Coyhaique is the biggest town along the Carretera Austral, and we planned to stop there to resupply food, gas and money, since not all of the towns in the region have ATM machines. On the way we found another nice wild camp along the river, and arrived in the town of Coyhaique the next day. It took us our normal few hours to do all of our “town stuff,” and we rewarded ourselves with a pizza and a beer at a local microbrewery.

We stopped that night just out of town at a campsite that was also an organic farm. Nacho, the farm’s Spanish owner, was very helpful, showing us around his greenhouses and giving us a great list of things to do farther north. We stayed for two nights, chatting with Victoria and Cameron, a couple from Florida heading South on the Carretera on their bicycles.

Our first stop after leaving the farm was to do two hikes recommended by Nacho.

After a couple more hours driving, we arrived at our next stop, a hanging glacier. We were excited that Quinn did the first hike of the day without complaining, and not wanting to push our luck, Jen and Quinn went to the nearby overlook to see the glacier while Witt did a longer hike to get a closer look at it.

The area we’re driving through is very remote and rural, with cattle and sheep being the main focus of the farms. Not much can be imported, as transportation in the area is difficult and time consuming. Lots of houses have greenhouses. If you want veggies, you have to grow them yourself.

Our route north took us next through the village of Chaitén which was nearly wiped out by the eruption of it’s namesake volcano in 2008. Farther north we entered Parque Pumalin. This private park was created by Douglas Tompkins, an American businessman who co-founded the North Face clothing company. Doug and his wife, Kris (who is the former CEO of the Patagonia clothing company), are leading many conservation efforts in the Patagonia region of Chile, including the creation of this very nice park. We camped in one of the park’s campgrounds on our way through and remarked that it was set up much like campgrounds in US national parks.

The next morning we arrived at the southern terminus of two ferries that make up part of the Carretera Austral.

The coastlines here are dotted with salmon fisheries. The farms are the main industry in the area and the source of much of the farmed salmon imported into the US. There are typically tanks set up on shore where the salmon spawn in fresh water supplied from a stream. Once they mature they are transferred to nets located just offshore.

On the recommendation of a guide we met on the ferry, we decided to take a detour into the Rio Puelo valley. The valley is very remote and just opening up to tourism. Like much of the region we’ve been traveling through it is threatened by a hydroelectric scheme that would flood most of the valley.

Chile has privatized most of its water resources and today they are 80% owned by foreign corporations. In recent years there have been plans to dam rivers in the area and build the world’s longest transmission line (over 2400 kilometers) to supply Santiago and the power-hungry mining operations in the north of the country. This transmission line has been blocked by local conservation efforts, but there are other fights brewing as developers eye lesser known valleys.

Reaching the heart of the Rio Puelo Valley required yet another ferry ride, this time across a lake. We arrived at the terminal after the last ferry of the day had departed, so we made camp on the lake shore.

About three weeks ago when we first pulled into San Pedro de Atacama after crossing the Salar de Uyuni, our refrigerator stopped working. Part of the reason we stayed in San Pedro for so long (other than work) was to get parts for the fridge mailed to us from Utah. While we were waiting, we sampled some of the offerings available in the region.

We discovered recently that many of our credit and ATM cards are expiring soon. June of 2015 seemed like so far away when we left on our trip two years ago! Quinn’s grandparents have been kind enough to collect the replacements for us, and since we were stuck waiting for our fridge parts anyway, we asked them to send our new credit cards to us as well. Despite having to make the 4-hour drive from their house to the nearest DHL office, they mailed our cards and new car registration documents for us. Thank you so much!!

The process for receiving a package in Chile goes something like this. First the package gets mailed. It usually only takes 3 days to arrive in Santiago. Then it has to go through customs. Each of our packages took about 5 days for this process. Then DHL notifies you that you owe import duties on your package. Visit the DHL office and pay the taxes. Then they release the package from customs, and about two days later the package arrives at its destination.

