Summer in (and out of) the City

Before moving to Santiago the two of us lived in the Rainy Kingdom. Each year sometime around the month of May the press which is also called yellow started speculating about the likelihood of an exceptional BBQ summer that may or may not lie ahead. Usually references were made to some complicated science from the Queen's witches and wizzards at the Met Office. Needless to say, in all those years we lived there, those BBQ summers never arrived. And so the years passed by, 8 months of autumn followed by 4 months of spring, two seasons and that was it.

Since we arrived in Santiago we experienced winter (reasonably cold and very smoggy) and spring (niiiiiiiiice!). It seems like it is getting hotter every day now so this probably means summer isn't far, either. We're now faced with the dilemma of either having to 1) heavily water the garden, or 2) accept that the lawn is going to turn into a brown dead mess.

Option 1) isn't great as, in this city of 8 million, water is a precious commodity. And wasting it on keeping the lawn green / landlord happy / fit in with what all our neighbours do doesn't seem very smart. On the other hand, those green spaces which are kept alive make life in this massive concrete jungle a lot more bearable, no doubt for its human residents as much as for its non-human ones. So we started collecting all our shower, washing machine and washing-up water and re-using it for watering the garden. But it's looking like we'll be struggling to keep things alive through the summer like that.

With the advance of summer the 2500km long strip of land that stretches south from Santiago all the way down to the tip of South America becomes an appealing travel destination. Nevertheless, we embarked on one last adventure (for this season, anyway) up north last weekend. This time we went to Valle the Elqui, some 100km SE of La Serena or 350km N of Santiago. Valle de Elqui is a popular destination for a number of reasons:

• rivers fed by the Andes turn the valley into a lush oasis in the middle of an otherwise arid landscape
• its remote location and clear skies makes it ideal for star gazing at night
• for the more spiritually minded folks it is located in the magnetic center of the planet, where the earth is the most energetically charged (... or something)
• despite it's remoteness it has a good tourist infrastructure with camp sites, hostels, hotels and associated entertainment (horse riding, etc)
• it is located in the northern-most wine region of Chile and Pisco is made around there

In other words, it's a good place to "... get away from it all for a while" and has the potential to satisfy a variety of interests. With the benefit of a hire car we ended up staying for three nights in three different campsites, each day partially driven away by the snoring or other noise from our fellow campers encountered during the previous night, as well as the desire to see and explore other areas.

On the way back we made a little detour to Fray Jorge National Park / UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, another little forest oasis nourished by the humidity of the near constant fog around the hill tops of the coastal range (... it did remind us of the forest in the UK, but surrounded by desert!)

After having spent (...and worked through) too many weekends lately it was a welcomed and needed break for the three of us. It was also Señor Mario Carrasco's first camping trip and it looked like he enjoyed it. Below a selection of photos: