Day 14 - San Pedro de Atacama, Chile (1 April 2012)

Day 14 - San Pedro de Atacama, Chile (1 April 2012)

I wake up in the morning with Ann asking me if I felt an earthquake through the night.  I didnt feel a thing, I must have been out to it because she said there was a quake and it was shaking for about 20 seconds and relatively strong.  We look up on the internet and find it was a 5.1 magnitude earthquake situated about 80 kilometres from San Pedro.  No drama.

This morning we don’t do that much, we just did some washing and relaxed really. It was a good opportunity to catch up on our blogs and start uploading photos.

The weather here is fantastic and very hot, just like yesterday.  At night however the temperature plummits.  Im guessing it is probably going to be even colder when we do our 4x4 adventure in a couple of days as we climb even higher in altitude (approx 3,750 metres above sea level at our highest point, I think).

At lunch time we head into town to go to the store where I brought some jandels the day before.  I got a great deal of 2,000 pesos (NZ$6).  I knew it was too good to be true, as when I went to put them on this morning, I had two left feet.  What an idiot, why wouldnt I try them on in the shop? I only tried one jandel on and thought it was the right size so made the purchase.  So at the shop I exchanged a lefty for a righty, so it all ended well.  Also that morning when I went to put my brand new sunglasses on, I noticed they had partially broken.  They were pretty uncomfortable so it wasnt a bad thing they broke.  Fancy that ay, I had a pair of glasses for 13 years, and then my next pair only lasted 2 days.  I bought a new pair of glasses for $3,000 peso (NZ $9), so hopefully the increase in price of 50% (NZ$3) from my last pair of sunglasses will be the difference between poor and not so poor sunny's. 

We then buy large slabs of pizza for lunch which are covered in tomatoes.  We found a fella selling them on the street, he bought a few out of the restaurant to sell.  It solved our issue of what to have for lunch!

We then head off to the Museo Arqueologico Padre Le Paige (museum). The entry is 2,500 pesos (NZ 8) each. This museum takes you through the history of the people who live in the desert dating back to 6,000 BC. It was quite interesting.

We then headed back to the hostel to get ready for our star gazing that we had booked for that night. The star gazing is fully dependant on the weather and the sky must be clear for the stars to been seen. We are lucky, tonight it is clear (was only clear two nights in the last week) and it is the last night that you can star gaze as it is full moon time and the moon effects the light from the stars. Our tour is run by a Canadian astronomer who moved to Chile as it is one of the best places in the world to see the stars. He also runs a remote observatory there with countries during their research.

The tour starts with an hour lesson about the sky. We start off with the basics like how we can tell north and south from the stars. Then the astronomer proves to us that the earth is round and spins by pointing out certain facts from the stars. He then shows us the planets that are in the sky at that time which are Mars, Venus and Saturn. He then shows us the visible zodiac signs that are in the sky (you can only see six signs at a time, the other six can only been seen in the Northern hemisphere).   
Then after the supposedly boring part (I found it quite interesting) we got to look through numerous telescopes that are all set up to certain stars and objects in the sky. From the first telescope we can see a close up of the moon. I can see the craters and mountains and everything! The second telescope was my favourite, we were able to see Saturn! It was fantastic and incredible to see a planet so far away.  Most of the other telescopes had to be constantly readjusted as we would lose sight of the stars.  Really enjoyed this tour as it was interesting as completely different to what I would normally do.  We got back to the hostel at about 1130 so it wasnt too late either.

Museo Arqueologico Padre Le Paige - http://www.sanpedroatacama.com/ingles/museo.htm