We had an epic goodbye to the Atacama Desert! After four cancellations and rescheduling due to weather, we were finally "on" for our astrophotography tour in the desert! We were so happy as that ended up being our final night there before we started our journey to southern Chile. We were picked up at 11pm and driven out to the middle of the desert near San Pedro de Atacama...and that's where the magic began.
Atacama Stargazing has a great little setup in the desert with three dedicated stations which are linked by gentle ground lighting. We started at the telescope station, which was fortunate as the moon was about to set and we managed to get a brief, very clear view of the waxing crescent. We've looked through lots of telescopes and that first peek made it clear that the viewing in the Atacama Desert was remarkable. We then viewed Saturn, Jupiter, and the Orion Nebula through the telescope, all while the guide detailed the lifecycle of a star. We could also see nearby galaxies and saw several shooting stars. Even looking at familiar constellations was new and different! Orion appeared upside down and WAY more stars were visible throughout the constellation.
From there we moved on to an "Andean Cosmovision" station where we tried some traditional Andean food, teas, and wines before learning about how the Andean people used the stars. Fun fact--the familiar constellation, "Pleiades," was viewed as a sack of potatoes by the Andeans and they used it to assess how the potato crop would be and whether they needed to ration food (based on how much of the constellation they could see as moisture levels varied). And Orion was not Orion the Hunter to them, but a God of all things.
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| My non-pro photos from the first two stations. |
Our final station was Astrophotography. In this little spot we all got photos taken by a pro and while we aren't models (ok, we adults aren't), these photos were amazing! They almost look fake, but I swear they are real! We sat still for several seconds for each one!
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| Our first family photo in forever! |
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| Our beautiful girl against a stunning backdrop. |
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| Our handsome guy (who is about to have a b-day!). |
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| Trying to be all cute like the kids. |
This is the one experience we booked before going to San Pedro de Atacama and I'm so freaking glad that it finally worked out. We would HIGHLY recommend doing this if you're ever in the area as we learned so much and had a wonderful night of stargazing!
The final goodbye was also epic, but rather in an epically bad way! We arrived at the tiny Calama airport with plenty of time to spare, but as we had to check our big backpacks, we couldn't move along until they opened that counter two hours before departure. No big deal, right? Especially in an airport with only three gates. But...some flight had been "reprogrammed" and the passengers were physically blockading the doors to security! What?!?!?! What in the world did they hope to accomplish by blocking other people traveling on other airlines to other places? It mad absolutely no sense. We were baffled that the tons of people trying to go through couldn't just push by them, but since the airport security team was also rather small, it took a while to get the situation cleared up. By then, we were beyond tight on making our flight and didn't know that way up at the front, our flight was being told to come on up and get through security. We were assisted by another family who knew we were on the same flight and flagged us down, and we in turn grabbed a lady that we recognized from when we had checked baggage. Suddenly this cute little airport was turning into my worst nightmare! And I HATED going around others who had been in line for over an hour with us, but we did it and squeezed through to an incredibly quick security screening. We went straight to the gate and immediately through boarding. With all of the flights getting held up, there was actually no gate for our plane to go to so we were walked out on the tarmac to it, loaded up, and miraculously pushed back only a few minutes late. What a freaking adventure! We were so tired from the late night in the desert the night before and I was getting bummed that we only had two nights in Santiago that looked to be in danger and I was NOT excited about having to rebook a bunch of stuff, but it all worked out. Really hoping we don't have to repeat that anytime soon, but that's travel. We just have to be flexible and have our credit card ready!
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| My word, that was NOT how I expected our departure from a tiny airport to go! |
~Jo, Nomadic Momma
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