In the desert, the consistent nights of clear sky provide the perfect conditions for star gazing. The sky takes over the landscape, stretching out so expansively over the sand and mountains, reflecting nature's brightest blue. At night, the sunbeams quickly clamp themselves down over the mountains, slowly shading in the shadows with purples, reds and pinks. It all happens so fast and without any cloudy interruption, causing the colors to really streak and paint the sky so artistically. I can’t capture it with my camera; I’ve tried. Fortunately, I purchased a polarizer before I arrived here, which has helped immensely in photographing just how blue the sky is.
We booked a tour of the constellations and hopped on yet another tour bus, this one filled with English speakers from all over. A French astronomer greeted us out in the middle of the desert and led us out into the sky, everyone in their newly purchased alpaca hats with the native patterns of swirls and animals on the outside. For myself, I wore my newly purchased colorfully checked hat that has the animal fur flaps that clip over your ears and flip up in the front, very stylish.
He began by noting that viewing the sky is about observation. As the stars are moving, we are moving, and our cultures are also developing and changing. Perhaps the natives in the past were a little trippy from the substances they smoked from desert plants and perhaps the missionaries were trying to convert people by converting the constellations to Christian images. With his laser he pointed out squares or diamond constellations that are seen as a centaur, scorpion or an alter.
“As as you can see here, this is bear. Here is the head and the body, right? Obviously. Well, if you thought that was a bear then you probably would think that over here is a woman. As you know, all women have square heads. But a Virgin? I don’t think so.” He said as he pointed out the constellations that formed two stretched out legs. “Now, if you’re a European this bear now becomes a saucepan or a big dipper. And over here, if you have a monarchy, you would see this as the Northern crown, but if you are perhaps a Communist, this now becomes the sickle.”
“If you’re a Christian you would see this as a cross. Why they chose to use one of the most horrible ways of death, I don’t know, but the Barbarians – they didn’t have this way of killing people, so they saw a kite. People from Patagonia saw a hand and other indigenous saw an arrow. And over here we have a constellation very intelligently named, well, what do you think?” he said as he used his laser light beam to point out three stars 45 degrees away from each other.
“A triangle,” answered someone.
“Yes! As I said, you are a very educated group. But as you can also see, I know many triangles in the sky,” he said, proceeding to connect all different dots to make triangles.
“Now, if you could make a list of your top ten favorite things of all time to do in your life, they wouldn’t be things you learned in school, would they?”
“Triganometry.” piped up someone from the crowd.
"Astronomy is one of those things you will never learn in school."
“I will show you the astrological signs, but I don’t think they really have much meaning. The stars don’t really care about us, and for astrology to be correct they would have to have meetings, figuring out whose birthday was when and then decide to do mean things to people. Well, if you’re boyfriend breaks up with you, and you follow astrology, then he probably was right to do so.”
“What are the five best things to do in life? Breathing, eating, sleeping, drinking and…..? Sleeping again.”
“What do you have to do before you have a baby? Well, you have to make them. And you may need to try one or more different people before you find someone special. Well, watching the stars provide the perfect conditions. Imagine: it’s cold, you’re looking up at the sky. I’m telling you, it’s perfect. There is a closer distance between you, unlike playing tennis or some sport together – these are not going to do the trick. But how do you point out the constellations? Well, you don’t get a laser. What you do is with one hand point out the star and it’s really the other arm that is doing the important job,” he said as his other arm demonstrating pulling a person closer to him, “and don’t just repeat information that you read on Wikipedia, that is not going to work.”
He proceeded to spout off toneless facts about the age of different stars and how far away they are in the sky and then imitated a girl politely creeping away. Then he informed us it’s possible that she could be a nerd too and natural selection would take over the situation.
“You see, to get to the closest star would take 385 generations of humans. So, if you were to take 4 humans, put them in a rocket, and send it off at the speed of light, it would only be the 385th generation that would make it to that star – and you can imagine by the time they got there they would be a little deformed. Perhaps they would have three legs, green skin, and speak in a strange voice. So, whenever you see extraterrestrials on earth, remember that when they began their journey they were actually quite normal looking humans.”
