Elqui Valley Panorama
I hope you enjoy today’s Fun Photo Friday favorites of Coquimbo and Elqui Valley:
Iglesia Inmaculada Concepcion Steeple — Vicuna Plaza
Elqui Valley Vineyard Panorama
Coquimbo
Monte Grande Church
Tag Archives: Chile
Fun Photo Friday — Coquimbo and Elqui Valley Favorites
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Filed under Fun Photo Friday, Photography, R. Doug Wicker, travel, vacation
Heading into Chilean Wine Country — Elqui Valley
Growing grapes for Pisco
Ever tasted Pisco? Well, you’re in for a treat over the next several weeks as we explore the region famous for Pisco. That would be the Elqui Valley region of Chile. Hope you enjoy the visit.
Elqui Valley
One of the first sights our tour guide pointed out to us upon our entrance into Elqui Valley was the observatory atop Cerro Tololo. This observatory is part of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory group that also runs Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona.
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory
Notice the barren mountains surrounding this lush valley? The Elqui Valley is located in the midst of the driest hot-weather desert on Earth. This is the Atacama Desert, where annual rainfall reaches about .6 inches/15mm. Yet, in the midst of this harshness you’ll find lots of these:
Pisco on the Vine
How is that possible? Why is this mid-desert valley so fertile? Because of the Elqui River, which is fed by snow runoff from the Andes Mountains to the east. That’s why you see so many vineyards here — plentiful water to keep grapevines alive, yet the ideal conditions for stressing them to produce the best possible grapes for wines.
The fertile Elqui Valley
You get some truly magnificent photos from the roads overlooking this valley. It’s fascinating to see all this green surrounded by the harshest of deserts.
Elqui Vineyard
Here are two more examples:
Elqui Valley vineyard
Elqui Valley
Filed under Photography, R. Doug Wicker, travel, vacation, Wine & Food
Arriving Coquimbo, Chile
Coquimbo Tugging at Your Heart
The Golden Princess left Valparaiso on March 14 and arrived at the port of Coquimbo, Chile, the next morning. You won’t see a whole lot of Coquimbo because Ursula and I didn’t see a lot of Coquimbo. We had another destination in mind, one that will take up the better part of the next couple of weeks.
Fishing Fleet
Coquimbo is just over 210 straight-line miles/340 kilometers north of Valparaiso. We arrived very early in the morning — before dawn even — so the pictures you see here were taken in the late afternoon after our return from our inland journey that day away from the Golden Princess.
Rust Bucket
As you can tell from today’s photographs, this is a major port city with a large number of fishing boats.
Best Buds
The city itself, beyond the port, is impressively large and densely populated with an apparently diverse and eclectic population. This next photo may surprise you a bit, considering Chile is predominantly Catholic, but it’s indicative of a tolerant society:
Mosque on the Hill
I wish we had the time to explore this impressive structure, as I find many mosques at least as fascinating and picturesque as cathedrals and churches (see: Istanbul in Words and Pictures and Nine Days out of Barcelona — Barcelona, Casablanca, and Rabat). At any rate, you can see more of both the exterior and interior at this site: Discovering the Beautiful Mosque in Coquimbo Chile. The blogger here has some really wonderful photographs of it.
Ursula and I boarded our tour bus and headed northeast along the coast to La Serena, but that was not our ultimate destination this day as you will discover on Wednesday. It was still relatively dark when we stopped at Faro Monumental de La Serena (Lighthouse Monumental of La Serena):
La Serena Lighthouse
Filed under Photography, R. Doug Wicker, travel, vacation
Decisions — Murder in Paradise
The Globe — Murder in Luxury
R. Doug Wicker — Author 