Star Gazing in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile..

One word to describe this. AMAZING.

We arrived in Chile after the Salt Flats tour from Uyuni and O was excited to be in the desert! And another country! Inmediately you could see the differences between Bolivia and Chile.. Chile was so much more up market and developed than Bolivia. And expensive! San Pedro is so so nice thou, it is a little town literally set in the driest desert in the world, and it has a main plaza and about 15 little side roads going off it and sooo many resturants! All sand coloured buildings.. You could spend a few days here easily!!

We, however, only have one night before we leave for Salta, Argentina. So we went on the Astronomicos tour.. It was only a two hour tour but it was incredible! The stars are sooo bright here!

We started off by having a little lesson into the background of the Milky Way and the differences between the Northern and Southern hemisphere.. Interesting enough.. Then they showed us all these pictures etc of what the Greeks dreamt up.. Honestly some of these things that a cluster of stars are meant to show is ridculous! I reckon that they made them up as a joke and then people just thought they were been serious! Haha!

So then we went a looked at what the Greeks think they see.. Virgin ladys etc.. You get the drift- insane! Ha!

Then we looked at what the Adeans see.. Adeans are a collection of Pervian, Bolivians, and Chilean people.. They look at the black of the Milky Way not the white bit everyone else looks at.. So they see a big Llama, a baby Llama, a fox, a Adean person, a toad (no im not joking), a snake, and some sort if bird..
This was cool, but it was cold out (even in the desert! I was shocked!), and I wanted to see the planets!!

So the next bit we went in this dome thing and he showed us on the MASSIVE telescope (worth £45,000- not as much as i thoight they would be), Saturn and Mars! Yes the planets! It was amazing! Well actually i wont lie, Saturn was amazing, mars looked like a round star.. But Saturn is apparentely made up of gas and we could even see the ring around it!! And three of its 27 or 29 moons (i cant remember) !!

It was incredible! And if you had an amazing camera (which clearly we dont! Mine struggles in the dark when taking pictures of people!) you could take a picture and get the movement blur of the stars! Im not sure how but one guy had an amazing camera which did it so it can be done! (something to do with shutter speed or something!)

So yeah our one night in Chile was amazing and I kinda wish we were spending longer here! Argentina is the next stop! Just hope its a little warmer!!

Speak soon! Muchos love!

XxX