Photography is actually able to capture stars that our human eye can’t take in. He took some of our cameras and set them up to expose for 30 seconds in order to show this. Now I am happy to have a beautiful picture of the night sky. There is an image via the Hubble Ultra Deep telescope that was about able to capture about 2,000 galaxies in an area that is about 1/12 of the moon, the image exposing for 12 days. If there are that many galaxies in that small of a space, imagining how immense our universe is reminded me how very tiny I really am in comparison.
In the beginning of our tour, there was a star over in the East just above the mountain and by the end of the tour it had moved up a good ways, as the earth had been rotating ever so slightly the entire time. As the Earth tilts and rotates, the Southern hemisphere can see certain stars, only sharing about 2/3 of the sky with the Northern hemisphere at a time. The Milky Way surrounds us, and as our guide pointed out, when you see the Milky Way through a telescope you’ll notice that it’s not actually milk but a thick clusters of stars.
“And as everyone knows, people in New York actually walk like this,” he said, demonstrating a person walking at an angle.
It would take 8 minutes at light speed to get to the sun, our closest star. The planets are found within a certain band across the sky but can be seen in the different places over the years as they move along their course and sometimes they align in different ways. As they move, they also find themselves in different astrological signs, which astrologists try to interpret. Saturn in Virgo…. Mars in Scorpio… etc, etc….
“At the beginning of the month, there was an alignment with some of the planets but it wasn’t a great one because the Pope didn’t die. As you know, whenever there is a planetary alignment something catastrophic always happens – a Pope or King dies, etc. In 2040, Mars, Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter will all align with the moon and that will be the end of the world,” he informed us, ever so sarcastically.
“Now, how do you read a star map? Well, the best source is actually your I-pad, which has GPS and can locate exactly which sky you are in. Then, you want to find the Southern Cross. As you can see, I know many crosses, “ he said as he made different cross constellations with his laser and all different stars in the sky, “but if you read a map it will have the constellation drawn out with a helpful label, ‘Southern Cross’.”
“What you have to remember when looking at the sky is that we’re looking at the past. We receive the light of these stars many years after they have actually formed. See that star over there? The light from that one left when you were born. We are looking at basically the same sky that people did hundreds of years ago. The stars move very fast, but in our sky, this one for example, has only moved from here to here,” he told us, pointing out a very small space in the sky.
We saw a shooting star (or, falling rock burning up in our atmosphere) during the beginning of the talk and he informed us that two others would be included in the tour. He took us around to different telescopes where we were able to see nebulas, globular clusters, the Milky Way and even Saturn. The view of Saturn was actually quite strange because the white silhouette was an exact replica of my glow-in-the-dark stickers that clung to my starry sky ceiling when I was younger. It was a stark white clear cut-out of Saturn, with its satellite to the left brightly shining. I suspected that perhaps it was in fact just a sticker by its artificial nature.
After the tour, we went inside for some hot chocolate. We were actually in his house, though the center room resembled more of a dark adobe gathering place with tiny lanterns hanging from wooden posts. The bathroom was actually very excellent, with a lampshade around the center light with a starry space scene, hot tub in the corner, and colorful and artistic touches in the mirrors and soap dispensers.
He’s been doing research on asteroids out in the desert, funding it himself. His knowledge and exuberance for astronomy was inspiring, especially in that he made it fun for us to view and listen to. Being out in the middle of the desert wasn't so bad either, those stars are quite the spectacle.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Travelers Traveling...
One funny thing about traveling is that your country becomes your first identity. You may even find yourself strangely attached to your history or just forced to think about it more. One night at my hostel I was woken up by, “Who saved you???!” coming from a drunk American of course arguing about World War II and America’s involvement towards the end. Between swearing at this British girl, I could hear her saying, “You can’t just say all these things and not let me say anything.” Lying in my bed, hardly surprised by the arrogance of someone from my own country, I was very tempted to stick my head out the door and tell him that he’s further contributing to the ruin of the American reputation. I later found out that he told a girl from Finland that the war that her grandfather had fought in with Russia didn’t exist and he actually attempted strangling a Canadian guy hours later in the night when they were walking back to the hostel in the absolute middle of nowhere in the desert.
“So, that means you can say you traveled all over South America and the only aggressive person you met was a guy from Florida?” I asked him.
“Yes, looks like it,” he said, “It was strange, he wasn’t quite right.”
