Chile 2000In December, 2000, I got a chance to spend two and a half weeks travelling in Chile. The trip was split roughly half and half, business and pleasure, though to be honest, even the business part is pretty fun. I was awarded five nights of observing time on the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory 4-meter telescope to observe the Magellanic Clouds. This was a follow-up set of observations to those I got last year and are going to become a major part of my thesis research. But this time, I was to be joined by Amy after the run. We would then spend ten days touring around through the south of Chile before returning home before Christmas.Since pictures are a thousand words, I've compiled this web trip report using many of the photos I took along the way. My profound appologies to those of you with slow internet connections... ;-) Table of Contents |
The Andes! One of these mountains is Aconcagua, highest non-Himalayan mountain in the world at just shy of 7000 meters. But I don't know which one.
Two interesting flowers that I saw a lot of up here.
I hiked out to this flat-topped peak and passed through this very Mars-like terrain on the way.
A large cactus near which I found an assortment of large, very bleached, chalky bones.
Looking back up at the observatory.
Weird snowman rocks--wish I knew how these formed.
A marvelous desert 'garden' I found a couple hundred feet below the dormitory one afternoon. The mountain drops off extremely steeply to the north-east and I braved the ferocious descent to see what was down there. Lots of plants like these and some dirt just about ready to slide further down.