Hand of the Desert

A great night of sleep and we got up. The kids slept late of course. I realized the starlink wasn't working last night and it wasn't any obstruction. The starlink router would not reset and the wan plug on the router was not lighting up when plugged in with the starlink.

We did not have much to see today except geoglyphs on the hills. We could see the geoglyphs near our camp spot.

We passed a few more geoglyphs and large mining operations for cement.

We headed down the road for a water fill point at a gas station four hours down the road. We stopped at Santa Elena, a mining town, to see a toy museum but it was closed. We continued on the road and went to the gas station but the spigot did not have a threaded end. I tried to use the water bandit but it would not hold against the soft hose.

I dumped the toilet and then Ellie peed while the cassette was out so that was a fun clean up. It wasn't her fault. Christine told her to go pee even though I was dumping the cassette.

We filled up gas and headed down for Antofagasta, a port city and the largest city in northern Chile, which was once part of Bolivia before the Great Pacific War.

We went to a Jumbo supermarket which we had last seen in Colombia. It was located in a small but nice mall with a kids playground. 

We bought some $80 in groceries and headed off to the desert to see the Hand of the Desert before dark.

The Hand of the Desert is an art sculpture just south of Antofagasta. There is another hand sculpture in Uruguay and the two hands embrace South America. It is a spot for photos on the Pan American Highway. We went to camp there. Unfortunately the moon was full and would rise and set with the whole night. Other cars showed up and it appeared to be a hangout spot. The back side of the hand was a pee spot and stunk of urine and the cement appeared to be wet. We took our photos and Christine made dinner while I troubleshot the Starlink. It turns out we had zero cell signal out here. I could not reboot the Starlink so I concluded that tomorrow we should go to Antofagasta and buy another one if Starlink could not get it working.

We ate dinner and then went outside to take night shots of the stars but the moon was too bright.

Eventually we all piled back in the RV and showered and got ready for bed. It was quiet and no thumping music although there were two cars taking photos near the sculpture. It was cold and windy out and good for a campground.