The Last Days in Santiago

We made it safely back from Valparaiso on Monday afternoon and enjoyed a very casual evening-in, and early night at the apartment. On Tuesday morning we woke quite late to an empty house, with both of our hosts out, hard at work. Fiona and I decided to leave the house and search around for somewhere to have breakfast, and then to plan the rest of our days activities. We had breakfast in a Vegan Bike Shop believe it or not, and we decided to stay local to the apartment for the rest of the day.

We started with a short wander through the Italian Barrio which was quiet and peaceful, and then Fiona suggested that we get the Funicular and ride to the very top of the Cerro de San Cristobel, the massive great hill, (I still think it is a small mountain...!), that we walked half way up on our first real day in Santiago. Let me tell you, it was a darn sight easier riding the funicular railway up to the top, maybe we really should have done that on the first day...?  Anyway, even when we reached the upper funicular station, there was still about 100m of stairs to climb to enter the open-air church and reach the very feet of the ‘Virgin’ statue that looks out over the whole of Santiago. The views from the very top of the city and the Andes Mountains are quite spectacular, and we made the most of them as we were in no rush to descend back in to the hustle and bustle of the city. It was really quite peaceful and serene up the top there, at least until the local Catholic Priest started preaching his midday mass, and even then there was something soothing and restful about the way he recited his verses.

Eventually we rode the funicular down to the city again, and decided to visit another of Pablo Neruda’s houses, like we did in Valparaiso. This was not too far from the bottom of the funicular and only took us a few minutes to find, hidden away in a backstreet, tucked under a steep slope of the Cerro San Cristobel. As we had done at the weekend, we took the audio tour and followed the tour around another of Neruda’s fabulously quirky houses, with hidden passageways, spiral stair cases, and a plethora of art and artefacts. One of the things that Fiona and I both really liked was Neruda’s ‘Summer Bar’ built towards the top of his garden, where he could entertain guests. This has given us some ideas for our new house when we return to Christchurch. I think overall I preferred the house in Valparaiso for its stronger

nautical theme and stunning views over the city and ocean, something that can’t be said of the ‘La Chassona’, the name of Neruda’s home in Santiago. 

We left his house in search of a bit of lunch at a local place I had read about, called ‘Galinndo’s’, which appeared to be the only restaurant in a street full of restaurants where people were queuing out the door at 3:00 in the afternoon.... We eventually got in and I had the local speciality, a corn pie, and Fiona had steak and chips...! That was enough for one day’s wanderings..... We returned to the apartment and caught up with Christine and Andres, and ended up having a late soup and another round of Wizard.

On Wednesday, both Christine and Andres were going to take a half day to spend some time with Fiona and I, and take in some of the culture on offer in Santiago. First we had an early lunch and then headed to the Pre-Columbus Museum to see some history. It was fascinating, and the ‘Chile, before Chile’ exhibition was stunning, both in the quality of its presentation and the quantity of the ancient artefacts on display. There was also a lot of other stuff from all the pre-Columbus civilisations throughout the Americas, but I enjoyed the Chilean stuff the best. From there we went to the ‘La Moneda Palace’, which is the seat of the Chilean government, and the scene of the famous coup of 1973. From there we went to see the ‘London-Paris’ district which is a quaint little area of gothic houses and cobbled streets, and we visited a former military detention centre, now a memorial to the dead & missing, called ‘Londres 38’.

That evening we were meeting up with Christine and Andres’s friends at their local bar for a few beers and pizzas, whilst also watching one of Chile’s World Cup warm up matches against Northern Ireland, which was being played in Valporiaso. It wasn’t the greatest of games, and if I am honest Northern Ireland played very poorly, and even then the Chilean team only just managed to beat them 2-nil. It was good however catching up with all the people we had meet that first week we were in Santiago, and a few more besides. I am always happy to go anywhere where there is beer and good conversation to be had, and when you throw in a football match to watch, it doesn’t get much better. Seeing Christine and Andres’s friends for the last time did serve to remind us that our time here in Santiago was drawing to a close and the next part of our trip was approaching fast.

