Off the beaten tourist tracks lies Vicuña at the beginning of the Elqui Valley. We already knew since Santiago that we liked the local beer, Pisco and stars were further reasons for the detour.

For the first time we here also came across the “siesta”. Between 1pm and 5pm basically everything is closed. But since it is very uncommon to display the opening hours and if you are not aware of the practice, you initially find yourself in midst a boarded-up town. Even when everything is finally open, Vicuña (which, by the way, is actually the name of a certain kind of Lama) isn’t exactly a very lively town.

They do have a very nice bike-rental, though, which provided us with the best bikes on our entire trip so far for our tour of the valley.

The sun-set with the glowing mountains really challenges the one at Uluru with regards to changing colors. As soon as the sun has set, you can enjoy the cloud-free sky for star-gazing, which actually always includes the small Magellan-clouds, which are in fact galaxies that are only visible on the southern hemisphere.

All in all an uncommon but very rewarding detour on our way north.