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Well as you can see from the title of this blog we are STILL in San Pedro. Monday night we went to the ticket office to make sure we were departing at the correct time Tuesday morning. Everything is really last minute here and the lady helping us said she wouldn't know until after 7 pm. So we came back after 7 and then she said the border wasn't answering it's phone so we would have to go to the border and ask for ourselves. It didn't sound good though. The lady at the ticket counter was really concerned about the clouds that night. They hardly ever get clouds (it is dry season) and when they do it means bad things for us. Also due to the clouds our astronomy tour that was supposed to be that night got cancelled so we were pretty bummed out- nothing seemed to be going our way. Anyway we were at the ticket counter and she told us to hop on this bus that came by and it would take us to the Chilean border patrol about 1 km away. Well it was a very weird way to go about things but about an hour later we had our answer. Apparently the bus was going to go at the regular time (9:30 am). So we were happy and went back to the hostel and went to bed. The next morning we went to meet the bus at 9 am. We caught the driver walking away from the bus and he just told us to wait there until 9:30. Well he finally came back at about 9:50 and then proceeded to tell everyone that he had to check with border patrol again about the roads. When he finally came back at 10:30 he told us the passage through the mountains was impassable due to snow last night. Well we were totally depressed. We were supposed to be in Salta last Sunday and now we had to wait until Thursday to get the NEXT bus and even then it wasn't certain that it would go. There is only one way to Salta by road here so we really had no other option but to wait. We trudged wearily back to our hostel and booked in for two more nights. Then we started brain storming how we could get out of here. We could backtrack by bus to a larger town and fly to Salta. But salta is so small that we have to connect in Santiago and buenos Aires before getting there (check out a map, it's a REALLY round about way to get there) and the flight would be $630. Hmmm ya way too much for me to spend. We thought about skipping Salta too but anything we could think of was just too expensive. So in the end we decided to wait until Thursday and take another chance on the bus. If we get to go Thursday we should still make all our tours, although it'll be super squished in. But we will only get one full day in Buenos Aires before Shelby has to fly out (we planned for 4 nights there originally). Originally I had 5 nights planned there for myself. I am going to try to take some days off of Brazil here and there so I can stay in Buenos Aires longer, after Shelby flys out. It's too interesting of a place to miss out on! So I really hope that we can get on the bus Thursday cause that's pretty much our last resort until we have to fly just to catch Shelby's flight home in Buenos Aires. So we are just hanging out in San Pedro, passing the time by reading, eating, and basking in the couple hours of warm sun we get a day. We did rebook the astronomy tour for last night and it was really good!
We got picked up at 9:30 pm and drove only about 5 mins to the edge of town to a building owned by this company. It had a flat roof with two telescopes and a bunch of chairs on top, with a ramp up to the roof. We were pretty lucky that there were only 3 of us on the 9:30 tour (there was like 20 on the 7:30 tour) so we got lots of time to ask our own questions and we didn't have to rush looking in the telescope! The tour started with some history of astronomy (when it started and why). Basically it's been going on for as long as man has been alive and was used first to mark the seasons and help with agriculture. Then we learned a bit about astronomy in Chile. Apparently astronomy is super important to the country. 40% of the world's astronomical information comes from Chile! They even have laws on how much light buildings/homes can emit after dark because it messes so much with the view of the sky. About 20 km from where we are they have something called the Alma Project. It is a field of a bunch of radio telescopes that take in lots of information from the sky through infrared technologies. Apparently the project cost 1.5 billion dollars. Chile is also currently building a HUGE telescope. Our telescope we were using was about 4 feet long and had a lens inside that was 12 inches long. Well this new telescope would have a lens 25m long!! So the actual telescope would be MASSIVE; bigger than some buildings. We were in the best place in Chile to be looking at the stars because it is so dry here (we are in a desert) so the picture through the telescope is very very clear. Whereas if you were somewhere more humid the picture would be more blurry.
After learning some history we started picking out different constellations. Now that our eyes were adjusted to the dark, the stars were shining so bright. It is actually unbelievable how many stars there are in this sky. It's honestly hard to find a dark spot in the sky. It's like every inch of it is white and shining. Also due to the mix of high altitude, no pollution, dry air, etc. shooting stars are really easy to spot. For the 1.5 hours we were outside and I happened to be gazing up, I caught 7 shooting stars! It's kind of unbelievable. But back to the constellations. We first learned to spot the southern cross, and then how to tell which way is south from that (the distance between two of its stars, multiply by 4.5, and take that from the point and then go straight down and that's south... Kind of complicated). Then we learned to pick out the half-man half-horse constellation and the scorpion constellation. We found the star closest to us (4 light years away) and got to look at it through the telescope. It turns out its actually a twin star, but you can only see it's twin through the scope. Then we looked at another star to compare the colours (white/blue is a young, hot star, and yellow/white is an older star that's not as hot). We checked out a galaxy in the shape of a hat and 2 cumuls which are big clusters of stars. A new cumulus is open, and looks like a bunch of golden rings. The new cumulus we saw was in the shape of a butterfly. An old cumulus is said to be closed and it really just looked like a big grey blurry blob. Then we went inside to warm up and have a pisco sour and some snacks. When we went back out we saw a swan-shaped Nebulous (a place where stars are born). We also learned how to tell the difference between a star and a planet: a star twinkles and a planet doesn't. So we picked out Saturn in the sky and then got to see it through the telescope! It was really really cool! It almost looked fake because it was so perfect! It was perfectly round and you could see its rings perfectly! I spent a lot of time looking at Saturn because it was so cool. That was the end of the tour and Shelby and I were really glad we got to go! Today we hang out again until tonight when we should find out if we can continue to Salta tomorrow! I hope the clouds stay away! Also my picture is of a painted mural here in San Pedro! Everything is very colourful in Chile, but also really brown and dirty because we're in the desert. All the roads are sand and most of the walls and fences are made of mud bricks. Also a side note: we visited the local cemetery yesterday because we were bored and even that is different than at home. Lots of people had tombs, some just made of mud bricks, but most were really fancy. There were also a lot of buildings that housed whole families (6-8 people). It seems like they celebrate death more so than us because of all the beautiful tombs and flowers everywhere.
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janice Harty thanks for the blog. The star tour sounded awsome. Hope you get out tomorrow and get to continue on yor journy. It all sound so wonderful.