400 Years of the Telescope

Santiago’s bustling urban airport was teeming with travelers when we arrived, blue production bags in hand. We made our way through the arrival gate and followed the crowd to the customs and immigration lines. It was there that we met up with our final production teammate, Scott, who had taken a different route to Santiago than the rest of us. He traveled from San Francisco to Miami and finally to Santiago whereas the rest of us went from Sacramento to Dallas, Texas and finally to Santiago. We had all successfully arrived in Santiago, the first leg of the trip completed. We enjoyed the 3-hour layover that Santiago afforded us, allowing us to check our e-mails and grab a cup of coffee or Anita’s favorite, cappuchinos.

At noon, we took a quick puddle jump over to La Serena where we finally collected our luggage and made our way to the rental car stand. It was there that we had a hiccup in our plans when the rental car company could not locate our reservation and we had to improvise, making calls to other rental locations and planning some way of getting a vehicle that could fit our luggage and our crew of 4 to get up the mountain to Cerro Tololo.

Finally, after 2 hours of waiting and hoping for someone to get off siesta so we could get a vehicle, we were once again moving towards Cerro Tololo. We reached the summit about an hour and a half later and got ourselves checked into mountain administration. We then caught a bite to eat at the mess hall for the summit where we met some of the night’s observers and the mountain’s administrative staff. We got from them an idea of how the week was going to be – quiet due to the Chilean Independence Holiday. With their help, we will be able to make the most of the 3 days that we will be staying up here on Cerro Tololo.