San Pedro de Atacama

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It is with a heavy heart that I left San Pedro de Atacama. Our time there was shortened by the lack buses headed down south to La Serena, as many were full due to the impending Christmas holidays. For this reason we only had three short days to spend in the dusty desert town. There was some wine drinking in the street and some loud singing and hammock swinging.The highlight of our time in San Pedro would have to be the stargazing tour we went on the first night we got into town. We managed to get onto a tour at midnight and went out to gaze at the desert night sky for 2.5 hours. We learned about Sirius, one of the closest stars, only 8+ light years away, and Betelgeuse, 500+ light years away. We saw Mars, and Jupiter through a telescope and different globular clusters and galaxies and star groups. We learned how to find Orion, the Rabbit head, the Big Dog, Gemini, Aires and Taurus. At the end we got the fab photo taken of us with our new Canadian pal, Victoria, in front of the stars. Just awesome!Now it is off to La Serena for 11 wonderful days without a bus! We will spend Christmas and New Years there and will even be with a Chilean family for the Christmas festivities.

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