August 9, 2012
In the morning: Up the Andes!
I keep promising myself I’ll go to bed sooner…
It’s been a whirlwind of microscope time and also getting to know our collaborator and her beautiful university. She took us to lunch and a tour around the campus. The arcitecture is a mix of mid century, local cubey-modular, and very modern.
Plus they have deer – wild deer – grazing around campus. This campus is surrounded by bustling Lima on all sides, so there’s nowhere for these deer to go but on campus. They’re totally docile and get along with the students. They don’t even eat the flowers!
Here’s a model the mining students made of the Chilean mining collapse and rescue route – I recognized it from a diagram at the Smithsonian from my visit last month. The Smithsonian has the escape pod on display. It’s so eerie.
We were in a rush to pack up so I had Dave catch a picture of what I’ve been doing all this time. Very glamorous! I especially love the dopey racoon face I have; combination of blinking and the goofy impressions the eyepieces leave on my face.
In the morning a truck picks us up early. I’ve packed everything back together with my gear ready for action. As we’ll be at elevation – over 5k meters! – we will not hike much tomorrow. I’m so excited to finally see these rocks. I’ve been looking at photographs and, now, microscopic images of them for so long. And before this trip I was holed up in my Los Angeles apartment for months doing math. It will be AMAZING to see real rocks, and hunt for our favorite fossils, once again!
Oh, and here’s a flyer for my talk for the geological society on Wednesday! Yikes!