Apparently the Floridian was yelling about how he hated Canada and had a crazy look in his eye, perhaps from lack of medication or too much of some other substance. This Canadian, who actually has been living in Australia and London for the past eleven years, would retell the story later as the day he was almost murdered. As we were sitting around a fire in the middle of the hostel, a guy from Seattle was trying to break the wood with his foot by stomping on it, since there was no saw.
“You can do it! You’re an American!” I cheered.
“Yeah, pretend its Canada!” said the Canadian.
A day later I overheard a conversation from my hammock, happening at a table nearby about different holidays.
“Today’s an American holiday,” said an Australian girl, G-chatting with a friend back home.
“It is?” responded a guy from Seattle.
“Happy Memorial Day!” I said from my hammock, realizing the date.
“July 1st… isn’t that when you celebrate the slaughter of your natives?” continued Australia.
“That’s July 4th,” responded Seattle, “It’s our independence day.”
“Right, Canadians celebrate the harvest and you celebrate the slaughter of your natives,” said Australia. She continued, “We take good care of our natives you know.”
“Well, we give them nice plots of land…but your country didn’t always take such good care of the Aborigines,” replied Seattle.
“Right, well we’ve apologized for all that now, and that was all the British anyways,” defended Australia.
“I think the Queen should actually apologize,” chimed in the English girl.
“I know! I was absolutely furious about that. It’s really your queen that needs to apologize,” said Australia.
“Well, the monarchy was really German anyway,” responded England.
You hardly get people’s names either when you meet travelers. When you meet them the first questions are about traveling and where you’re going or where you’ve been and what you think about it. Then, after spending two days with the person or people and they leave, you suddenly realize that you never got their name. They were always just, “that couple from Barcelona” or “that guy from England” or “the girl from Australia”.
“Miles… feet… inches… all these crazy American measurements,” said Canada.
“We keep our measurements even though the Metric system makes absolutely more sense. We actually learn it in school… we use it for science and math…” I said.
“So the entire world agreed upon a system and America refused to join?” asked Canada.
“So, that means you can say you traveled all over South America and the only aggressive person you met was a guy from Florida?” I asked him.
“Yes, looks like it,” he said, “It was strange, he wasn’t quite right.”
Apparently the Floridian was yelling about how he hated Canada and had a crazy look in his eye, perhaps from lack of medication or too much of some other substance. This Canadian, who actually has been living in Australia and London for the past eleven years, would retell the story later as the day he was almost murdered. As we were sitting around a fire in the middle of the hostel, a guy from Seattle was trying to break the wood with his foot by stomping on it, since there was no saw.
“You can do it! You’re an American!” I cheered.
“Yeah, pretend its Canada!” said the Canadian.
A day later I overheard a conversation from my hammock, happening at a table nearby about different holidays.
“Today’s an American holiday,” said an Australian girl, G-chatting with a friend back home.
“It is?” responded a guy from Seattle.
“Happy Memorial Day!” I said from my hammock, realizing the date.
“July 1st… isn’t that when you celebrate the slaughter of your natives?” continued Australia.
“That’s July 4th,” responded Seattle, “It’s our independence day.”
“Right, Canadians celebrate the harvest and you celebrate the slaughter of your natives,” said Australia. She continued, “We take good care of our natives you know.”
“Well, we give them nice plots of land…but your country didn’t always take such good care of the Aborigines,” replied Seattle.
“Right, well we’ve apologized for all that now, and that was all the British anyways,” defended Australia.
“I think the Queen should actually apologize,” chimed in the English girl.
“I know! I was absolutely furious about that. It’s really your queen that needs to apologize,” said Australia.
“Well, the monarchy was really German anyway,” responded England.
You hardly get people’s names either when you meet travelers. When you meet them the first questions are about traveling and where you’re going or where you’ve been and what you think about it. Then, after spending two days with the person or people and they leave, you suddenly realize that you never got their name. They were always just, “that couple from Barcelona” or “that guy from England” or “the girl from Australia”.
“Miles… feet… inches… all these crazy American measurements,” said Canada.
“We keep our measurements even though the Metric system makes absolutely more sense. We actually learn it in school… we use it for science and math…” I said.
