From Mars to You

Greetings!

The morning after the long drive to and from and to camp we headed out to find some unique features on the satellite imagery. My chosen path was apparently too optimistic as far as what I could accomplish with our big truck, and rather than looking at fascinating surface cracks or dunes, we were looking at a channel that we had been able to drive into, but not back out of. Then we were looking at the end of that channel, the very steep slopes outside of the channel, the extremely rough terrain below those hills, some mine property, and an abandoned railroad grade with all of the tracks and wood pried off. The afternoon, while not necessarily filled with academic inquiry, was mentally strenuous in its own right trying to find a way back out of the seemingly one-way-access piece of nowhere we had gotten ourselves into. The answer was, unfortunately, the railroad grade. Driving on a railroad grade, while relatively straight and approximately the width of the truck, is unpleasant. I could try to describe how unpleasant, but I think it is best explained by the fact that we vibrated the labels off of the water containers in the back of the truck... simply vibrated them into fingernail-sized scraps. Chris was afraid he would have a seatbelt shaped bruise across his chest. Though we did not find the features we were looking for and left a few new marks on the truck, we found our way back to camp, and that made the day a victory. I had not really liked the tent that I bought in Iquique, it shook in the wind and one of the poles cracked to the point of almost breaking the first time I tried to put it up, so I decided to see if the poles would work with my other tent. With some finagling, removing a few pieces from the new tent, and a few extra stakes, I had an only mildly deflated version of my tent. As I knelt to pound in the last stake, my pants tore... right across the back of my upper left thigh. I sighed, pounded in the stake, and resigned myself to having one fewer pair of pants for the rest of my trip.

Thankfully, the tearing pants marked the end of the mishaps for the start of the trip. The next day we found a somewhere to park within an hour-and-a-half hike to the features we wanted to see. That marked the start of three more days of productivity before heading into Iquique for some showers, food, and gas. We had a tasty dinner at a not-so-tasty time (they brought our food at 10:20 when we had ordered at 9:05) and headed back to the hotel for some sleep. We spent the next four days at Punta de Lobos (Wolves' Point) which Chris believes earned its name from the constantly howling wind. Excepting one day of clouds, our time there went basically as expected - sun, wind, and lots of walking. Now we are back in town for the evening, and will be heading out for another three days. I'll let you know more when we come back on Tuesday. Now... the part you actually look at: pictures.




Working at Punta de Lobos... or Mars... you decide



Our super-gourmet kitchen



Trying to get the crappy poles from the crappy tent to work for my nice tent



Camp at Punta de Lobos - note my awesome use of the wrong poles to put up the better tent



Who needs a light table??



The footprints of a little visitor that came while we were sleeping... what it is doing all the way out here, I will never know



The convenient parking spot to hike from... aka, the truck wouldn't go any farther up the channel



The view from where we hiked to... people will apparently drive ATV's anywhere

Ok... that's it. Until next time....