We went to the Norte Chico for a long weekend. From Vallenar up the Huasco river valley to Altos del Carmen, where we stopped to look at the church despite a band of evangelist christians playing electric guitars in the square! Then on up the ever narrower valley with contrasting coloured rock and bright green vines and other plantations in the irrigated flat bottom and climbing the sides.
We stopped for lunch in the hamlet of San Felix -
comida típica (chicken and peas!), followed by a sietsta outside in the square.
Then down the valley again to the coast. A few miles short of Huasco is Freirina, famous for a C19th church and a slightly earlier classical style wooden house named for Diego Portales. Both were undergoing major restoration.
We diverted south on 40 km of dirt road (seeing a burrowing owl on the way)
to see some industrial archaeology - one of the earliest copper foundries in Chile (1846), with two elegant, slender chimneys built of bricks imported from England.
On the road there were a couple of abandoned villages and a cemetery.
Also several little farms with herds of goats.
Supper in a fish restaurant in Huasco.
The next day we went to Llanos de Challe national park some 40 km north where we walked on the trails. We saw some ancient corrals, a lot of dried up vegetation but no flowering desert which was our aim. However we saw two guanacos,
which was quite special, and ate our picnic lunch beside a wetland at Carrizal Bajo where we saw coscoroba swans.
There was a charming church with the town library beside it.
On the way back we stopped at an olive farm where they have 400-year-old olive trees, brought in by the Spanish in the 16th century to compensate the natives for having virtually enslaved them under the encomienda system...
We stopped for lunch in the hamlet of San Felix - comida típica (chicken and peas!), followed by a sietsta outside in the square.
Then down the valley again to the coast. A few miles short of Huasco is Freirina, famous for a C19th church and a slightly earlier classical style wooden house named for Diego Portales. Both were undergoing major restoration.
We diverted south on 40 km of dirt road (seeing a burrowing owl on the way)
to see some industrial archaeology - one of the earliest copper foundries in Chile (1846), with two elegant, slender chimneys built of bricks imported from England.
On the road there were a couple of abandoned villages and a cemetery.
Also several little farms with herds of goats.
Supper in a fish restaurant in Huasco.
The next day we went to Llanos de Challe national park some 40 km north where we walked on the trails. We saw some ancient corrals, a lot of dried up vegetation but no flowering desert which was our aim. However we saw two guanacos, 
which was quite special, and ate our picnic lunch beside a wetland at Carrizal Bajo where we saw coscoroba swans. 
There was a charming church with the town library beside it.
On the way back we stopped at an olive farm where they have 400-year-old olive trees, brought in by the Spanish in the 16th century to compensate the natives for having virtually enslaved them under the encomienda system...
