Fray Jorge- in Photos

Many, many sunrises in the field

One of our favorite things to do was pull cactus spines out of our hiking boots with pliers. Not even joking.

Sad Cactus

We had to drive to the city of La Serena, about 1.5 hrs away, for groceries every few days (there was no refrigeration in the cabin, so everything that needed to stay cold went in the cupboard). In La Serena we discovered a fantastic supermarket called Jumbo. On our first visit, these girls were giving out free samples of Miller Genuine Draft. And clearly dressed up like Uncle Sam and an albino Statue of Liberty. Oh, also at Jumbo, we would buy 2 kilos of cheese to last us 5 days. That's about 4.5 pounds of cheese. It was amazing.

After grocery shopping we went to dinner and the beach!

Sometimes in the cabin we would have Spanish lessons with Professor Raul. Other times we would have Cafe Literario (book club) where we read out loud and discussed Martin Rivas (the first novel written in Chile and a super popular period TV show. We watch it whenever we can on our one channel, and decided to all buy the book for when we were out of TV range)

When the girls did night telemetry, the boys had to cook dinner. Sometimes we came home to candle light and wine! Usually we wrote "recetas" on the whiteboard to make sure there would also be something edible...

This is why there are fragments of cloud forest!

The bathtub outside of our cabin (un baño al fresco). One day there were other researchers coming to the park, and as we drove up to our cabin I remarked "Oh- there's a truck in our driveway." And a second later "OH- there's a man in our bathtub!" Thus, Bañera Juan got his nickname (amongst ourselves).

This was the day the muffler fell off the truck...

Luckily we got it reattached before the 6 hour drive back to Santiago. I don't think it would have fit very well. Chao Fray Jorge!