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The Atacama Desert, Northern Chile

By quericolavida

Atacama DesertSometime ago I wandered into the National Gallery of Art on the National Mall because I wanted to see a movie in that great theater they have in the East Building. (they show interesting and free movies almost every day!) Although I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into when I sat down to see “Nostalgia for the Light”, it turned out to be fascinating. The documentary tells two stories in parallel, both set in Chile’s Atacama Desert. One is the story of archaeologists and astronomers who study in Atacama, which as the driest desert in the world, lends itself to fossil preservation and the clearest views of the stars in the world. Astronomers from all over put their names on a long list to eventually be able to visit some of the worlds highest observatories and largest telescopes.


Atacama DesertThe parallel story recounts the tragedies suffered under Pinochet’s violent military dictatorship in Chile from 1973 to 1990. Like in Argentina, many political leftists disappeared during that time, either being thrown out of planes into the desert and sea, or even subjected to concentration camps near the Atacama desert. Today women still wander the desert looking for bones or clues connecting to loved ones lost during the dictatorship. The filmmakers also draw connections between the parallel stories by recounting the experience of a prisoner at at the Chacabuco concentration camp who taught other prisoners about astronomy and how to identify constellations in the desert. Their lessons were quickly banned because the military feared they would use the constellations to make an escape.

Atacama DesertMy experience with the desert was far less tragic, although the context made the trip all the more interesting. I went on bike rides through the Martian-like terrain of the dry desert with the mountain ranges and volcanoes in the backdrop. The town of San Pedro, where I stayed is an Oasis in the desert, with water and flamingos nearby. By day I took excursions like sandboarding (snowboarding down a sand dune) in the “Death Valley”, visiting salt flats, floating in salt water lagoons, and visiting the “Moon Valley”. I even woke up early one day to see the sunrise over natural geysers that are currently being studied by geologists from UC Berkeley and Universidad de Santiago. By nightfall I was exhausted from the adventures and had the opportunity to lay down and look up at the sky. The stars in the Atacama desert are so vivid that you feel as though you can peel them out of the sky, but the constellations are different from what we would be looking at on the northern hemisphere. In the desert you can see vast expanses of space with naked eye and beyond the milky way with a simple telescope, a humbling experience to say the least.

-Giordano