stargazers

Well, since we left the Norte Grande of Chile and headed south to the Norte Chico, things have calmed down quite a bit - we´re in winding-down mode now, pretty much (trying to get our heads round the idea that we only have a couple of weeks left now!). After some umming and ahhing over whether to head to the area around Copiapó or to La Serena (which we HAD already visited a couple of years back, but liked enough to go back to), the latter won out, partly due to the fact that seeing the attractions around Copiapó would have involved yet more sitting-on-coaches-for-most-of-the-day-type tours, which we´re heartily sick of by now. And the MAIN reason we headed there was to visit the Mamalluca Observatory in nearby Vicuña, and see into space!

The north of Chile has some of the best conditions in the world for astronomy - as it happens, Chile has just won the right to own the world´s most largest and most amazing telescope (over the Canary Islands, apparently they´re gutted). Anyway, at Mamalluca they gave us a head-spinning prelude to the telescopic action - did you know that the sun (and therefore the Earth) will only be around for another 5,000 million years??! This was news to us! Why had no one told us this before? And how can they be so precise about it? (We were also unaware that Pluto is no longer considered a planet, but that may just be us being behind the times). Following this, we got to see Saturn (ring included), Mars, and as you can see, we managed to get a spectacular view of the Moon as well:

Besides that, we did little in La Serena, unless you count me getting a bit carried away buying Chile World Cup paraphernalia (hey, it´s been 12 years!). It was a bit too cold to relish being out anywhere in the evenings, unfortunately (and there didn´t seem to be any heating anywhere either!)

From there, we headed down to Santiago again for another week or so with my family, and that so far has involved some of this:

(Machas a la parmesana - razor clams topped with cheese and grilled; a Chilean classic)

several toasts drunk to our travels, and hearing everyone´s earthquake tales - and the full realisation of how lucky we really were to miss all that...

Being back in Santiago meant we could also revisit La Fuente Alemana, and have a proper Chilean sandwich-fest (grilled pork, avocado, tomato, mayo - the works), while pondering whether us opening a venture like this in London would ever be a success... I dunno, you´d have to find some of these legendary old ladies to run the place for it to work!

Once we leave Santiago, it´s only Mendoza and the final few days in Buenos Aires to go...