Lazy Beach Days and a Lunar Eclipse

Trip Start Dec 16, 2007
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Trip End Jul 09, 2008


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Flag of Chile  ,
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

After a 17 hour night bus I had quite the fantastical day in La Serena. First things first, we found a lovely restaurant and had a delicious lunch of soup, veggie lasagna and a mocha mousse thing for dessert. In Chile they have set menus for lunch that are a ridiculously good deal and great food. Afterwards we headed to the beach and just spent the afternoon lazing around. While La Serena may not have the nicest beach, I welcomed the warmth and relaxation not to mention the lovely sunshine (I must say though that the Chilean sun is the hottest I have ever felt). On our way back from the beach we bought an abundance of fruit: peaches, pineapple, bananas, watermelon, oranges, mangos and plums and made a heaping and delicious fruit salad.

The first night I went to an astronomical observatory because this area has one of the clearest night skies. It was really cool, we got to see Saturn, the moon and Mars through a telescope magnified 200x making dinner
making dinner
 . I was happy to see Saturn again because when I first saw it last year with the rings it seriously reminded me of a glow in the dark sticker so I was glad for the confirmation that it does indeed look like that through a telescope. The moon was awesome because Iīd never seen it through a telescope before, it was blindingly bright but it was really cool because you could see its craters. Afterwards we went inside and got a mini astronomy lesson which I loved because Iīve always been a bit interested in it. Then we went back outside and got to see several constellations and star clusters.

The second night I got to see a Lunar eclispe. I learned that it was happening at the observatory, crazy because the next one isnīt until October 2010. So after waiting for 3 hours it finally began to happen (Iīm so glad I waited). So basically the bottom right hand side started getting dark and just continuously kept disappearing. Once it was completely covered, the spot where the moon had been started to glow reddish in colour. It was really cool. Itīs crazy to believe that itīs the earthīs shadow that does this. 
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