Oxygen level: 97%
After the ESO fellows meeting that took place in santiago from November 12th to the 14th, we took a short trip to visit the ALMA site near San Pedro de Atacama from November 15th to the 17th.
We arrived at San Pedro very early on thursday, all very tired after having to get up at 4 am and a lot of partying during the fellows meeting. The city is quite small but really cute. After walking down a couple of streets I realized that I had already seen all of San Pedro! We found a place to have lunch and while eating felt a quite strong earthquake. All of the tourists that were eating there run outside except for us! The main reason is that all those people were there the day before when there was a big earthquake, some of them were telling us later that they could barely stand up, it must be quite a scary experience.
Then, in the afternoon some of us went horseback ridding in Valle de la Muerte, which means Death Valley... did not lose anybody although some of the horses insisted on not keeping up while others tried to run us over.
Day 2
Oxygen level: 70% (at least for some...)
Visiting APEX and the ALMA site.
San Pedro is located at about 2600 meters. On our second day, a bus took us first to the ALMA base camp where we had a health check around 3000 meters and then drove us up to the site at around 5000 meters.
Day 3
Oxygen level: -- % (too low to be measured)
We rented a mini-van and went traveling a bit around before returning to Santiago in the afternoon. Went first to a salar where we saw lots of flamingos and the kept driving until lagunas Miscanti and Miniques, located at about 4000 meters. Beautiful place...or should I say ... gorgeous ...
