Mistral grew up just up the valley in the village of Montegrande, taught in a one-room school by her older sister Emelina. The poems she would later write — fierce, tender, grief-struck, devoted to children and the dispossessed — carry the dry light and hard hills of this place in their bones. When the Swedish Academy honored her in 1945, it praised lyric poetry that had made her name a symbol, in its words, of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world. Before she died she left what she owned to the valley's children. The town that raised her keeps her memory the way you keep a family story.

Vicuña sits on a green valley floor hemmed by mountains, several of whose peaks climb past 4,000 meters. The plains here grow exceptional grapes, along with other fruits and vegetables, and the great pisco cooperative CAPEL runs its main distillery in the zone. A short way out of town, the Route of the Grappa links the pisqueras — the family distilleries with names like Capel, Mistral, and Tres Erres — where the valley's sun is turned into Chile's national spirit. The town itself, walkable end to end, is built largely of buildings dating to around 1900, a low and unhurried place beneath a very large sky.

What truly sets Vicuña apart happens after dark. The valley enjoys roughly 300 totally clear nights a year, and the result is a sky so dense with stars it can disorient a first-time visitor. The great professional observatories cluster on the surrounding summits, including Cerro Tololo, which offers daytime tours. But the valley also pioneered astrotourism for everyone: in November 1998 the Municipality of Vicuña opened the Mamalluca Observatory just northwest of town, the first tourist observatory in Chile, built around a telescope donated by Cerro Tololo. On a clear night, the Milky Way arches overhead like a road.