Elqui Valley

After our stay at Bahia Inglesia we moved onto the beautiful Elqui Valley. We arrived late in the evening and already the gang was planning their spot for dinner. As per usual Tiffany and went to the nearest store to pick up some supplies to cook.

We stayed in a really nice place. It was an old house that had been converted to accommodate lots of people. It was run by this little old lady who was very patient with our Spanish. There was hot water, clean bathrooms and comfortable beds. There was even a nice courtyard with flowers, hammocks and a hot guy from Europe so it soon became my favorite place.

We got home and had to get ourselves organised to head out to the Mamalluca Observatory on one of the mountains surrounding the valley. The valley has the clearest skies in the world, only 10 days are cloudy so NASA has set up many observatories and they are planning to build the best telescope there. They even have orange street lights to stop the light pollution.

We headed up for our tour on a very clear night with one of the biggest, brightest full moons i have ever seen.

After being there for maybe 10 minutes a Taiwanese American came over and told us he had heard Tiffany talking and was she American. She replied yes and that began all our troubles for the rest of the tour. This very strange man was bouncing around us telling us he was so excited to meet another American. The tour finally started and we had to continually move to avoid this guy. He was a very special dude and it was the only time that the gang were useful in cutting him off and staying away from him. He then came up to Tiffany and kept apologising to her.

Anyway the bits of the tour that i did get were very good. We looked through the telescope at the moon and different constellations as well as some clusters that cannot be seen with the naked eye.

After the tour we headed back to our hostel and the others got ready for dinner. After our social evening the night before they assumed they had cracked us and we would go out but once again we gave them the slip and headed for the kitchen. They finally left and we enjoyed our spaghetti.

That night everything was perfect except the small fact that all the freaks were sharing our room once again. Tiffany and I shared a double bed and the eating machine was beside us in a single. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking a phone was vibrating on a table but i discovered that the eating machine grinds her teeth, obviously dreaming of crunchy food.