For us the destination was Calama, a mining town in Northern Chile. Since the town (and more importantly its only campground) wasn’t that appealing, we decided to wait in the tourist hub of San Pedro, camping at hostels where we could use the fridge in the kitchen. This meant that we had to make the 3-hour round trip drive from San Pedro to Calama three times before we had both of our packages in our hands.

The fridge parts were the first to arrive, and we installed them that evening with high hopes that we’d soon have cold beer once again. Unfortunately it was not to be; the fridge still refused to run.

A few days later it was time to pick up the package containing our credit cards and other necessities, like train tracks. (Doesn’t everyone get train tracks in their care packages?) After retrieving that package we drove to the Tatio Geysers, the world’s highest geyser field.

The Tatio Geysers are apparently most active between six and eight AM. That combined with the fact that they’re at 4320m (over 14,000 feet) in elevation meant that we had to endure some discomfort to see them (namely cold temperatures, lack of sleep due to altitude, and then getting up before sunrise). We drove up the previous evening and camped near the geysers. It got to well below freezing overnight, so we put our water-filled nalgene bottle along with a container of leftover bean soup outside to freeze. This will keep our fridge (turned cooler) cool for a couple of days, we hope. We fired up our heater and snuggled into our sleeping bags for the night.

The next morning as the tour busses started to pull in well before dawn, we dropped the top on our van and followed them to the geyser fields.

With our packages now safely in hand, we were finally free to leave for Argentina. Since we’d decided to cross the border at Paso Sico, which doesn’t have a Chilean customs post, so we did our immigration and customs paperwork in San Pedro. We left town at about 2pm, and since we didn’t want another sleepless night at altitude, we camped in a flamingo reserve on the Salar de Atacama.

We’ve decided that Buenos Aires is the best place to try to get our fridge fixed, so we’ve opted to detour south to the “Paris of South America” to either repair or replace it. Our next stop is the Argentinian wine growing region of Cafayate for a week. After that we’ll bolt across the continent to BA. Wish us luck!

The Atacama Desert is known as one of the best places in the world for star gazing. That’s why scientists from the U.S., parts of Europe, and Japan decided to install one of the world’s largest radio telescope arrays at 5000m (over 16,000 feet) in the mountains there. The dry (2% humidity – don’t forget your moisturizer!), thin air ensures that the faint signals that have been traveling from distant galaxies for the past 100 million years don’t end their journey by being dispersed in a pesky water droplet in our atmosphere.

We visited the Atacama Large Millimeter/Sub-millimeter Array last weekend, and it was quite an experience.

The first thing that clues you in that this project has deep pockets is the fact that the tour is free. We awoke at 8am, which here is before dawn, and went to board the brand new, fancy bus that would take us to the site. Then they turned on the safety video which easily matched any of the safety videos I’ve ever seen at NREL or any other government facility, right down to the Personal Protective Equipment, Health and Safety Regulations, and Medical Response Action Plan. The English speaking narrator obviously had never even visited a Mexican restaurant, as he kept saying, “San Pedro dee Atacama.” It all felt very out of place for us.

If you start thinking about the task of assimilating the data from 66 different radio telescopes into a single dataset that represents the virtual 16km antenna that the site simulates with it’s array, you can imagine that there’s a lot of data processing going on. In fact, for every astronomer on site, there are 9 electrical engineers. On top of that, one of the world’s fastest supercomputers, called the correlator, is operational at 5000m on the site to carry out this work.

The collector on the antenna is cooled to +5 degrees Kelvin in order to make the receiver “radio quiet.” This must be maintained even during transport, and so the crawler generates power for the antenna during the trip.

To continue the astronomy theme, both Jen and I attended (on separate nights) an astro tour held just outside of town. The host had a couple of good-sized telescopes, and we got to see Saturn with it’s rings, star clusters, and something called the “Sombrero Galaxy.” The guide was obviously passionate about the subject, and we ended out having a great time despite the cold weather.

It’s hard to buy real coffee here, and we’ve been drinking instant. Jen’s birthday present this year was a real cup of coffee. Happy birthday!