Things to do
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Destilería Capel
The cooperative distillery on the south bank of the Elqui, where much of the muscat grown in the valley becomes pisco, with a museum of copper alembics and old presses beside the working plant. Guided visits run through the day and end at the tasting counter, and the harvest and distilling season falls between February and April.
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Embalse Puclaro
A reservoir dammed across the Elqui in 1999, its green water covering old farmland and the village of Gualliguaica, which was moved uphill and rebuilt above the shore. A hard afternoon wind funnels down the valley across it almost every day, which has made the north bank one of the fixed kitesurf spots of northern Chile.
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Museo Gabriela Mistral
The museum of the poet born in this town in 1889, the first Latin American writer to take the Nobel Prize in Literature, holding her manuscripts, letters and objects from the consular years abroad. A reconstruction of her adobe birth room stands in the courtyard, her grave lies further up the valley at Montegrande, and the museum closes on Mondays.
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Observatorio Interamericano del Cerro Tololo
A working research observatory on a 2,200 metre summit south of the valley, holding the Blanco four metre telescope and the Dark Energy Camera that surveyed the southern sky. Public visits are daytime only and run on Saturdays, they are booked weeks ahead over the summer, and access is by private vehicle because no bus climbs the mountain.
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Observatorio Mamalluca
A municipal observatory on a ridge at about 1,100 metres northeast of the town, opened in 1998 and built for visitors by the municipality of Vicuña. Sessions are booked in town and run in shifts through the evening with a guide at the telescope, and the nights around a full moon show much less sky.
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Torre Bauer
A timber tower of 1905 on the plaza, ordered in prefabricated sections from Germany by the mayor Adolfo Bauer and assembled piece by piece when it arrived. The municipal tourist office works from the ground floor, and the balcony above is opened for a look across the tiled roofs to the valley walls.