Valle, but our tour guides woke us up to see the enormous dam that was recently built to provide water to the valley. The condensation from the reservoir that was formed is so intense that it affects the weather for the entire area, and we could hardly see the water because of all the low-lying clouds. We came to the small town of Montegrande, known for its vineyards producing Pisco (Chilean liquor) and as the birthplace of Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. It was incredibly beautiful, hidden in the mountains and surrounded by vineyards and flowers.

We went to the tiny schoolhouse where Mistral once taught as a young woman and met an elderly woman who knew Gabriela Mistral as a child. She told us Mistral’s life story and it was really cool to meet someone with so much history. We also visited Mistral’s tomb and heard a little more about the inside story from Fabia, our activities coordinator. Mistral doesn’t receive very much attention in Chile compared to Pablo Neruda. She was the first Chilean to receive a Nobel Prize in literature, but got the national literature award several years later. This could be because she wasn’t as politically inclined as Neruda, or because she was a woman (and severe-looking, at that). When we got to her tomb Fabia told us that a new grave was recently added, that of her “half-nephew” (actually her illegitimate son). The whole story was quite interesting and made us realize how the conservative Chilean perspective can warp things quite a bit.

We walked from Mistral’s tomb to a Pisco vineyard in Montegrande, where we got to taste the grapes (very sweet and delicious) and the liquor made from it. We also got to meet Ruperto, a donkey who is featured in all the company’s ads and merchandise. I doubted his popularity until I got back and told my host family that I had met Ruperto, and apparently he is a household name in Chile. We had lunch in Pisco Elqui, another tiny village just minutes away. The town was very quiet but we had an excellent meal and some local musicians even played a couple of songs for us.

After lunch we traveled to Vicuña, a slightly larger town where we saw the Gabriela Mistral museum and a replica of her childhood home. We looked through manuscripts, personal effects and the rewards she received, including many honors from the foreign countries she worked in and a copy of her Nobel Prize check and medal. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the town, looking at artisan shops and enjoying a concert in the plaza de armas (main square). One thing I have noticed about Chile is that people enjoy passing time in local parks and town squares, listening to music, talking with family or letting their kids rent little bikes or electric cars to ride around on. I saw similar sights in Valparaíso and La Serena, and it makes me happy that people are outdoors socializing and enjoying public spaces. We ate dinner at a hotel in Vicuña and watched a short documentary about Gabriela Mistral afterwards.

Then on to the surprise event of the night: we were headed to an astronomical observatory in the nearby mountains to try and catch a glimpse of the southern constellations. Unfortunately it had been cloudy all day (in the valley famous for its clear skies 350 days per year) and we had to wait to see if conditions would improve. We drove up a long, one-way dirt road to the observatory and sat through a lecture on constellations, black holes, supernovas and telescopes of the world. I was too tired to get much out of it, except I learned that telescopes are named with very little creativity. The South African Large Telescope (SALT) and Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL) were just two ridiculously obvious names that we learned. We got to climb up into the observatory itself and see the revolving dome ceiling, but at this point it was still cloudy and raining slightly. Still, the astronomers would not let us leave without a show. With all the long hours up in the observatory and nothing to do, these Chilean astronomers formed their own little band and gave us a short concert. I was expecting it to be pretty lame, especially because we were all exhausted at this point, but the band was good and they played a mix of rock and indigenous music. This one man had amazing skills on the pan pipes—I couldn’t believe how fast he could go through the notes while at the same time playing a drum with his other hand.

As we headed down the mountains toward the valley once more, the skies cleared up and I couldn’t help standing up and sticking my head out the bus window to see the hundreds of stars outside. We stopped the bus and got out for a while to admire the constellations we had just learned about. I was completely taken in by the vastness of the sky and the clarity of the stars in such an uninhabited area. With the help of one of the astronomers, we were able to point out the Southern Cross, Alpha and Beta Centauri, Saturn, Jupiter, Scorpio, and the points of absorption (black spots) that the indigenous people named after the animals they were shaped like—ostrich, frog, snake, llama. I could have stayed out there looking at the stars all night. It was even better than a night sleeping under the stars at camp, and I saw several shooting stars. Still, we were all beat and needed to get back to the hotel.