“So the entire world agreed upon a system and America refused to join?” asked Canada.
“It’s how we maintain our bubble. 12 inches in a foot, three feet in a yard. Our rulers have centimeters and millimeters though, I believe….” I replied.
“What’s a yard?” asked Canada.
“Well, it’s similar to a meter,” said Seattle.
“Miles, pounds, ounces, quarts, gallons, cups…” I listed, trying to think of all the ridiculous names.
“Cups?” asked Canada.
“Yup! Do you have acres?” I asked Canada.
“No, you use hectares, don’t you…” pondered Seattle.
“That fire is about… 2 feet high or 24 inches.” I said, zoning out into the fire, “So, how about knots – is that universal?”
“I don’t know where it comes from, but I love that measurement. And at least everyone measures horses in hands,” said Seattle.
“Hands? Where did that come from?” I asked, laughing.
“Some king wanted to measure a horse so he thought, ‘Hey, how about I use my hand…’” responded Seattle.
“What about a dozen?” I asked.
“Yup, we use a dozen,” said Canada.
“How about a baker’s dozen?” I continued.
“Yeah, I think I know that one… that’s six, right?” answered Canada.
“Nope, 13!” I said.
“Because you know the baker!” said Seattle.
“In America, you know the baker.” I said.
“Six is when the baker hates you,” said Seattle.
Across from us the Chileans sat listening to Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” singing along to some of the lyrics, then switched over to Chilean music, then back to something English. They turned on the song that Coolie used later for his Gangster Paradise, to which my western companions began singing the rapper part absent from the original version.
“Power and the money, money and the power, minute after minute, hour after hour!”
The most common conversations between travelers usually revolve around language, measurements, wars, entertainment, travel stories, pronunciation, colonization, and Americans not learning enough about the world in school. I was talking with two Scottish girls about Scotland’s contributions to the world, asking if the country had invented the library system. They then asked the Chilean what his country had invented, to which he responded after looking a bit confused, “motels.” I said that I thought those came from America and our car culture, though I’m not sure. I think he was on his second or third glass of straight Rum at that point.
Travel stories come out. A horrible movie seen in La Paz, where the theater was freezing and they were sitting in movie seats on the floor watching a girl explicitly getting gang raped. A leather jacket a guy had handmade for $40 in La Paz, after simply showing a guy a picture of what he wanted. Past travels up through Greenland, north of Scotland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands as a cruise ship librarian. A journey to North Korea for four days where you saw all the lights in the city get completely shut off at night and a guard keeps you company most of the time, making sure you don’t take pictures of the people. You hear about people wanting to go to Colombia, figuring out how to get to Peru when the border is closed in Bolivia, how Brazil is so expensive for Americans to enter, and tales from Easter and Galapagos Islands. Comparisons of food, money, and long bus rides are exchanged; travel becomes this present reality that of course after awhile you become accustomed to, take for granted, and sometimes even get tired of.
“Are you guys headed to Peru tomorrow?” I asked.
“What’s a yard?” asked Canada.
“Well, it’s similar to a meter,” said Seattle.
“Miles, pounds, ounces, quarts, gallons, cups…” I listed, trying to think of all the ridiculous names.
“Cups?” asked Canada.
“Yup! Do you have acres?” I asked Canada.
“No, you use hectares, don’t you…” pondered Seattle.
“That fire is about… 2 feet high or 24 inches.” I said, zoning out into the fire, “So, how about knots – is that universal?”
“I don’t know where it comes from, but I love that measurement. And at least everyone measures horses in hands,” said Seattle.
“Hands? Where did that come from?” I asked, laughing.
“Some king wanted to measure a horse so he thought, ‘Hey, how about I use my hand…’” responded Seattle.
“What about a dozen?” I asked.
“Yup, we use a dozen,” said Canada.
“How about a baker’s dozen?” I continued.
“Yeah, I think I know that one… that’s six, right?” answered Canada.
“Nope, 13!” I said.
“Because you know the baker!” said Seattle.
“In America, you know the baker.” I said.
“Six is when the baker hates you,” said Seattle.
Across from us the Chileans sat listening to Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” singing along to some of the lyrics, then switched over to Chilean music, then back to something English. They turned on the song that Coolie used later for his Gangster Paradise, to which my western companions began singing the rapper part absent from the original version.
