Norte Chico

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Wondering about the title? Norte Chico – the small north – is the cute name for the second (out of five) Chilean region, following the “Norte Grande” we have traveled so far.
This is where the Atacama desert (finally) ends and makes way for moderate climate and fertile valleys, home of the national drink Pisco.

Before hopping on our next 10h long bus journey we had a pit-stop in the large city Antofagasta to enjoy some big-city life and take care of a few errands. Even though Antofagasta doesn’t have any great sights to offer it is a pleasant town and people were in a good mood following the win of the Copa America. We were quite struggling to find an open bar to watch the final, as it seems most Chileans prefer to enjoy the matches at home with friends and family. Also the car parade following the win was a bit disappointing for South-American standard…

Our next stop was La Serena, another coastal town and the pretty neighbor of Norte Chico’s not-so-pretty capital Coquimbo.
In Peru we somehow never thought about the possibility to use Airbnb and stay with a local host, instead always opting for hostels and hotels. Only after our great experience with our family in Arequipa did we start to have a look at Airbnb, especially for places we planned to stay a bit longer. So far in Chile we had no success as smaller towns usually had only few offers or we were just too late, but La Serena has a few nice hosts and we decided to stay with a Malaysian/ Chilean couple – the mentioning of Chicken curry in the description was enough to make Yang Ke’s eyes shiny and mouth watery!
Her instincts proved to be spot on and we had a great stay at their beautiful house, together with five lovely dogs and one lazy cat. Ravi, a retired Indian-Malaysian who moved to Chile five years ago, has a big repertoire of delicious dishes, covering Indian, Malaysian and Chilean cuisine, and he was super helpful with our sightseeing and travel planning.

La Serena is another city blessed with kilometers of sand beach and dotted with condominiums, holiday home for Chileans and foreigners alike. It has a nice enough historical city center and serves as a good base to explore several nature parks and the Elqui valley, famous for its Pisco vineyards and for being home of several sky observatories. We were keen to visit the Humboldt Penguin Nature Reserve, whose islands are home to sea lions, dolphins and (you guessed it) penguins, but we gave up after ferry service remained cancelled for three days straight due to high tide and strong winds. Instead we spend more time exploring La Serena and Coquimbo and opted for a longer visit to the Pisco valleys.

Coquimbo’s port, once busy with gold and copper exportation and with lots of European immigration, lost its significance over time and now only serves for fishing purpose. It still holds a small armada of fishing boats with a little fish market attracting sea lions and hundreds of pelicans waiting for their chance to grab some leftover chunks.

The city has a little “barrio ingles” (English district) from its glory days which has been partially beautified and which gets busy in the evening with several bars.

Otherwise Coquimbo’s main sight is the very obvious 80m tall Cruz del Tercer Milenio, not for its architectonic beauty but for the panoramic views from its vertical cross.

We left La Serena for a trip to the Elqui region to enjoy its scenic valleys full of vineyards, slurp some pisco (sour) and give me one more chance to gaze into Chiles famous night skies.
The region is another hotspot for stargazing and host to several international observatories.
After our misfortunes in San Pedro this was our best bet to finally enjoy a few nights of clear Milky Way. It was new moon, the valley boosts 320 sun days per year and we were booked three nights into a homely hostel in Pisco Elqui. What could go wrong?

We took it in good spirit – after all, who can claim to have seen snow in Pisco Elqui?!  (Apparently the second time only over the last ten years). It snowed nearly the whole day and we spend a cosy day next to a wood oven – the closest feeling of a German Christmas I had since living in Singapore 😉

We had a tour in a small artisan pisco production, which probably would have been very interesting if not for the (Chilean)Spanish only guide I could only roughly guess what he was saying and Yang Ke fell asleep of half way. A good example why Chileans are so infamous for speaking the worst Spanish in South America…
After tasting their award winning piscos we could also conclude once and for all that we really don’t like pisco and from now on will only drink it mixed with loads of lemon and sugar! 😉

We returned to La Serena for one night (tours to Humboldt reserve still cancelled….), said good bye to our hosts Ravi and Eli and the five dogs and hopped on a bus to the big capital