Artisans at Work

It seems that San Pedro is a town of artisans. The streets abound with artisanal products, hand-made and eminently purchasable.

Artisan jumpers

We made our way through the tucked away stalls groaning under the weight of alpaca knitwear, decorations fashioned from wood or dried gourds, and natural remedies sourced from desert plants. For me it is the textiles that characterise the atacameño handiwork. Most are woollen garments designed to combat the chilling desert nighttime - scarfs, hats, long socks, gloves, jumpers - all are available in temptingly soft alpaca wool. In the purpose-built 'pueblo de artesanos', we found at least one woman at a loom, painstakingly producing chunky-knit ponchos.

Artisan village

Having had our fill of knitwear, we indulged in some artisanal ice creams. This time the shop came good with flavours sourced from local desert ingredients: algorrobo and chañar. Neither were bold flavours, and it turns out that alogorrobo is similar in many ways to carob, and so the ice cream had the same flavour as imparted by this ersatz chocolate, while chañar gave a subtle caramel note.

Artisan ice cream

Having been in email contact with the owner of Cervecería Saint Peter, I discovered that there was more than meets the eye to this hidden brewery. After a few words of halting Spanish to the ladies at Ayllu restaurant, we were met by the brewer and ushered behind the restaurant to visit the premises, which can be reached by invitation only.

The brewing premises were little more than a small room, but the brewer, who started the venture two years ago with his girlfriend, was happy to 'show us around'. In terms of artisan beer, he is certainly crafting from local ingredients but finds that the San Pedro water is not completely suitable and so uses the bottled variety. However, he highlighted a Chile-grown hop, Bravo, which makes up one of the seven in the Saint Peter Ascenso IPA.

While his customers in the vast majority prefer the golden ale he produces, flavoured with the herb rica rica, there were bottles of Ballast Point and Hertog Jan knocking around the brewery, so it wasn't a surprise to discover that he is a fan of big beers such as super-hoppy IPAs, Belgian tripels, porters and barley wines, as well as an experimental beer by Kross aged in Carmenere barrels, named Kuad. The line-up of Saint Peter beers reflect his adventurous palate. On recommendation we took away a few of his favourites for later. In terms of artisan credentials, table-mounted bottle-cappers were in evidence, and one of the bottles was grabbed from a box and labelled by hand as we purchased it.

Artisan beer

We congratulated ourselves on being able to sustain a conversation entirely in Spanish on such a technical subject. We can't claim to have understood everything, but, with confidence buoyed, we marched across the street to Queso y Olivias to source some queso de cabra (goat's cheese). As luck would have it, alongside artisan bread (natch), the 'emporio' also stocked soya mince.

With our newly procured artisan cheese, we arrived home to a much busier hostel than we left. Jostling for kitchen space, we crafted ourselves aubergine stuffed with soya mince, cheese and onion, alongside fried potatoes.