For our last full day in Santiago, Fiona and I did something else that appears to have become a traditional part of our World Cup trips, we visited a memorial to some former human rights abuse or atrocity. In Germany in 2006 we visited a museum and memorial in a former headquarters of the East German secret police, called the ‘Stasi’, and in 2010 in South Africa, we visited the Apartheid Museum and all that entailed. This time round we visited the Museum of Remembrance and Human Rights, to learn about the 1973 Chilean coup and the following 18 years under the dictatorship of Pinochet.  The Museum was very well laid out, walking you through the entirety of the troubled period in Chile’s history from the pitched battle at ‘La Moneda’ and the death of the former president, Salvador Allende, through the years of hardship and brutality under the dictatorship, to the ‘plebiscite’ or referendum to end it all in 1990. As you can probably imagine, it was a very moving experience, with some of the footage, photo’s and personal recollections being very harrowing, but the eventual defeat of Pinochet and his military junta being very uplifting, the full gamut of emotions were stirred. This should be a must see for anyone visiting Santiago.....

So now I am sitting here writing this blog with less than 12 hours to go before we get on another plane and this time head west to Sao Paulo in Brazil. We will be catching a cab to the airport at 4:00am with an expected arrival time in Brazil of around 11:30am local time. From there we will head to the Hotel we are staying at in the Paulista Jardin part of town, where we will finally meet up with Mr Yates Snowden Williams III, to kick-off our 6^th World Cup adventure..... But the excitement of meeting up with an old friend is tempered with the fact that we will be saying goodbye to Christine and Andres, who have been exceptional hosts and fast become firm friends during our time in Chile. Christine’s calming and ‘simpatico’ nature and her pride in her adopted home of Chile, added to Andres’s South American enthusiasm and

dynamism, paired with his awesome culinary skills, will be sorely missed. I hope very much that we will be able to catch up with them again, either here in Chile again, or even in New Zealand maybe, but not to too far off in to the future. Thank You for your generosity and kindness Christine and Andres, we hope we can repay the favour sometime soon.....

Now I just about enough time to finish packing and maybe squeeze in a final round of Wizard before we leave..... 

The Kings of Valparaiso

We arrived back from San Pedro de Atacama with little incident, except for nearly missing the first plane, but that’s all par for the course when travelling in Chile, (Note to Self..., never trust the information boards...!). We sat around chatting and imparting news of our travels and adventures in the Grand North to Christine and Andres for a little while but headed to bed soon after as we knew we need to be up reasonably early the next morning, as we had another trip planned for the weekend. We were heading west to Valparaiso.

The only thing I knew  about Valparaiso was that the houses there are vibrantly painted and they hold a Red-Bull Downhill cycle race there every year, not what you would call a lot of knowledge really, so I was looking forward to this trip. We managed to rouse ourselves out of bed and left the apartment around 10:00am, and after a swift metro ride we were back at the bus station that we had used the weekend before for our trip to Vilches. It amazing to think what we have already done in less than 2 weeks in Chile. The bus ride was a casual 2 hours jaunt and we arrived in the bustling port city just before 1:00pm. If you can imagine a place where mountains meet the sea in a steep cascade of brightly coloured houses, each of which seem to be on the verge of tumbling down the hill into the sea, then that would be Valparaiso. Add to this a melange of architectural styles from the late 1800’s right through to today’s contemporary tastes, with the distinctive infrastructure of a busy working port. I would put it somewhere between ‘Shabby Chic’ and ‘Urban Funkiness’.

As an example of this, Christine & Andres took us to a favourite little bar of their called ‘La Playa’ for a spot of lunch, which could have been a set of a Hemingway novel if it wasn't for the myriad of black and white posters of Hollywood’s  great & good with a mix of Rock Stars from 1960’s thru to 90’s. It was an amazing place right out of another time. After lunch we made our first use of a Valparaiso institution, the ‘ascensores’ or small funicular railways, that climb the steep slopes from the port level, about 100m. These historic and rickety boxes save you a heart pounding climb up near vertical streets, and as far as I am concerned, there are not enough of them..!

After the lift and a further calf-busting climb to find our hostel, we eventually found it in the beautiful historic seaport area called ‘Cerre Alegre’. Once we had checked-in and dropped off our bags we went on a gentle stroll around the area, looking up colourful stairways, along steep streets at distant pastel shaded hillsides, and vistas out over the harbour and to the hazy Pacific Ocean. Eventually we found our way to one of Christine’s favourite spots, the ‘Brighton’, a brightly painted yellow/orange

restaurant and terrace perched right at the edge of a deep ravine that looked

out directly over the city streets below. It was here that we were to try our first ‘Pisco Sours’ a drink of Peruvian origin, made from Pisco, distilled grape liquor, with lemon & sugar syrup and a small hint of Angostura bitters. It’s sort of a Chilean classic that we had been waiting to try and now was that time. Whilst I found it to be a bit sour, no surprises there, I did enjoy it and ordered another soon after.

