And in English.... Looking at very old stars in a small galaxy near the Milky Way to see molecules forming in their atmospheres.
Left: Even in the world's driest place, it is sometimes cloudy.
Having survived the interminable trans-Atlantic crossing, endured the luxury of the ESO guesthouse, and been shaken (but thankfully not stirred) on the two-hour drive from Antofagasta, I arrived at Paranal to discover... cloud. Not a promising start.
This is what makes Paranal so special, and what keeps this part of the Atacama dry: the prevailing wind blows from the sea to the west, but the moisture-laden air from the sea is held back by the coastal mountains. High altitude cloud, though comparatively rare, seems to have taken a liking to us.
In fact, general adverse conditions seemed to take a liking to us during our stay. Whilst there, we suffered cloud, software glitches, dome drive faults, terrible (4") atmospheric seeing and a magnitude 6.6 earthquake.
We were fortunate enough to miss the smaller, but much nearer earthquake and torrential rain storm the following week.
If the stars don't shine, at least you can always have a swim in the pool - a very surreal thing to have halfway up a 2600m high mountain in an underground hotel in the middle of the world's driest desert.
The VLT itself comprises of four telescopes, named Antu (UT1), Kueyen (UT2), Melipal (UT3) and Yepun (UT4). They can be put together, along with the small auxilliary telescopes to form the VLTI interferometer. As you can see - the whole thing is quite big.
You're looking here into the world's second largest mirror. The largest is only 10cm (4") larger and is part of the Subaru telescope at Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The mirror is 8.2m (26" 11') across and only about 20cm (8") thick. It is constantly held in shape by active optics - a set of actuators that bend the mirror back into the correct shape. For comparison, the M3 tower (holding the tertiary mirror) in the centre of the main mirror is about the size of a person.
Right and below: Umm... sunsets.
With miraculously little of our observing time lost to problems (thankfully), I headed back to Antofagasta to begin my journey north.
Here is Antofagasta Railway Station (just visible behind the trees), which is painted bright green, but which no longer runs passenger services and has, apparently, been converted into flats. Curiously enough, a British red telephone box stands in the middle of the gardens.
There is very little for one to do in Antofagasta at that, or indeed any other time of day.
Arica is a somewhat more sedate town, which is only an 11-hour bus journey from Antofagasta. It is a somewhat less ungainly sprawl than Antofagasta, and lies at the bottom of El Morro hill, the site of a battle during the Peruvian War. Known as the City of Eternal Spring, it is also a popular beach resort.
Here I was to spend two days after missing the bus to Putre. This was first accomplished by having to get a later bus, since the earlier one was full, thus missing the bus on the first day, and begin given the wrong times for the bus on the second day, therefore missing that too.
Left: The San Marcos de Arica church, designed by Gustav Eiffel "Tower".
While Arica itself is not an unpleasant place, it is also rather short on tourist attractions. During my regrettably-long stay there, I had the fortune to be entertained by a heap of marching, dancing school children. Some variety of municipal service thing was going on, involving lots of brass bands and stage dancing.
Perhaps the most interesting thing is the San Marcos de Arica church. Founded around 1570, the original church was destroyed in 1888 by an earthquake and was replaced by this construction by the famed architect Gustav "that bloke what built the tower in Paris" Eiffel. The more sturdy structure is comprised entirely of prefabricated wrought-iron plates. Only the doors are wooden. Ikea eat your heart out.
Because of its arid conditions, the Atacama is a wonderful area to preserve just about anything. There are numerous sites with ancient drawings in the valleys around Arica. The lack of water erosion prevents them from washing away.
They fall into three categories: petroglyphs - carvings made in rocks, geoglyphs - images made from grouping rocks, and rock paintings.
In the Atacaman geoglyphs were made between AD 1000-1400 by a pre-Inca civilisation and are thought to mark caravan routes traders used to take from the altiplano to the coast. These particular ones show llamas (used as pack animals) and people accompanying them. What the people are doing is unknown. Probably too much coca.
The mummies at the San Miguel museum are believed to be the oldest in the world, with the oldest among them dating from as long ago as 6000BC. The practice was used as recently as 2000BC by the Chinchorro tribe. This included making the clay death mask the covers the face.
