We walked to the edge of town to a spot where we had been recommended to be picked up easily, after waiting there for nearly an hour we walked on a little bit taking breaks in all the shade we could find. The midday sun in Chile is so unbearably hot, you can't imagine how hot it is until you witness it for yourself, even if the temperature is only about 30ºC with the sun beating down it feels more like 40ºC. Luckily for us we were in wine and pisco country so were surrounded by vineyards at all sides, we walked passed one, saw a man picking the grapes and asked to try a couple of grapes, instead he gave us a couple of big bunches, yum yum yum. Finally getting picked up was such a relief, we had been waiting for two hours by this point and were taken to a junction about 20km outside of Pisco Elqui. There was no shade at all here, just the slightest bit behind a road sign but you needed to stand in a strange position for your whole body to receive shade. After nearly an hour we were picked up by another ecologist, this time they were going all the way to Pisco Elqui but needed to make a quick stop in one of the town before to get something at the municipal building. They had come all the way from Vicuña as they were picking up some equipment that had been sent there. When we got to Pisco Elqui I could sort of see the appeal, it was a quaint little town, up in the valley with vineyards lining the whole bottom along the Rio Elqui, the river flowing if a little conspicuously through the Elqui valley. We walked town till we got to a nice, quiet shaded square that was right next to the Mistral distillery, we never went as they charged $5000 pesos for a tour and a small bit of pisco at the end, doesn't really seem worth it, could buy a whole bottle of pisco for less than that and have just as educational a time. As there was no visible river we ventured towards a town called Horćon, we had been told by some locals that the river was bigger there and that it was easier to camp. After walking maybe 1km or so we were picked up by a flat bed truck that had just finished a round of picking grapes and dropping them off, can't have been in the car much longer than a minute when we saw a big bunch of hitch hikers on the side of the road, the truck driver stopped, they hopped in the back and we all went off to find this river, fortunately for everybody there were some locals in the back who knew a very good spot to swim and fish and camp, they led us right to where we wanted to be. When we got there it was what we had been waiting for, a lagoon, surrounded by trees, fresh flowing water, not in any way drinkable though, just clean and clear. The lagoon if I can call it that was tiny, about twenty five metres square and at its deepest point only about two metres deep. It would suffice, in fact it was perfect, not too big, not too small and not too busy, only the locals know about it. The only things letting the whole site down was the fact that it was really near a main road, not much traffic so not too much of a problem and also the ground was really bad to camp on, it wasn't level and was littered with lots of tiny rocks. One of the locals children even managed to catch a fish with his hands, a very feat for most but he managed fine even if it did take about an hour and the fish was too small to be eaten so we put it back in and left the rest alone for now.