 

After a couple of hours on the terrance, the next treat in store for me was a trip to a local ‘Beer Bar’ called “El Irlandes” which had a great selection of Craft Beers from all over the world, strangely excluding New Zealand, but then I have tried so many NZ beers it was good to try something I had not had before. So in that vein I had a Mikkeller Double IPA called ‘Cracked Moon’ and a Clown Shoes porter called ‘Genghis Pecan’, as you can imagine I was in seventh heaven. But the evening was still young and the best was yet to come.

Around 8:00pm we went to a restaurant called ‘Cinzanos’ which appears to be a bit of an institution in Valparaiso, where the stage was set for an evening of old time crooning. The main stars of the evening were a dashing star of yesteryear and his 2 piece show band, all of whom were in their 70’s if not older. As the music started and the singer started belting out some South American classics to much appreciation from the building crowd, we started to get in to it, helped in part by a few bottles of Chilean red wine and a hearty meal. We had bagged a great spot just in front of the action and what started as a mildly entertaining evening soon became raucous affair as the evening moved on, different singers took the stage and at our table the wine flowed freely. I seem to remember something about Fiona kissing the band members and some dancing may have taken place, but to be honest my memory of the final hours is a little patchy. I remember little after leaving the restaurant, but my calves were very sore the next day...!

The next morning, nursing our hangovers, we met downstairs for breakfast to plan the day’s activities. We were going to take a wander over to the non-catholic cemetery, which like many parts of the town, was again perched high above the port streets. This started out okay, but the uphill stairs section was a real killer for 2 out-of-shape middle aged, marginally overweight people, especially when both Christine & Andres skipped jauntily up the staggering climb like new born mountain goats...! Still it was worth it in the end as the cemetery is full of foreigners that ended their lives here in Chile. It was remarkable just how many tombs and gravestones had many Scots and English names on them, of adventurous souls who were trying to make a life for themselves so very far from home. Very poignant.... From there we wandered up-hill again, ever-upwards but this time not quite so steep, to a converted prison that was now a cultural centre, with a wonderfully flat green space in the middle that seemed under utilised in this steepest of locales.

Next we caught a bus to see one of the houses of Pablo Neruda, a Nobel award winning poet & writer that Chileans are fiercely proud of. I can’t say that I am too familiar with his poetry or writings, but when it came to designing houses, another passion for the man, he knew what he was doing....  The house, called “La Sebastiana”, was stunning, both in its unique and somewhat nautical 1950’s design, and its pristine location above the city with almost 360 degree views of Valparaiso, the surrounding towns & bays, and over the port far out into the Pacific Ocean. Neruda described himself as a ‘Land Captain’ and his house in Valparaiso was a supreme vessel of his imagination. So impressed were we that Fiona & I will make some time to visit his house in Santiago later in the week.

We returned to ’Cerre Alegre’ and had a splendid lunch just up from our hostel at a place called ‘El Desayunador’ which literally means ‘The Breakfast’. This was followed by some more walking around, and unfortunately some more severe climbing, when we discovered that the funicular we wanted to use was not working. I wish I had switched on my GPS this weekend, just to know what vertical elevation we had climbed; I think you would have been impressed...! Christine & Andres were going to head back to Santiago that evening, but Fiona & I decided to stay an extra

night and have a slow return the following day. So we ended up back at the ‘Brighton’ terrace where I decided it would be appropriate to have some more Pisco Sours, and we played a game of our now favourite card game, Wizard. Whether it was the Pisco’s or the lack of energy from all the climbing of the previous few days, but my ‘wizard-brain’ was just not working and I could not catch a break. This is a somewhat flimsy excuse as Fiona managed to grab her first Wizard victory, and she was probably more tired than I was....

We bid our farewells to Christine and Andres as they left to head back to Santiago, and Fiona I went for a late afternoon siesta back at the Hostel. We did managed to drag ourselves out again to go to a little French style restaurant not far from the Hostel, but we soon returned to the warmth of our little room and a couple of hours of watching BBC World, and some other English language rubbish....  The perfect way to end a perfect weekend in Valpo, as the locals call it....

Alright Geysers...!