The Chinchorro mummies include the mummified remains of many babies and children. Efforts to explain the infant mortality rate include high levels of arsenic. Here, a mummified baby can be seen with its clay mask.
It seems natural to geographically split the long, sinuous north of Chile into even more sinuous regions. The first region comprises the desert and coast: a flat, barren, sandy, salty wasteland, occasionally slashed by river valleys that would make the Grand Canyon think twice. Our journey started in one of these - the Azapa valley, famous for its olive production, and continued in the Lluta valley, famous for its fruit and vegetables.
On the long and winding road to Bolivia, punctuated with annoying frequency with trucks travelling to the borax depot in the valley, there lies what CONAF refers to as a magnetic zone. Stop your car on the road and it will roll uphill!
Obviously this has nothing to do with magnetism. The optical illusion, similar to Electric Brae in Ayrshire, and Aston Clinton near Luton, the optical illusion is created as the road there rises at a slightly less perilous incline than the surrounding area.
This is the second geographical zone - the pre-cordillera. Vegetation, in the form of some rather pathetic, stringy shrubs, starts to grow, along with the magnificent candelabra cactus - browningia candelaris. These only grow within a few hundred metres in altitude and survive in this parched environment from the occasional moisture they get from sea fogs and the Invierno Boliviano. They grow at about a centimetre a year, making this one around 400 years old!
Winding upwards into the mountains, we stopped briefly at Pucara de Copaquilla (3080m) to take the air, or what was left of it. The Pucara is a reconstructed pre-Incan fortress that was used to guard the fertile valley beneath it. Like so many places in the altiplano, it is place of deadly quiet (apart from the occasional lorry) and views to, well, take your breath away.
Socoroma (3060m) is a tiny village of 132 inhabitants, nestled in among the mountains, playing host to a few old natives and not much else. They have a big problem with rural depopulation as all the youngsters go on to more active lives in the cities, leaving the old folk to grow their oregano in peace. They do keep a nice thatched church, though. One of the oldest in Chile. But you'll hear that a lot around here.
With the Sun setting, we munched on some pilfered passionfruit (or at least that's what we were told - I've never eaten them green before and the flowers on them were... different), then left on the long road eastward. Below: Putre and Cerro Taracapa at sunset.
We arrived in Putre (3550m) a little late for sight-seeing, but it was shortly before here that I got my first glimpse of my original target - Cerro Tarapaca/Taapaca (5820m). Apparently it's ascendable in a day from Putre... but I didn't manage to get there in time to acclimatise, and besides, ascending in 2300m at that altitude in one day is a bit silly - most people don't make it.
Instead my night was spent in the comparable comfort of a Putre B&B, of which I have regrettably already forgotten the name. We dined in the local restaurant in town owned by a Bolivian. The wine was passable, the alpaca (which tastes something like a cross between beef, undercooked turkey thigh and something that might be tuna steak) was very pleasant, but the aperitif was enough to knock your socks off! I never did find out what it was, but it may have been singani. Also new was quinoa, a local grain similar to cous cous, and a local variety of potatoes that were small, black and tasted of roasted peanuts with the texture of baklava.
The following morning we travelled to the third geographical zone - the Altiplano. Here, the temperature and rainfall are sufficient for oases of mossy greenery to spring up. In them, the wildlife suddenly blooms from the occasional lonely condor to a wide variety of birds and mammals.
Having stopped near the ranger station of Las Cuevas, we met some rather cute and cuddly creatures called vizcachas. Relatives of the chinchilla, they look like fat rabbits with long, squirrel-like tails. They're very tame, and it was quite easy to get within about ten feet of them. Like rabbits, though, they're not as cuddly as they appear - having seen two of them fighting, it's not something I'd like to be on the receiving end of.
The Cuevas that Las Cuevas refers to are just that - caves that were inhabited by prehistoric man (and presumably woman). They have a magnificent view out over the altiplano, but I'd imagine they could get quite cold at night. Good excuse for a nice roaring fire!
Above right: It's a duck!
Right: Another one of those small, unidentifiable birds.
Below: The twin volcanos Parinacota (right) and Pomerape, seen across the pampa and the Bofedal de Parinacota.
