The Voss Dufour World Tour

The night was cold and the air was very crisp and clear. It was a perfect star gazing night as the moon was a new moon, thus not shining at all. When you looked up, the amount of stars in the sky was unbelievable. Words escape me in trying to describe the scene. It was as if all the diamonds in the world had been tossed into the sky. It was like nothing I have ever seen before. Nothing was familiar. No Big or Little Dipper, but instead a playground of new constellations and galaxies.

We began the evening by taking in Jupiter and four of it’s moons. At another glance thru the telescope, we saw the rings around Jupiter. We saw Nebulas (the beginnings of a star) that were invisible to the naked eye and could only be seen with the aid of the telescope. At first glance, some clusters just looked like clouds, but as soon as you peeped thru the telescope, you saw thousands of stars. Thousands I tell you. Thousands. It was breathtaking. The Milky Way was quite visible that night as were other galaxies, millions of light years away. Binary stars, red stars, blue stars….there was no shortage of burning balls of gas.

One of my favorite classes in high school was my freshman year science class, taught by the ever fabulous, Dr. Joel Block. I truly became fascinated by the stars and constellations because of him as we learned about 30+ constellations, their major star(s) and the story behind them. He brought the stars, constellations and the sky alive because of his enthusiasm and story telling skills. I can’t look to the skies above without thinking of him and this night was no exception.

We saw him in the bus station. We were on the same bus (until he got got off for being on the wrong bus.) We saw him in Pisco Elqui (2 hr away) when we got back into town after our hike. We saw him in La Serena at a red light. We don’t know his name, but we know he works as a Carabinero which is similar to a policeman. He knows who we are and approaches us to say hi every time he sees us. He speaks English and when we saw him at the bus station, he caught our eye because he was travelling with an English-Spanish dictionary. We wondered if he could understand us (as we talked about other people at the bus station.) He followed us onto the bus, but when he got off for another bus, I think we all forgot about him. Until Pisco Elqui.

When we were heading to get a drink in Pisco Elqui, we walked by a group of Carabineros and didn’t take much notice of them. Until one of them walked towards us. It was our stalker friend. He approaches me by saying “I know you.” Now, I of course am thinking…no you really don’t know me. I only know 3 people in Chile and you aren’t one of them. Yes, it was kinda creepy. And the creepiness continued when Corina, James and I were walking back from the market one day and as we walked thru an intersection at a red light, guess who popped his head out of the window and jumped down from his van to say hi.

No doubt we will be missed when we leave La Serena.

Corina and Tom have this odd fixation about penguins. They love them and are determined not to leave Chile without visiting some local penguins. And so with that, we took off in a taxi, heading north for about 100 km (60 miles for those of you not on the metric system.) We were told the trip would take 2.5 hours (which without knowing the distance seemed absurd.) Considering it was 4 of us packed into a taxi, one of us with super long legs, that would make for a long 2.5 hours. Turns out the trip was actually about 90 mins, but stretched out into 2.5 hours because our taxi driver used the trip to make drop offs and pick ups all along the way.

Upon our arrival, a dark and gloomy sea greeted us. But we were undeterred and excited about hopping into a boat and cruising across the choppy bay to see these penguins! Unfortunately we were held up a bit as we waited for 8 other people to show up. The boat was priced for 12 ppl and so anything else meant that the ticket price per person went up which didn’t fly with us. We expected a van from La Serena to join us, thus solving the problem, but thru some means of communication, only 3 people from the van showed. So we continued our wait, passing the time with our delicious, previously prepared lunch of beans, rice and cheese. Finally, thru some act of God, 8 other random people showed, beginning our adventure.

Upon approaching the “dock” and seeing the “boat” you think, hmm..insurance would never let this fly in the US (We have had that thought on more than one occasion. I assume we will continue to think that.) We exchange glances between the four of us and hop on! Mind you there were swells and the boat was rising and dropping a fair distance just alongside the “wharf” as people boarded. We had to wait for the boat to come up and then hop on and hope it didn’t drop while you were settling yourself. Yes, insane. Of course we are cracking jokes about getting stuck out on the water and lo and behold, 5 mins out puttering across the water towards these island with wildlife, our motor gives out. One of the guys tries to fix it while another took to rowing..which unfortunately didn’t prevent us from going backwards. Eventually we are all sorted and motored out to the islands.

Unfortunately it was quite cloudy and even misting out which didn’t make for a nice backdrop in the fotos, but we did see dolphins cavorting along, jumping and swimming alongside our boat. We saw sea lions lazying around on the rock, waiting for the tide to come back in, allowing the sea lions to hunt for fish. We saw penguins waddling on the rocks. We saw sea otters stealthily swimming through the water. We didn’t get to see the 14,000 penguins that apparently inhabit one of the islands as they were up high to escape the sea otters. All in all, we had a blast and defnitely got some good laughs out of the whole experience. Luckily enough we caught some sun on our car ride back thru the valley. The views were spectacular and absolutely breathtaking. As usual, the fotos do it no justice! Stopping for herds of alpaca and donkeys crossing the road was the icing the cake for our wonderful day.