A nice breakfast at our place, then loaded up the truck and we headed off east. Lance had read about a field of radio telescopes (no, don’t ask me what they are), and after an hour or so, we found a road into where they were located. However, closed by a gate. We turned around, but there he went using his telephone map and veered off onto a dirt road that climbed around and through the rocky hillside and – lot and behold – every gate was opened. We passed one other truck, and no one was stopping us, so back, back back we went. And higher and higher. We passed some kind of high voltage antenna and kept snaking higher. You’d think that after all these years of driving up I-70, it wouldn’t phase me, but when the side would drop off, I’d be squealing and close my eyes. We reached the top, which was 17,300 feet. Yes, you’re reading that correctly. The view was spectacular:
And Lance wanted to go higher still. So, he said he wanted to go for a walk to take some more photos, and would be back in about 30 minutes. I was resting in the car, because of feeling lightheaded at such altitude, but practiced deep breathing slowly.
After about 40 minutes, he hadn’t shown up, but I figured it was taking longer than he thought and he was taking a million photos. After an hour, I started to think about it, and after 1 1/2 hours, I put my hiking shoes and jacket back on and went out with the binoculars to call and look around. Then my incredible imagination started going at hyperspeed. At the two hour mark, seeing nothing moving but my mind, I raced with the truck out and stopped at the first little farmhouse I came to. An interesting quandary to be in a major panic, but have to speak very slowly (since I had to think about my Spanish tenses, genders and pronouns). The man was so helpful and called the police (Carabineros) for me and instructed me to wait for them. Which I did, patient (mooooo!) cow that I am. When they finally arrived, they followed me back, but as police, they could only go 30 km/hour! Finally, one of them jumped in the car with me and we headed back. Lance had driven in, and you cannot imagine the number of dirt roads that forked into dirt roads, etc. All the while I’m babbling in bad Spanish to the poor guy. We finally get near the top and there is Lance. I stop the car, jump out, and start crying. He was totally fine, lost track of time (gone 3 hours instead of the 30 minutes) and actually saw me pulling out.
We had to provide our names, passport numbers, etc, for a police report, and drove back to town for an 8 pm arrival. Dog tired, emotionally spent (me) and completely dusty, we showered, had dinner and hit the hay. More adventure than I liked!