Our journey continued on to the village of Parinacota that lies beneath the mountain that gives it its name.
The Bofedals, or swampland, on the altiplano offer some rich wildlife. Andean Geese (Chloephaga melanoptera) are a common sight, along with all four kinds of Andean camelid. Alpacas and llama are farmed by the locals for their wool, the products of which can be bought quite cheaply in the local markets. The more endangered vicunas and guanacos run wild in the reserves.
The vicuna is one of conservation's success stories. Hunted for its wool - the finest in the world, and reputedly one the warmest - the vicuna's numbers plummetted to around 5000 in the 1960s. In response, the Peruvians and Chileans set up national parks to protect it. Political skirmishes have split the Chilean park up, but the vicunas are now around 125,000 in number.
Since the average vicuna only produces around 200g of wool annually, wool now sells at around £300/US$500 a kilo. A little out of my price range.
They are rather cute, though.
Below left: A Puna ibis (Plegadis ridgwayi).
Below right: Err... some kind of woodpecker...
Above right: The Lagunas de Cotacotani.
Left: The summit of Volcan Guallatiri/Gaullatire.
The village of Parinacota is an isolated community in the middle of some of the most picturesque nowhere imaginable. Comprised of only a few houses, a church and a couple of market stalls, it is home to only a few dozen Aymara, and sits a few miles back from the main road under the shadow of the volcano.
The church, a reconstructed 17th century affair, has an unusual feature of a table chained to the altar. Reputedly, the table is homicidal and wont to leave the church at night to go on a killing spree.
Throughout my altiplanic expedition, I was joined by a motley crew of travellers. In addition to my Santiagan guide, I was kept company by a Danish tanker engineer (chief engineer at that), who seemed to have been everywhere it is possible to go in one lifetime. The fourth member of the posse was a German law student, with whom I also ended up hunting around Arica for a place to sleep that night. Specifically, TWO places to sleep - which took some getting across to people.
Above: A cormorant.
Right: Giant coots nest in front of Sajama volcano.
If you have ever studied a Chilean guide book, this a photo (left) that you must have seen repeated a thousand times. The perfect volcanic cone, reflecting in the waters of Lake Chungara (3810m).
The lake is reputed by some to be the highest (non-navigable) lake in the world. Quite what defines the highest lake is a matter of controversy. This list only puts it at number 27!
On the subject of quite high things, the flat summit of Volcan Sajama in Bolivia (above) hosted what is widely recognised as the world's most altiduous game of football.
Above right: Birds dot the short of Chungara lake, beneath Sajama volcano.
Right: And now for something completely different... another small bird!
Having reached the Chilean border post (which is some miles away from the actual border), we turned tail and headed back down the mountain. We stopped frequently, although this was mostly due to borax trucks.
One place we did stop were the hot springs near Putre. While nice, they've gone and built an actual spa building around them, denying visitors the delights of having a good view from your bath (not like last year).
We also stopped for this guanaco, which not taking kindly to us thundering through its neighbourhood, brayed at us and wandered off.
Thus we returned to Arica. Once again my plans were thwarted, not only because I had to find a different hotel that night because the one I had been staying in was fully booked, but because the next day my visit to Peru had to be cancelled since the bus down to Antofagasta was full as well! It makes you wonder why they had so much trouble to put together a group to go up to the altiplano!
The trip back down to Antofagasta was largely uneventful and served mostly to hammer home the vast emptiness of the desert. I sat next to an Aymara man on his way down south. He was large, and spoke about as much English as I did Spanish - we got on surprisingly well. We watched movies on the TV (subtitled, not dubbed, thankfully) and I indulged my new-found passion for enpanadas, which are remarkably similar to Cornish pasties. I never did get to try a cheese one.
The night in Antofagasta was instantly forgettable, as was most of the next day, which was largely spent wandering around Antofagasta looking for a taxi that didn't cost £10 to get to the airport. I failed.
I was very happy, however, to get back to the ESO guesthouse - a tiny island of luxury at the end of a long trek (and the start of another mammoth plane flight). With my pisco in hand, I set out on my way back to Blighty. But I shall return!
