Day 5

Posted by Lisa on February 11th, 2006 — Posted in Uncategorized

On Thursday we decided to visit the town of Andacollo, where every December 26 more than 100,000 pilgrims overrun the gold and copper mining town located 1,050 meters above sea level to pay homage to the Virgin of Andacollo. I’m sure the signs in town explained her story, but I’m not sure what it is. We visited the 2 churches and the museum which contains tons of gifts given by the pilgrims to the Virgin, including toys, rosary beads, pictures, letters- honestly, some of the weirdest stuff ever. In the end we couldn’t even find the supposed little Virgin figurine that was found in some mine, again another story I don’t know. Afterwards we decided to follow the suggestion in our tour guide book to “take a decent gravel road to the Hurtado Valley, where it’s possible to make a loop to Vicuna and back to La Serena.” Little did we know that it would be a 6 hour drive on nothing more than a goat path over mountains through the Hurtado Valley, over more mountains and into the Elqui Valley. There was never any guard rails, the road had eroded in places and was a mass of sloped hairpin turns. Now many of you know my family so you can just imagine what was going on in the car. My dad yelling at me to “slow down, use a different gear” and I think many “Jesus’s” were being muttered among other things. My mom was in back (who by the way is afraid of heights) muttering nonsensical questions constantly. Then of course, I tried to use 4 wheel drive and a warning light came on in the car “trans temp”, and we couldn’t find the manual and we hadn’t seen anyone in hours. By the way, the manual was in the car, in the drivers side door, but all in spanish, no help there. I was driving and yelling at the both of them. In the end, now that we are home safe and sound, it was a beautiful drive. We started out at 1,050 meters in Andocollo drove through the desert down to sea level then up over some mountains and down into the Hurtado Valley back up some more mountains and finally down into the Elqui Valley. We saw beautiful deserts, valleys, mountains, vineyards, people and animals. The pics from the drive don’t do it justice. I probably wouldn’t do it again, but it’s fun to hear my parents talk about their brush(es) with death!!!

Andacollo

The views

Us at the scary parts

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