La Serena: 17 - 19 Mar

17 Mar:

Arrived shell-shocked, or at least pretty tired, after a 7 hour night bus journey. The owners of the hostel in Valpariso had organised a hostel here for me, and Gladys the owner was there at 0h600 to pick me up and transfer me to the hostel. It was quite a nice place, with my own room, but I did pay for it.

Spent the rest of the day going round to tour operators and talking crap trying to find out what the sights to see were. Then met Laurent (French) and Aine (Irish) who found out that it is way cheaper/more convinient to rent a car, than go on tours. Got myself, Christina, and Kevin (arriving tomorrow) in on the deal, and planned a trip (only on Saturdays) to the telescopes 160km north at La Silla, owned by the European Southern Observatory.

18 Mar:

Kevin and Christina´s turn to be shell-shocked from the million-stop bus journey. Regardless, the five of us piled into the rented silver Toyota Yaris, and headed north along the Panamerican Route 5. After navigating to the turn off, it was 30 or so km along a narrow winding tar (dirt-road would put oservation spoiling dust into the atmosphere) road up to the observatory at 2400 m. All the telescope domes looks like mushrooms sprouting out of the dry Atacama desert mountain top.

The tour was really interesting and we first were shown around the New Technology Telescope and then the biggest one there, the 3.60 m one. The NTT is distinguished from normal telescopes in the methods of its mounting: it has a altitude/azimuth mounting instead of the normal equatorial mounting. This means it is more difficult to keep pointing at a specific point in the sky as the Earth moves under it (but computers and accurate control systems can solve this) but: can see almost all the sky, can move from any point to another, costs half as much, can support two sets of instrumentation switched by the flick of a mirror, and doesn´t have the tradititional domed roof.

Since I´d always thought that grinding the mirror was the greatest obstacle to astromony, it was insightful to see how many problems actually have to be overcome including: maintaining a perfectly consistent atmosphere with that of the outside when the doors are opened at twilight, actuating the mirrors to negate the effects of gravity at dofferent attitudes, liquid helium cooling the CCDs to reduce noise, and cleaning bird-shit of the mirrors that are open to the world at night.

This is where the last planet was discovered (not in our solar system) that could possibly support life. The discovery was in 2005, but it took alomost a year and the South Africans help in Sutherland to verify the data.

We took a "shortcut" on the way home to visit the dry coastal towns that survive off the misty winds off the ocean (and of course fishing). A straight 6km on the map equalled 24km of treacherous mountain passes (up and down) that were incredible. Everyone else was petrified, but it reminded me of chasing JP van Belle (on an MTB) down Prince Alfred pass in his own car. The little quaint towns of Chrunrunga and Tres Cruces at the bottom were awful. There was even a hippo sized dead sea-lion on the 10 metres of beach between the rocks and the sewerage outflow. So we ate some biscuits, watched the sun set, and headed south along the bleak, but later beautiful coast while finally finding a radio station that had at last arrived at the late eighties. Or at least at little bit later the the end of the seventies.


19 Mar:

The plan today was to spend the day in the Valle Elqui, and the night at the Mamalluca Observatory. The Elqui Valley is a narrow flat-bottomed valley containing a year-round river flowing frm the Andes through the Atacama-like dessert. So it´s chokkas full of agriculture, especially papayas, custard apples, and most importantly Pisco grapes (mainly different Muscatel varieties). Pisco is a "refreshing, mild tasting, aromatic, wine spirit". Very much like brandy, but without bothering too much about good grapes, multiple accurate distillations, and long-term maturations. Most of the time its drank as Pisco Sour anyway which is a really nice drink made from Pisco, sugar, lemon juice, sugar, water, sugar, and sometimes a bit of egg-white to make it froth when whisked. Can also be flavoured with papaya, mint, ducle de leche (caramel condensed milk) or [the better ones] drank neat. Regardless, it's Chile´s natitional drink, and they´re very proud of it, and it is a huge part of the economy.

So we went on two Pisco Tours, Ruta Norte and Capel, watched some hilariously bad production videos and some hilariously good Pisco adverts, and drank quite a bit of Pisco in various guises. Then it was back halfway down the spectacular valley to the town of Vicuña where I had the most tasty 1/4 chicken ever, and then 9 km up more crazy narrow dirt roads (at night) to make it to the first show (20h30) at the Mamalluca Observatoy.

20h29 we get to the gate, the security guard, and his radio, only to learn we should have collected the tickets back in the valley at the official office. No amount of pleading was going to change anything, but the lucky break was that the tour would only be starting at 21h00. Some quick calculations, and we 'raced' back down the Indiana Jones road paid for the tickets and re-ascended to make it with 18 seconds to spare.

The tour itself was excellent! After being split into Spanish and English groups (there were about 40 people, and this tour runs 3 times a night, everyday!) we went to the top of the dome and looked at Saturn, stars, and various star clusters (that look like one star or invisible to the un-aided human eye) using the Cassegrain 30 cm computer controlled telescope. Finally got to see the rings round Saturn, which were amazing!

Then, down to the lecture room, and a talk on the southern night sky aided by a really good SkyGlobe type computer program. Then, outside to the Newton 30 cm telescope built by a famous guy called Dobson. This telescope has the same light collecting ability as the inside one, just much less zoom, which I found way better. More stars, planets and clusters, with our local astonomer guide Luis amazing us with his incredible knowledge of the constellations and stars in general. The only negative point of the evening was learning that the biggest telescope in the world was actually just sitting on my doorstep back in Sutherland, S.A.

20 Mar:

Laurent and Aine handed back the rented car that had served us so much better than going on gringo tours. And the rest of the day, just did admin stuff, recovered and ate. Getting on a 17 hour bus to San Pedro de Atacama tonight at 22h45, and then off to Bolivia---civilisation ends tonight!