Showering with the stars

Friday, November 10

La Serena has been cloudy—stubbornly cloudy and dreary and gray. The beach has been socked in by a cement-colored wall that bleeds into the cement-colored sand, and even manages to augment the already chilly effects of the Humboldt Current. When we got on the bus a little before 8pm on Friday, the wall hadn’t budged, and we were all a bit skeptical of our planned trip to an observatory up in the hills. But somewhere near Vicuña, a town about an hour from our hotel, the sky dropped out from under the cement, and a dizzying field of glittering black spilled out above us.

Up on top of the observatory after the slick Big Bang (sounds very cute with a Spanish accent) presentation in the planetarium, the dome of billions upon billions of shiny things busy transmitting their shininess across millions of light-years of black had a dizzying, fall-over-backwards-at-the-thought-of-your-relative-insignificance sort of effect. While we were there, several shiny things got the urge to wriggle free of their perch, and fell quietly from above, making a glittery arc that stretched overhead before disappearing like fireworks. We got to spy on galaxies made up of millions of stars that hang to the left of tiny little specks that are really more millions of tiny stars many more times further away; we saw the southern hemisphere’s constellations, including the very tip of the southern cross; and we even got to marvel at our astronomer’s super-cool laser pointer that beamed over 4 kilometers into the inky night. Needless to say, most of our questions revolved around the price of said laser, where one might purchase said laser, and whether or not we could play with said laser (which we did). Later, we were “surprised” with a personal concert put on by the resident astronomers who apparently have their own—unbelievably good—garage band. It was slightly surreal to be sitting there, at the top of a windy road nestled into the Elquí Valley hills, showered by stars falling around us, being serenaded by an homage to Fito Paez sometime past midnight.

Saturday, November 11

After breakfast, we headed back toward Vicuña and then further into the valle Elquí, which is a gorgeous desert basin walled by dry walls of light brown that contrast perfectly with the cloudless light blue of the sky (apparently the valley is almost always cloudless, unlike our cement-infused coastal residence). Large spiny cacti dotted the brown, interrupted by what had to have been arbustos espinosos—some sort of bushy thing that keeps coming up in my geography class. We stopped for lunch in Villa Seca at a restaurant that cooks its food entirely from solar heat. We got to wander around the various solar panel-winged wooden boxes that dotted the patio and were filled with mix-and-match pots and pans slowly warming their respective dishes as we learned how the process worked. Later, we all rejoiced at the taste of bread from the sun, as we took to calling it, followed by salad from the sun, chicken and rice from the sun, flan from the sun, and finally coffee from the sun. Plus, I discovered the amazingness that is Canada Dry Soda limón. After stopping at the Gabriela Mistral museum, we headed for the Ruta Norte pisco factory for an amusing tour and an even more amusing jaunt through the gift shop.

Later that night, Amanda, Graciela, and I made ourselves a highly balanced dinner of completos--followed by Chilean get-to-know-you games (i believe it's a bit late for that...) with large numbers of COPA kids, pineapple slices, donas, and the occasional churripan. I have to say, even though I'm really glad I was able to break away from the group and make Chilean friends, the time I've had in La Serena has made me feel a little sad for not having gotten to know the group better. Not to say that I wish I were best friends with all forty kids, but there are a lot of cool people on the program who I love spending time with, and I'm really glad I was able to do that this weekend. Plus, how often do you get to reminisce with someone about childrens books that entailed highly ripe strawberries?