At 8 AM Marie Laure served us a delicious breakfast of homemade yogurt, jams, OJ, toasted breads and cake. All six of us set off in two cars towards the inland town of Vicuña in bright sunshine.
We took a turn off, once out of La Serena, towards the tiny hamlet of Santa Gracia as Bob wanted to see if we could find some Burrowing Parrots which live out in the dry, cactus bush. After awhile Bob said that this looked like a good area, and sharp-eyed Caitlin said, “There’s one!” And soon we saw about 100 parrots clambering around on very spiny cactus, noisily chattering and swooping through the sky!
They are about 18” long with an olive back, red and yellow on their breast, and with blue wings - very flashy and thrilling to see parrots so well. Outside of Australia, parrots are usually shy, well camouflaged, flying very high, and not easy to see.
We watched them for quite a while as it was such a pleasure, and then motored on, seeing some of the larger cacti with large red flowering clumps and abundant red berry-like fruits.
We were following a narrow dirt road with signs indicating an eclipse site a few miles on and finally arrived at a freshly graded road which led up to a hilltop that also had been bulldozed. On it were outhouses, a row of tents and a bandstand. We walked over to the tents and found a booth with ladies cooking empanadas.
We bought a few delicious onion and beef ones which we inhaled with Fantas, and chatted with some of the other workers who were very excited to have their first eclipso customers! I hope they get the crowd for which they have been working so hard. We may return if the coast gets foggy.
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| Munching Empanadas |
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| The Cooking Ladies, Karen, Hil, & I |
We left and returned to the main highway and continued on towards Vicuña. This narrow valley contains the Elqui River plus a large reservoir which irrigates a lot of row crops and vineyards.
It was amazing to see such greenery after a week of nothing growing at all or very dry scrub.
The traffic driving towards Vicuña was quite heavy as eclipse viewers are starting to arrive in large numbers.
We drove through the outskirts of the town, but then headed back to avoid getting stuck in traffic. We’ve heard that the entire road will be closed on eclipse day to avoid total gridlock.
Hilary pulled off at the one winery obviously visible from the road, Falernia, and we were able to taste a special eclipse bottling of a mixture of Syrah, Carmenere, and Cabernet Sauvignon and bought a couple of bottles, one for Karen and Bill who are celebrating their 51st wedding anniversary today!
We returned to our hotel and relaxed for a bit before all meeting in the breakfast room for foie gras, crackers and wine which we enjoyed with Marie Laure. We then walked about 20 minutes to Jack Fish, a unique, tiny restaurant that specializes in ceviche, sushi, and rock and roll music videos played quite loud, but really good music, and the food is great also! It was Bill & Karen's 51st wedding anniversary, and they kindly took us all to dinner!!
We had a fabulous evening and walked home in good spirits!
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| "In this place, one listens to rock, but if you don't like it, Goodbye!!" Cliff Burton, RIP |
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