San Pedro de Atacama, Chile 🇨🇱

Today is a lazy day! It is Jeff’s birthday so we go to the French bakery for pastries, any excuse really! Shivani and I have decided to book the Uyuni tour for Tuesday, it gives me time to do the Geysers tomorrow. I am also looking forward to travelling with her as she is such a positive ball of sunshine and the 3 days are supposed to be tough going. We head into town and book the tour with Cruz Andina, we liked the fact they stay down lower in Ville mar on the first night so altitude should be easier and warmer. On the way out of town we stop for an ice cream. I choose a local flavour, Rica Rica which comes from a desert plant and tastes of malted milk. It is then back to the hostel to laze in the hammocks basking in glorious sunshine.

Tonight I am going stargazing, this was something that was recommend to me as the desert provides perfect conditions for viewing the night sky. I climb into the van and spy Nicky & Liam who I met in Salta, I had mentioned the tour to them and it is great to see them tonight. Jorge is our host for the night and you can tell how passionate he is about astronomy. He previously worked at ALMA, which is a station that houses lots of the worlds biggest telescopes for Germany, France and USA. We arrive at his house and I spy at least 15 telescopes waiting for us to use. Settling in to chairs he takes time to explain a bit of history, how the night sky is mapped and that it is divided into 88 constellations. I am sat there just mesmerised by the view of the Milky Way. Obviously it is a different view to what we see in the Northern Hemisphere but I don’t recall every seeing something like this that wasn’t in a book, just beautiful. We see the Southern cross and learn how to use it to find the South Pole. Jorge points out the scorpion, Sirius which is the brightest star and Omega century.

We have a short break where his adorable little daughter Antonio helps her mum give out Hot Chocolate (which is lovely and warming whilst stood next to a gas fire).

Now it is time for observations using the telescopes. First looking at coloured stars; red, blue and yellow. Planets are those that don’t twinkle! We see clusters of stars, a spider cluster and also Canopus, the second brightest star in the sky. We are using different telescopes for each observation and he then surprises us with Jupiter, which looks like a cookie with a fork imprint on it. We can see four of her planets, she is just beautiful. Jorge also shows us Saturn with her rings showing as one big one. Finally the moon comes up, and viewing it through the magnification is great as you can see all the craters and lakes. Jorge has taken a few photos for us but regardless this is one night I will remember for a while….