“Power and the money, money and the power, minute after minute, hour after hour!”
The most common conversations between travelers usually revolve around language, measurements, wars, entertainment, travel stories, pronunciation, colonization, and Americans not learning enough about the world in school. I was talking with two Scottish girls about Scotland’s contributions to the world, asking if the country had invented the library system. They then asked the Chilean what his country had invented, to which he responded after looking a bit confused, “motels.” I said that I thought those came from America and our car culture, though I’m not sure. I think he was on his second or third glass of straight Rum at that point.
Travel stories come out. A horrible movie seen in La Paz, where the theater was freezing and they were sitting in movie seats on the floor watching a girl explicitly getting gang raped. A leather jacket a guy had handmade for $40 in La Paz, after simply showing a guy a picture of what he wanted. Past travels up through Greenland, north of Scotland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands as a cruise ship librarian. A journey to North Korea for four days where you saw all the lights in the city get completely shut off at night and a guard keeps you company most of the time, making sure you don’t take pictures of the people. You hear about people wanting to go to Colombia, figuring out how to get to Peru when the border is closed in Bolivia, how Brazil is so expensive for Americans to enter, and tales from Easter and Galapagos Islands. Comparisons of food, money, and long bus rides are exchanged; travel becomes this present reality that of course after awhile you become accustomed to, take for granted, and sometimes even get tired of.
“Are you guys headed to Peru tomorrow?” I asked.
“I really don’t want to get on another bus,” said Finland.
“Well, we could go to Arica for the night and then Cusco the next day,” suggested Australia.
“If we don’t take night buses both nights, we’ll have to find a place to stay,” reminded England.
Sometimes you feel tired and it’s difficult to fully absorb everything between jumping on and off buses and snapping photos. At Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon – named because the landscape resembles the surface of the moon) Rosario and I followed our tour up the sand dune and later found ourselves suddenly alone after sunset and running back down through the sand to our waiting companions. Sometimes these tours push you to move a little too quickly and you’re only left with pictures to dwell on and process later, wondering, “Where the heck was I??”
Although, the travel is great and really bends your perspectives - or breaks them. I’ve tried to find differences between all these cultures, attempting to generalize how Americans are, or Europeans, or South Americans. Though there still seem to be personality differences between them all, I feel like at the end of the day, we’re really all quite similar. Some people are crazy and hate other countries, some people are more relational, others are more critical, and some are very efficient while others are laid back. I think sometimes it’s easier to step back and look at this cultural collage and just admit that people are really just people wherever you are and that when you step into a new place, its more about trying to leave as many of your own cultural filters at home, trying to understand the history and context of the people you are now interacting with. It’s more about observing and accepting than impressing your own beliefs onto other people. Traveling tends to break you down a little bit and stretch out your own ideas as you move through these places where you realize you don’t know much about anything anymore.
“Well, we could go to Arica for the night and then Cusco the next day,” suggested Australia.
“If we don’t take night buses both nights, we’ll have to find a place to stay,” reminded England.
Sometimes you feel tired and it’s difficult to fully absorb everything between jumping on and off buses and snapping photos. At Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon – named because the landscape resembles the surface of the moon) Rosario and I followed our tour up the sand dune and later found ourselves suddenly alone after sunset and running back down through the sand to our waiting companions. Sometimes these tours push you to move a little too quickly and you’re only left with pictures to dwell on and process later, wondering, “Where the heck was I??”
Although, the travel is great and really bends your perspectives - or breaks them. I’ve tried to find differences between all these cultures, attempting to generalize how Americans are, or Europeans, or South Americans. Though there still seem to be personality differences between them all, I feel like at the end of the day, we’re really all quite similar. Some people are crazy and hate other countries, some people are more relational, others are more critical, and some are very efficient while others are laid back. I think sometimes it’s easier to step back and look at this cultural collage and just admit that people are really just people wherever you are and that when you step into a new place, its more about trying to leave as many of your own cultural filters at home, trying to understand the history and context of the people you are now interacting with. It’s more about observing and accepting than impressing your own beliefs onto other people. Traveling tends to break you down a little bit and stretch out your own ideas as you move through these places where you realize you don’t know much about anything anymore.
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