Day 3 - Why We Came To Chile

Today I am going to be talking about why we came to Chile. We came to Coyhaique was because my mum and dad were attending a conference here. The conference is about Astrobiology, a combination of Astronomy, Biology and Geophysics. My mum made a poster for this event. Her poster is about comets in the protoplanetary disk around a young star that can be seen from the southern hemisphere called beta Pictoris.

The conference is being held at a hotel called Dreams Hotel Patagonia. It is on the third floor of the hotel. The hotel is a 15 minute walk away from out house, and we have come here every day so far. The conference has a room filled with the posters that people have made. The main event in the conference is the presentations. The presentations are pretty much just 20 - 25 minute long speeches about Astrobiology.

The reason we are staying so long after the conference is because my mum and dad came to work in the European Southern Observatory (ESO for short) in Santiago.

Day 2 - Lots Of Dogs

We have been in Coyhaique for a few days now, and I have been noticing the number of dogs. Pretty much every street that you walk down, you will find a dog. Most of the dogs are big, shaggy dogs and they all seem quite happy and friendly. On our first day we found 4 dogs lying down in a row on the same street as our house. There is always a dog or two playing in the fountain in the middle of town. One day we found a little kid lying down on top of one of the sleeping dogs near our house.

Yesterday when we were on a bus, we looked out the window and saw four dogs in front of a car barking at it. The dogs were lucky it was a red light. A few days ago we saw another seemingly suicidal dog run onto the road several times chasing cars, and the cars don't stop for them here - they must be used to crazy dogs.

Another time when we were walking to the conference center, we saw the first and only cat so far in Chile. It had it's knees sticking up weirdly, I think this was because there was a dog that was just staring at it.

Day 1 - Jet Lagged

Our adventure starts in Patagonian Chile, in the Aysen district of southern Chile, in a town called Coyhaique.... minus luggage.

The journey took 31 hours including waiting time. In Sydney airport, we waited for five hours before getting on another plane. The plane was off over an hour late, so in Santiago we only had 10 minutes to get from one plane to the next - we were escorted through customs and security, but we had so little time to board the next plane that we didn't have time to collect our luggage.

We then flew for an hour and a half over lots of fiords, lakes and snowy mountains to Puerto Montt and most people got off the plane there. Then more people got on, and we flew another hour and a half south to Balmaceda, which was quite small and remote-looking. We got on a bus to Coyhaique and that took an hour. The scenery looked a lot like New Zealand: cows, sheep, fields and snowy mountains.

The time in Chile is 16 hours behind the time in New Zealand, combine that with 31 hours of traveling, no time to sleep except on planes and you have a recipe for jet lag. We arrived at around 6 pm, got some food and went to sleep because we were tired. That's why there was no blog yesterday.

Introducing the Explorer

Yes, our explorer Patrick is back with his big-boy pants on.

Having navigated Korea (South Korea to be exact) and Wisconsin, USA, our intrepid explorer Patrick, travels to the far off land of Chile, land of fiords, forests, tall mountains, earthquakes, volcanoes, deserts, and telescopes - some of biggest and best telescopes in the world.