Why the Elqui Valley on the edge of Atacama Desert is one of South America's best stargazing stays

Many come to Chile for the scenery: to marvel at the world’s driest hot desert and snow-capped Andean peaks or to tour a long Pacific coastline with ice fields at one end and palm trees at the other. In this context, the Elqui Valley is an exception — visitors come not so much for the landscapes, but rather to direct their gaze upwards. To consider scenery that is neither Chilean nor even really belonging to Planet Earth — Elqui has the clearest night skies in the world. One southern hemisphere autumn, I find my way to a remote lodge in a dead end of a faraway valley, to witness the celestial spectacle at its most sublime.

The Elqui Valley sits at the southernmost edge of the Atacama: a desert where, in places, rain might fall once in an entire century. The dryness of the skies has a side effect — the lack of humidity renders the sky an unblemished lens into outer space. Setting out on the drive into Elqui, you notice observatories perched up on the mountaintops — almost half of the world’s stargazing infrastructure is found here. Some observatories are large complexes that recall a James Bond villain’s lair; elsewhere are smaller telescopes for private contemplation of the universe. Elqui has a kinship with outer space in other ways, too: UFO sightings are frequently recorded here, and the Atacama is used as a testing site for NASA missions to Mars.

Driving deeper into Elqui is — if not quite analogous to a space mission — then certainly a lengthy undertaking. A busy highway dwindles to an interminable country road beyond the town of Rivadavia. On the last stretch on my journey — into the hamlet of Alcohuaz — it stutters into bare, loose stones. Passing vehicles cast plumes of dust in their wake. I’m en route to the aptly named Casona Distante (‘distant house’) a lodge that is roughly the last building on the mountain road, before it wanders off to the Argentinian border.

Casona Distante is a 1940s mansion, sensitively converted into a hotel. Within its biscuit-brown adobe walls, hefty timber beams abound and Andean rugs have been placed on the floor to guard against the chill mountain draft. The building is encircled by verandahs; you can tread creaking boards and look out over a landscape of arid cordilleras, dust devils and a thin hem of greenery clinging to the banks of a bony river. There’s no wi-fi and no mobile phone reception; credit cards often do not work. The hotel is set at an elevation of around 1,720 metres so, in one sense, it’s already some distance towards the stars.

Arid Elqui also represents a far frontier of winemaking, and just visible from the verandahs are rows of quivering vines. Down the road from Casona Distante lies the Viñedos de Alcohuaz vineyard, where winemaking is guided by a reverence for Pachamana, the Earth goddess of Indigenous Andean belief. A little further down the same valley lie Pisco distilleries, where grapes are transformed into a fiery brandy used in Pisco Sours. At Fundo Los Nichos — Chile’s oldest-surviving Pisco distillery — the liquid is bitter, fiery and strangely colourless: as clear as the Elqui skies above. In the minds of some, it’s the potency of local Pisco that leads to all the UFO sightings.

Days in Elqui inevitably end with gazing up at the sky. Casona Distante offers its own stargazing sessions, which discuss how the Indigenous people of these mountains interpret messages from the heavens, and match origin stories to star formations. For all the telescopes, the most spectacular views are often those seen with the naked eye. On my last night I stand on the verandah, studying the stellar streak of the Milky Way, listening to the wind hustling along the cordilleras. All over the world, gazing up at the universe leads you to meditate on your own place within it. In Elqui, the clearest skies mean visitors depart with the most profound sense of clarity.