Yes. That's right. THE DESERT. It is located in the north of Chile, in the second region (chile is divided up into regions, in all there are 15). It starts at 1 in the north, then proceeds to 12 in the south, but later they added a few more up north, haha. Anyways, we had to get to the airport at 4 am in the morning. Needlesstosay, I didn't sleep before that. When we arrived we had time to sleep because we had to drive to Chuquicamata, the biggest copper mine in the world (and I think the biggest mine in general). It was pretty impressive:
Those levels are waaaay bigger than they look. They had to be big enough to fit the most gigantic trucks i have ever seen:
There was a whole deserted ghost town near the mine. It used to be inhabited by all the workers in the mine, but then they ran out of room to put all of the earth they were moving. Half the town is already covered by huge piles of earth. So weird how tiny humans can make such big holes. Holes in the earth, holes in the ozone layer, jeez.
That night I got to realize all over again how tiny humans really are in the grand scheme of things. I went on an astronomical tour. Coolest. Thing. Ever. As anyone who knows me already know, I LOVE OUTERSPACE. Aliens, universes, stars, planets, the MOOOON, its all great. So. Let me tell you about it. We drive to this house/observatory out in the middle of the desert. This really smart french dude that knows everything gave the tour. The stars were the clearest I have ever seen. And soooooo many. The branch of the milky way was veeery visible. We soon learned however, that what we can see with the naked eye is a miniscule amount of what is out there. He showed us all the constellations, and I got to see some I have never seen before, because it is impossible to see them in N. America: Scorpio, the southern cross, etc. So awesome! I want to learn the sky! We then moved on to about 10 huge telescopes that had been chillin only about 30 feet away but no one had noticed them because thats how dark it was. I got to see the rings of saturn, nebulas, and other crazy things. I just love the concept that you are looking into the past when you are looking at the stars. All the stars are suns, there are millions of other galaxies, I am sorry, but how can there not be aliens?! They took the hubble and aimed it at what looked to be a dark spot of sky and found this:
COME ON! and that's in a dark spot of the sky.
The desert is a magical place. The landscape is just so vast. It's amazing. We went to a place called el valle de la luna (valley of the moon) it looks like the moon's surface and is awesome:
We went up on a ridge for the sunrise, but the point is not to watch the sunset, its to turn your back on the sun and watch how the mountains change colors. So beautiful. STOP WRECKING THE WORLD HUMANS, its not yours!!!!! The way we try to "conquer" space (as in dividing up territories, trying to live on other planets) is going to be a very sad day indeed.
Went to a salar (salt flat) saw flamingos! Very cool. All in all, the desert is great. I don't think I could live there though. Waaaay to dry, I thought my nose was going to start bleeding at any second, and the tiny fact that there is no water, you know. Hope you enjoyed the pictures, sorry i made this post super long by putting so many but i mean loook at them!
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