On our way to the Hacienda

After three great days in Valparaiso, we traveled north by bus to the beach resort town of La Serena. Traveling along the coast, the scenery is quite spectacular, and it would have been an extremely relaxing and enjoyable experience if we had been spared the nine hours of Spanish-dubbed Chinese action flicks that were played on the small TV screens at eardrum bursting volume. Not that there was much dialogue to dub as the soundtrack consisted mostly of grunts, screams, and wails.

When we reserved the bus, we were told it would take six hours from Valpo to La Serena. Actual travel time was nine hours, so we arrived in La Serena in the late afternoon. Our final destination for the day was not this pretty city, however, but a horse ranch high in the Andes that was 3 or 4 hours from La Serena. We got ourselves to a rental car agency and out of town by 6:00. 

The drive from La Serena to the village of Vicuna (there is supposed to a squiggle over the n. I can't figure out how to do these marks and other accent marks on this blogger program. Sorry!) was very pretty, passing by pisco vineyards. We were entering the Elqui Valley, an enchanting expanse of green nestled within the very brown expanse of the Andes. We would have liked to linger on this drive, but the Hacienda was many kilometers away, at the end of a rough, dirt road, and we didn't want to arrive there at midnight. Soon after we reached Vicuna, we found the right dirt road that leads south to the Hacienda. And we soon started to climb.

And climb some more, with an endless horizon of brown, dry mountains. The Andes here are very different from the Andes in Colombia, Ecuador, and most of Peru. No glaciers here, no green terraced hillsides, no cloud forests or mist-shrouded peaks. Here, there's no rain. The green valleys are fed by snow melt, while the surrounding hills and peaks are covered with almost dead cacti. It's a surreal landscape!

Our little Peugeot struggled a bit on this very windy, rutty, dusty road and worries that maybe we should have rented the 4x4 cropped up. But with Audie's expert handling, we crossed the highest passes of these quiet, arid mountains and arrived at the quaint village of Hurtado before dark. Hacienda los Andes was just outside the village, and we arrived about 9:30. Our hosts had been waiting for us, and greeted us with a hearty dinner, and some nice conversation, before we quickly retired after our long day of travel. The next day we'd meet the horses!