(tent city, yungay station, chile) signal

i'm writing this to you from my tent and my fingers are freezing, so i'll make it quick.

yesterday and today we spent getting the electrometers up and running. one of the electrometers blew out today, so we're down to one already. we invented a new experiment to do with them while we were down here - we're trying to measure variations in the electromagnetic charge of soil itself, in situ. this is a bit challenging, and we're not quite sure whether it's working, but we're collecting data. we drove up to the "rock garden" to take the measurements. our initial system required a ladder, which alfonzo lugged up the hills. tomorrow we'll move into our next iteration, which will use a more manageable tripod to suspend the electrometer's pendulum. i took pictures today but i'm already in my tent and i forgot to bring my card reader, so you'll have to wait till tuesday night or wednesday for pictures of the experiment.

tomorrow alfonzo, don and i will set out on a 3-hour journey north in search of the dust devils they saw a couple of weeks ago. they are said to start up around 2, so we'll leave here around 10 to leave time for setting up on that end. we'll spend the afternoon chasing the devils and then we'll meet up with another day-trip expedition team in calama for the evening. after a few nights of camping here in subzero temperatures, it will be nice to have a warm shower and a soft bed.

here are a couple pictures that jasek took over the first couple days of our stay here. the funny looking shapes growing out of the ground are made of salt. it's one of the coolest landscapes i've ever seen.