Stars and Steam

Last night was a "star tour" compliments of a french astronomer who has relocated to San Pedro in order to access consistently clear night skies. He gave a very amusing talk and pointed out constellations with a laser (try *that* in Toronto!) Afterwards we got to view a dozen or so telescopes set up and pointed to various celestial bodies. By chance it was also a night a many falling stars as we were passing through the tail end of a comet tail. He had adapters for SLR cameras.

Was up at 4a (after getting back last night at 12:30a!) for a tour of el Taito geyser field. It was colder than Laguna Verde! When we arrived it was -9 and then it dipped to -11 as the sun started to come up on the east side of the mountainsand suck the warm air up and cold in from goodness knows where. With the low temps the geysers are most active due to the larger differential. I passed on the "swim" as the bathing pool was only 35C - not even body temperature. No way would I want to get out of that into -11C!

On the way back we stopped at the little shepperd village of Machuca where we learned that boys are smelly llamas and girls are pretty flowers.