San Pedro de Atacama Exploration

My blog post is a bit late today because yesterday at the end of the day,  when I'd normally be updating this site,  I was out in the desert looking at stars as part of an organized event.  And there were many,  many stars to be seen.  We're quite high up here,  and the sky was cloudless,  and the night sky was far more impressive than it is in Seattle,  where usually it's so cloudy you can't even see any stars.

The rest of yesterday was spent exploring the small dusty town of San Pedro de Atacama,  arranging a tour of the Bolivian salt flats,  and general hanging out.

And I'm very pleased to report that I do have a tour booked.  Normally it's a bit tough as one person to book a tour,  you have to go with other people,  and finding those other people might be a bit challenging.  However,  there are 5 others at my hostel,  all of whom I get along well with,  which is good,  since we're all going to be in the same Land Rover for 3 days together.  We booked it as a single group,  and if all goes well with getting a visa at the Bolivian border,  I'll be tooling around the high desert starting tomorrow,  seeing lagoons,  flamingos,  and blindingly white salt flats.  That also means that while I may be able to pull off one more blog post later this evening,  I will be absent from the internet for several days.  Furthermore,  depending on how much I want to risk it,  I may not turn on the computer for several days after that as well.  I've heard some stories about hard drives failing at high altitudes.  I'll see what others are doing and make my decision based on that,  but I might be offline for a while,  or using public computers to do smaller posts.

Okay.  Here are some desert photos,  with a sweet shot of the milky way at the very end.

The hostel that I am staying in has a very young cat,  which likes to get up on the roof,  and then mew pitifully until someone rescues it.  While that was happening yesterday morning,  it hopped onto a shade cloth that covers the breakfast area,  and wandered around trying to figure out how to get down.