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While Rachel continues to work up the mountain in her longest shift yet, I’m completing an intensive spanish course this week. I’m exhausted and stressed.

Spanish is fine while there is a direct translation, but in the last two weeks, i’ve encountered the most popular forms of the language… which happen not to have direct translations and thus make little sense to us british ignoramuses.

Then there are irregular verbs. Don’t get me started. Our tutor starts one day, “we’re going to look at irregular verbs in the subjunctive tense. Don’t worry, there aren’t many”. But, unfortunately, irregularity appears to be proportional to daily use- to say, to put, to know, to do, to think, to start , to leave and to sleep, are all irregular verbs. B**t***s.

Excuse my french, or spanish, or english. Its the same in all of them. I’m hating spanish tonight. But then that’s because i’m being tested on it tomorrow (una prueba). Que pantoso! as they say here. That means, quite literally, as far as I can understand, “Pants!”. Fair point.

Tonight is the equivalent of the Cup Final in Chile. The Universidad de Chile and a team called Colo Colo are battling it out for the title and a cup, presented by 3 vaguely chilean looking young poser girls (like you’d see at a Grand Prix event) and a token blonde who, rather dubiously, wears a cap (to disguise the 3ft long hair extensions!).

The scene at the stadium is uniquely Latin American- banners 10ft high are draped over the fences and walls of the stands, the ground around the pitch is littered with bottles, paper and other projectiles. And the crowd is very rowdy, supervised by what appears to be the Chilean army in full camoflage uniform!

The coverage is interupted every 10 seconds by another winning number posted in the bottom corner of the screen, and every 10 minutes by a beer advert. Indeed, it might as well be a battle for air-time. In this case, between Escudo and Cristal, the two “home-brand” beers of Santiago. Unsurprisingly, given Santiago water, the best beers are all produced outside of the city and cost the same as a Guiness made from the Liffey!

The roads are unusually quiet here… at least until the end of the match when at least a quarter of young fans jump into their cars, plant their hands firmly on the horn and drive the streets in search of… well, glory.

I’m supposed to be revising for a spanish test tomorrow morning, but I can’t seem to avoid watching the match. It is exciting in the way that Italian football is renowned for its eccentricities. The tackling is fierce and unrelenting. The players dart back and forth, the ball never left to free space. They’re certainly good at passing. But any attempts at the goal are typically from more than 25 metres and way out!

But a greater ability than any, is to foul. They do it in style, just like the italians, although with a tendency to more violence, on the pitch and off. Its not unknown for civil war to start in the terraces while the game resumes!

In response, the referee stomps around with a limited degree of authority on the pitch and even less credibility off the pitch. 20 minutes have passed and, just like Italian football, there have been 4 yellow cards already!

A few nights ago, whilst I was in Santiago, there was a stunning blue flash here on Paranal (see posts below). One of the engineers caught it on camera - check out his photos at http://www.atacamaphoto.com/Paranal/Paranal34.htm .

We have just recieved a brilliant wedding present from Joy, Dougs sister. She asked folk at the wedding to send their favourite recipes, which she compiled into a book. We have everything from Nanny motts poormans supper to welsh bread, canary island sauces to cookies-and-cream cake! Potential visitors be warned, you will need to prepare for some culinary delights.

We may have a problem with some of the ingredients though. We’ve found Worcestershire sauce (salsa ingles), but the Chinese herb “sambal oeleck” may be a bit harder. To Dougs relief I think I’m going to struggle to find the ingredients for jellied eels, sorry Dad!

So thanks to everyone who contributed, and we’ll be in touch to let you know the results (if we survive!).

I thought I’d write and let you all know (whoever reads this site..) that I am alive and well. Life is very busy here, but it has calmed down this evening, and should be quieter for the next few days. So hopefully I should be blogging a bit more, and will let you know about life on the mountain.

The mountain is Cerro Paranal, and is 8645 feet high. I’m not sure if that is before or after they blew the top off to make a flat platform. I spend 80 nights a year here, along with around 100 other people at present. Although there may be more, as it is hard to tell with everyone working different shifts. There are a few hundred people who work here in total, from cleaning staff to engineers, managers to astronomers. At the moment I am half way through a 10 day day-shift, which means I work in the control room from 9am-8:30pm. The control room is next to the telescopes, and the residencia, where we stay, is 5km further down the mountain.

The view from here is quite incredible. There is nothing to be seen but desert in every direction, except the cloud-covered sea to the west and some faint sand roads in the distance, to a mine and a up to a small observatory. The mountains not rocky, but are like giant sand-dunes, in red, yellow and even hints of blue among the stones. There are a few skeletons of plants, which I’m assured are alive and waiting patiently for the next rain. A few of days ago there was a bird of prey swooping around, presumably looking for astronomers who chose to walk to the telescopes and died of dehydration. Some say it is beautiful, but I would choose awe-inspiring. Strange how a place so dead, with nothing moving but the shadows, can be magnificant rather than full of fear. It reminds me of Psalm 23 - “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me”.