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SAN PEDRO DE ATACAMA
San Pedro is a small little village in the Chilean desert.It is a really nice, small village.We checked the place out for most of the day and then booked our star gazing tour for that night.We also booked our bus for the next day to head to Santiago which was to be our last leg of the South America adventure!!
STAR GAZING
Yet again this was an amazing experience. We booked a tour which brought you out into the middle of the Atacama Desert to a French astronomer's house. His name is Alain Maury and even though we had no great knowledge of astronomy or the constellations, it was such an interesting night.
We started by being led into their house (himself & his wife run the place together), which has no lights outside (clearly not good for star gazing!).We went through the front door and there was table in the centre with a single candle lit on it. Surrounding this is a circular style concrete seating area. You take your place on the concrete slab & Alain sits in front of you and starts to explain a few basics about using the telescopes outside (6 massive telescopes outside).Then we happened to look up....right above our heads there was a square section of the thatched roof missing! Peeping in on us all were about 3,500 stars and part of the Milky Way.Because the weather is so dry there he can afford to cut out a chunk of his ceiling & leave it open!Actually a lot of restaurants in San Pedro were the same...they have big squares cut out of the ceiling, then in the middle of the restaurant they light huge fires on the floor & when you finish your dinner you can sit around the ´bonfire´ and drink your coffee or whatever. It was lovely idea...clearly would never work at home!
Anyway back to Alain, after he retired early from the European Southern Observatory, he set up his own private observatory on a ranch outside San Pedro. He combines astro-tourism with his own private research on comets and asteroids. He brought us out and showed us how the rotational relationship between the earth, stars and sun. I won't bore you with the details, but if any of you are ever in San Pedro it's a must. We got to see the Southern Sky (as opposed to our Northern sky at home) so got to set loads of cool constellations like the Southern Cross, the bat, the soldier and the horse, the swan and so many more. He then went though the various names the Incas had for these constellations & the importance the stars played in their lives. The telescopes just showed up so much more than you could ever imagine seeing with the naked eye.It took two hours in the freezing cold at 9pm but was so worth it. Then to finish off the night he brings you inside and recaps on stuff, and his wife comes out with the best hot chocolate ever...her own mother makes it melting real chocolate in milk, it was gorgeous & was perfect warmer up to the end of the night.
Due to there being no lights around we couldn't take many photos. Alain took your camera & attached it to one of the telescopes which he had focused in on Jupiter and took a photo and also took a great photo of the moon.
The next day we headed for Santiago.
San Pedro de Atacama Done!!
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