The trusty alarm went off at 4:15am and Fiona and I immediately jumped into action to get ready and out of the room in 15 mins. This is a new sport we have been practicing a lot over the past 2 weeks.....

Just before 5:00am we were last people to be picked up on the tour bus, which meant we got to sit right at the back-of-the-bus, with all the additional legroom that entailed... Result...! We set off in the pitch black of early morning and headed in the general direction of Northeast towards the El Tatio Geyser field some 50 miles away, near the Bolivian boarder. The travel distance was not as significant as the altitude change, as we went from 2400m to 4300m, which has been known to have a very detrimental effect on some people due to altitude sickness. This was the reason Fiona & I had decided to do this trip the day before we left San Pedro in order to allow our bodies to acclimatise to San Pedro’s altitude, before assaulting ourselves with almost another 2000m increase.

I sat in the back of the bus zoning out while listening to my iPod as we drifted through the moonless desert and steadily ascended the long climb through a series of switch-backs and long straights. One of the other passengers on the bus was having a hard time with the altitude change, and we stopped for a short while to allow them a sort break before continuing onward. Both Fiona & I were okay, but you can really feel the effects of the altitude change with shortness of breath and achiness in your body as you get higher & higher. About an hour before sunrise we arrived at the Geyser park entrance and we got off the bus to pay the entry fee... Bugger Me Backwards...!! It was COLD, in fact it was -10 degrees C, and our guide took great pleasure in letting us know it would get lower just before the sun actually rose.

Fifteen minutes later, in the half-light of the pre-dawn we stepped off the bus again into a surreal and haunting landscape of billowing mists and the coughing and spluttering of boiling water. The El Tatio is the 3^rd largest geyser field in the entire world and has hundreds of individual geysers or fumaroles. The reason the tour is run at sunrise is that the the air temperature is at its lowest and this makes the steam from the vents more visible and impressive, and impressive it was. Apart from the fact that I had the perverse idea of dipping my gloveless hands into a vent to warm them up, I was enjoying the spectacle immensely. Fiona was wrapped up in every item of clothing she could put on, (including 2 pairs of trousers), wrapped in a blanket, and she was still cold....

We were led through the geyser field, moving from one interesting sight to another until we approached where the bus was parked, and also where breakfast was now laid out on a low wall. Before we reached the bus however, our tour guide, Mariano, reached down into large geyser hole and pulled out a couple of cartons of chocolate milk and a bag full of eggs, now hard boiled from the heat of the water... Ingenious...! I have now eaten an egg cooked by a geyser, and the hot chocolate was also very welcome. As we ate our breakfast, Mariano informed us that the temperature had now reached -13 degrees, but it would change momentarily when the sun rose. He was not wrong, as soon as the sun crested the far mountain ridge it was like an electric heater had been turned on as the warm rays of the sun were now being absorbed through my jacket..... Hmmmm, warm....

We had some further time to wander around and take photos before we boarded the bus to head to the thermal hot pools for those that were brave enough to get their kit off and take the plunge. No, don’t get your hopes up, even I wasn’t dumb enough to put myself through that savage ritual, but a couple of Frenchies on the bus did. Allegedly it was colder than it looked..... Imagine that.

From there we started the long journey back to San Pedro, stopping off to see some Andean wildlife and some wetlands, plus a stop for a goat cheese empanada at the original ‘one-horse-town’ that has only 3 residents. By this point I was starting to suffer the reverse effects of the altitude and with each meter we descended, a small head ache that had developed, proceeded to get stronger & stronger. By the time Fiona & I arrived at the hotel at midday, there was only one thing we were going to do, and that was take some headache tablets and climb in to bed to sleep....

We finally resurfaced at about 3 hours later that afternoon and mooched about the hotel for the rest of the afternoon, drinking tea & coffee out in the beautifully designed gardens in the warm sunlight. We rounded the day out with dinner at a restaurant called ‘Blanco’ that was all trendy white interior, dim lights and subtle house music, and very nice food too.... 

Tomorrow, (Friday I think?), we pack our bags and head back to Santiago, before taking off again on Saturday, spending the rest of the weekend in Valparaiso on the Pacific coast until Monday. As I won’t be taking the laptop with me on that trip, this could be the last post for 4 or 5 days.... Signing off for now...

