Nostalgia de la Luz

Nostalgia for the Light

In Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search for answers concerning the origins of life. Nearby, a group of women sift through the sand searching for the body parts of loved ones, dumped unceremoniously by Pinochet's regime (source: www.imdb.com)

This is Nostalgia de la Luz, a 2010 documentary set in the rugged beauty of the Atacama desert, the driest place on Earth. I saw it during Dublin's Stranger than Fiction festival at the IFI (I'm definitely feeling nostalgic about that place) and just couldn't shake those images and words from my head. A beautiful and emotions-stirring documentary. See it if you can:

Or Nostalgia for the Rain... 

When Hardy and I headed to the Atacama a few days ago, it seemed that the desert had gotten so nostalgic about water that the sky had decided to let it rain... and let it rain big. This place has so little experience with rain (average rainfall in the region is just 1 millimetre (0.04 in) per year and some weather stations have never recorded rain. source: Wikipedia) that the ground was unable to absorb the water, causing havoc in the region and leading to the closure of most of the roads around San Pedro de Atacama.

So we're back in Santiago without having had a chance to gaze at the stars but we'll be back for sure!

In the meantime we're off to... the End of the World...