Seeing the stars from the southern hemisphere.

Nothing brings home that we are in a different earthly hemisphere than seeing unfamiliar stars in an unfamiliar sky. Our closest neighbours are Magellanic clouds, named after a Portuguese navigator from the 18th century, two galaxies containing 33 billion stars between them. Their light has taken so long to reach us that we are looking millions of years into the past. New constellations leap out at us; Sagittarius, a centaur aiming his bow and arrow at Scorpion, whose tail sweeps across the dark blue sky. Jupiter glows through gathering clouds, its orange brown rings just visible with three of its 80 moons through Ivan’s giant telescope.

Sound bathing in Vicuña.

We are in Vicuña, a valley between two mountain ranges making it especially good for looking at the night sky. Ivan is our star-gazing guide, showing us moon craters 300 mile wide, the spokes emanating from it’s edges a sign of the impact an asteroid created millions of years ago. Strange to think everyone, everywhere, always has the same view of the moon. In the 1600s Galilei realised that while the stars glitter and stay constant in their geography, there were other entities that didn’t shimmer and had differing trajectories; that these were planets, not stars, and that they were circling the sun. No doubt others knew this well before he did, nomadic tribes in the deserts, sailors at sea, breast feeding mothers; but they didn’t have his influence. Our evening ends with a sound bath, it’s eerie song lulling us and Ivan’s dogs snuggling beside us into a sleepy trance. To finish our perfect night a huge shooting star soars across the sky like a rocket.  

    Top left a globular cluster, middle shows the Magellan clouds, right is the sound bath equipment.

Vultures glide past.

In an ongoing bid to save money for the care home fees, we’re staying 90 minutes drive away in La Serena, in a windswept apartment circled by vultures.  I thought we’d only ever see them in the desert or up in remote mountain ranges, but it turns out they’re as partial to a chip as the next bird. Our apartment is in one of six tower blocks in a complex voraciously guarded by a woman who insists on checking our every detail each time we enter. On the first morning we walked about 3 miles to get to the beach which is only a stones throw away, before realising there is a breach in the barbed wire fence between us and the beach manned by yet another security guard.

A vulture passing our balcony, on the look- out for chips.

Fort Knox- like security in South America

I recall Gisella’s horror when Clive told her we lived in a house with no security guard/bars at the windows/barbed wire/ cameras, her rationale for living in a 4th floor apartment in Mendoza being that it had all of these with knobs on. Probably literally. 

Photos: from left to right – Clive walking on the beach, our apartment seen from the lighthouse, average security measures for houses and flats in Argentina and Chile.

Rusty hob saves the day.

The beach is rather cold, bleak and windswept, like a Chilean Clacton-on-sea in November. Anything metal in our flat has rusted in the briny air, including the electric hob, it’s heat so feeble that there is little damage to the flat or the pan when I accidentally leave my white shoe laces “boiling”for 4 hours during a morning walk. The laces, however, are toast.

 If all goes well today we’ll be arriving at around midnight. In Patagonia.