Fun Facts & Figures – Part 1

As I did for the previous World Cup Blog for South Africa, and as the start of a continuing series, here is a quick round-up of some of the fun facts & figures about our trip so far: -

• Current Distance from Home: 10,512kms
• Distance walked so far: ~ 77kms...! (More than the last 7 weeks)
• Beers Drunk: Countless
• Great Beers Discovered: SpoH India Pale Ale, Santiago, Chile
• Amount of Spanish Learnt: Quite a lot..!
• Amount of Portuguese: Nothing
• Lost Hours of Sleep: ~ 20 hours
• Planes Taken:  3
• Public Buses Taken: 3
• Trains Taken: 1
• Games of Wizard Won: 2 (Steve) / 0 (Fiona)
• Highest Temperature: 25 Degrees C (San Pedro de Atacama, Chile)
• Lowest Temperature: -13 Degrees C (El Tatio Guysers, Chile)
• Favourite Purchase:  Beer (Steve) / Ethnic Shoulder Bag (Fiona)
• Favourite Quote: “Beer is not a purchase, it’s a necessity” - Fiona
• Favourite Meal:  Steak al pil pil (Steve) / Avocado Salad (Fiona)

Feel free to ask us for any other interesting facts & figures associated with our trip, (leave your questions in the comments section) We will try and get you the answers... Happy Days. 

Resting our old bones

On the Wednesday, we had nothing planned, except to meet for lunch a student of Christine’s who is currently working in San Pedro. Therefore we decided we would have a very casual & restful sort of day mainly based around the hotel in the morning, and then into town for the afternoon.

We met Antonia at a cafe in the main square and sat and chatted for a while, she was very grateful for the chance to practice her speaking English. She is a geographer here in San Pedro for a year on a UN backed project, studying the impact of the regions many stakeholders on the hydrology of the area. As you can imagine, water is a very important subject around these parts, and trying to balance the needs and requirements of the local population, the mining sector, tourism, and many others, all while being sensitive to the indigenous peoples of the Atacama, is a key responsibility. Antonia was engaging, smart and ambitious, with plans to move to London when her year in San Pedro is up, and we felt sure that she was destined for great things in the future.

The first part of the afternoon was spent at the local Gustav la Paige Museum, which details the area’s many diverse ecologies and traces Mans journey through the region over the past 12,000 years.  Gustav la Paige was a Belgian Missionary who spent the last 40 years of his life in San Pedro, where he documented the region, its landscapes, its peoples, and its buildings, and collected and categorised many of the exhibits in the Museum. Well worth the hour or so wandering round.... We also visited the local church that has stood around these parts since at least the mid 16^th century, and boy, did it show its age...! They are in the process of restoring it right now, but I hope they don’t lose that vintage character.

The rest of the afternoon we spent lounging around the hotel & its grounds. It’s nice to be able to make use of the facilities, instead of just rushing in & out and using only as a place to lay our heads. We need to go out for an early dinner, as we were due to be being picked up at 4:30am the next day for a trip to see the El Taito Geysers, and we wanted an early night. We went to a popular restaurant called ‘Adobe’ and sat effectively outside in an internal courtyard sort-of affair, with a warming brazier, and

view above to the stars. I had a fantastic steak dish called ‘al pil pil’ which is apparently  of Spanish origin, and involved large pieces of meat & potatoes in a thick sauce made from garlic & chilli, and wow it was good, (my mouth is watering right now as I type this). We finished off the meal with coffee & dessert, which was altogether far too much and headed back to the hotel for an early night.

Tomorrow we visit the Geysers of El Tatio

High Plains Drifters

As is customary on our World Cup adventures, we always seem to spend some time in a desert region of some description. Last time out it was a sandy wastes of Namibia, and before that the fringes of the Tunisian Sahara. So a trip to Chile would not be complete without spending some time in the driest spot on earth, the Atacama Desert.

Less than 5 hours after we got out of a taxi in Santiago, we back in one, heading for a 7:00am flight to Calama, in Northern Chile. At 5:00am the traffic is very light and we were standing in the check-in queue less than half an hour later. The flight was an uneventful one for me, mainly as I caught up on some lost sleep, but Fiona spent the trip gazing out of the window as the Andes passed by serenely and the temperate farmland turned into long stretches of desert wasteland. Off the plane and in to our transfer, had us at our hotel Altiplanico and unpacking by 11:30am.

The hotel is a sprawling collection of contemporary adobe style villa’s set in a very well designed and maintained desert-type gardens. There is a lovely pool at one end of the complex, but the water temperature was so cold there would be distinct chance of hypothermia if we tried to use it, I guess it gets better usage in the summer where temperatures can top out at 40 degrees C. Our room is super comfortable & very quiet, no TV, and with a separate bathroom wing and an outdoor shower, which is a very invigorating way to start the day. This must be the very bottom of the low season as I am guessing that of the 40 or so rooms they must have, there cannot be more than a handful of people staying here... Quiet luxury....

After a spot of lunch at the hotel, we took a short stroll into the main centre of San Pedro de Atacama. In the days before we arrived, the town had experienced a sand storm followed by snow, which even closed the airport for a while. Considering this is the driest place on earth, to arrive and see large patches of snow all around was somewhat strange, even worse was that the roads had turned to vast tracts of mud...!  Slowly picking our way through the streets, we wandered the main strip, carefully avoiding both the mud and the hawkers trying to drum up custom for either their tours or their restaurants. After finding the main square and a shady spot we sat for a while feeling very tired & out of breath.

What we had both not taken into consideration was that San Pedro was at 2400m and that we were feeling some slight effect of the altitude, probably not helped by our now fading jet-lag or the less than 4 hours sleep the night before. Too tired to even sit in a bar and have a drink, we returned to our hotel and crashed out for a few hours, followed by doing a bit of research on what tours we actually wanted to do, and find some recommendations. We eventually slunk out of our room at about 8:00am to hunt down some dinner, had our first Chilean restaurant meal in a place called ‘La Casona’, and were safely wrapped up in bed by about 10:30pm, praying for the gift of sleep...

Praise be to the deity of your choice..... We slept through to 8:00am with no interruption. Let me tell you that you don’t know how good that feels after a week of disruptive sleep....

Consequently, we were up, showered & dressed in time for breakfast, and felt that we had a new lease on life. The previous evening we had planned the mornings activities, and if it all worked out, we would have the next few days sorted out in terms of tours & sightseeing. Our planning worked. Later that afternoon we would be heading off to see the ‘Valley of Death’ and the “Valley of the Moon’, followed by dinner in town, and then to make the most of the exceptionally clear skies out here in the desert, off on a star-gazing / astronomical tour.

Our afternoon trip to the various ‘Valleys’ was the sort of experience that we

had hoped for, with impressive landscapes and stunning new vista’s at every turn. Our English speaking tour guide, Simone, took the time to explain many of the features and points of interest, and was on hand to answer our myriad of questions. 

The Valley of the Moon was the most impressive part of the tour, with vast salt-stained ravines & canyons, untouched sand dunes of enormous heights, and weirdly eroded rocks dotting the landscape, just what we had come to see. No wonder NASA uses this area as a testing ground for their Mars Rovers...! We had the chance to wander through this ‘moon-like’ place for a couple of hours, before climbing 300m up the well named ‘Duna Mayor’, (Big Dune) to watch the sunset. Stunning...!

We returned to town and headed out for an early dinner at place called Ckunna, before the star-gazing trip at 8:00pm. The tour company had warned us that it would be cold and that we should dress appropriately, and Fiona took this advice to heart by wearing nearly everything she had with her. We even brought her some gloves...!

The star-gazing was amazing as the Milky Way was on full display, along with Mars, Venus & Saturn, and the people giving the tour were extremely knowledgeable. I learnt more about astronomy, space, and our human-kinds place in the cosmos in 2 hours than I had in the past 50 years. I was left feeling decidedly small & insignificant in the scheme of things. From the introduction we moved to a bank of 12 telescopes set up to view various points of interest, and we were given a full description of what we were being shown at each telescope. The view of Saturn & its rings just about blew my mind, I have never seen anything like it. There were other planets, star clusters, nebulas, and interesting objects to view, but Saturn was indescribable, Fiona though that the telescope was just showing a representation of the planet, it took some convincing for her to believe she was actually ‘looking’ at Saturn.

Finally we went into small adobe building and had a cup of hot chocolate, (very welcoming), and listened to the French astronomer talk and answer our questions. His answer to a question about shooting stars took 10 minutes to answer, described the journey of man in their understanding of the heavens, stars and planets, and was worth the price of the tour alone.

We have a telescope in a cupboard at home somewhere, and I will dusting that bad-boy off very soon after we return.

Not enough Spiglord on the Blog.

Fiona has complained that there are no photos of me on the Blog, so to rectify this injustice, here are a couple....

Enjoy...

Using Technology at the Museum