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Friends in Berlin sent us this link to a stunning celebration of the Fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago. The short video is highly recommended. It’s amazing how much this world of ours can change in around a third of the Biblical lifetime.

This is an out-of-sequence blog entry, largely because when we went to the Los Flamencos National Reserve here in the Atacama Desert yesterday afternoon, in the middle of the great Salar de Atacama, I forgot my camera – and felt bereft for much of the trip.

Then I recalled that I had my BlackBerry, so took some pictures with that, through the quality is significantly lower. Am posting the images before doing the rest of the sequence on the Chile trip so that I can free up the minuscule memory on the phone.

We learned a good deal about the hydrogeology of the Atacama, adding to what we had been told by Paula in the morning when we visited the Valle de la Luna. What sticks in my mind particularly is the fact that the Atlantic and Pacific once met in this area, before the Latin american land mass began its inexorable rise, thanks to tectonic subduction.

The salt-flats of the Salar are wonderfully monotonous, though the landscape is broken by occasional bright green trees – and even a ‘forest’ planted some time back by the government.

In the distance , on the flanks of the Andes, we saw the base camp of the extraordinary ALMA project, with its 66 antenna observatory. In San Pedro last night, we discussed the planning controls here that minimise light pollution – something other countries and regions could learn from.

Apart from the flamingos, I saw a variety of birdlife, a number of what I imagine were Darwin’s leaf-eared mouse and a green and red lizard that I was told had only arrived in the area some 20 years ago.

The wind picked up markedly as the sun set – and then we went out behind the visitor centre to see the mountains pick up the reddish hues of the sunset. Some time after 20.00, a Full Moon popped its head over the Andes, and then rose majestically into the night sky.

The ride back was enlivened a woman who decided that her passport had been stolen from her bag while we were at the reserve. Silence settled. Fernando slept on the back seat. Then a vicious swerve as the driver steered around a wayward burro in the night. And then the missing papers were found in the woman’s bedroom.

After a late dinner, we sat out, around a blazing fire pit, and watched the Moon gradually ascend into the heavens – albeit drowning out many of the constellations it would have been good to see in more detail.

Wonderful conversation with a Swiss couple from Zurich, he apparently a very successful architect, she raised in the UK, and the family of four doing a 2-month trip around Latin America. Next, at least for them, is Easter Island. Given that I also learned yesterday that Easter Island is on the sub ducting plate, so will eventually collide with Chile, I said I would probably wait for the island to hove into view.

An amazing visit today to the Valle de la Luna. It’s appropriate, given my use of an image of Daniel Craig as James Bond a few days ago at the Recycla Awards ceremony in Santiago, that part of the Bond film Quantum of Solace was filmed here.

For a change, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, though one thing is perhaps missing here. Fernando filmed me as I ran (only the distance from where the photo is taken to the group in the distance in the 13th photo here) back to the group – even though I had complained that the altitude was getting to me …

After probably the bumpiest flight (in the late stages) that I have been on in decades, we touched down at Calama airport. Like so many things here, it is recently built and opened. As we came out into the open, the landscape shimmered with heat, and plumes of dust rose in the distance – which I assume, having looked down on a number of major mines as we flew in, must have been because of mining activity.

We climbed into a minibus with several other people and travelled eastwards towards the Andes. Getting to San Pedro de Atacama took about an hour-and-a-half, during which time I was struck by how much of the desert was covered not so much with windmills, though we passed through an extensive wind farm, but with litter. Most of the low-lying shrubs, it seemed, had acted as snags for passing plastic, paper and other debris.

As the land climbed, the debris thinned out. And then we crested the hills overlooking the Salar de Atacama, the great salt pan. As we headed down into San Pedro, I was struck by how the town’s single storey buildings are made out of adobe brick, with dirt roads once you’re off the main drag. The overall sense, however, with greenery and trees, is of an oasis.

And then on to our oasis within the oasis, the Tierra Atacama resort. Again this is single storey, with careful attention having been made to minimise light pollution. The gardens smelled wonderful, of fig trees, rosemary and lavender, with considerable numbers of hollyhocks (or malvas, here), in a wide spectrum of colours.

My room’s picture window looks out onto the elegantly symmetrical Licancabur volcano.

Under Fernando’s guidance, I’m trying a bunch of different Chilean red wines: Cabernet, Carmenere, Merlot and chilled Pinot Noir among them. Wonderful to sit out in the open air at night, with a glass of wine, the stars, a blazing fire, and across the valley on the flanks of the mountain alongside Licancabur, a wildly snaking road through to Bolivia, with the headlights of a small number of cars making their way up or down.

Up bright and early for a breakfast session hosted by the UK Ambassador, Fiona Clouder, at her residence, with people from the mining and retail industries, and a number of others. Very engaged discussion.

Then Fernando and I drove across town to the Recycla recycling site, where it all started. A prototypical triple bottom line operation, with a clear environmental benefit, a workforce partly made up of former prison inmates, and a financial bottom line which, though precarious at times, is largely funded by corporate CSR budgets.

To get the business onto a truly sustainable financial footing, Chile would need to adopt its own version of the EU Extended Producer Liability framework, to ensure that those who made products took responsibility from cradle to  grave.

Next port of call was the Ibáñez Atkinson Foundation, where the lunch was co-hosted by Felipe Ibáñez and his wife Heather (née Atkinson) and members of their family.

It all started with a small tragedy, in terms of the size of the victim. As I walked in, I espied a brilliant red model of a DH88 De Havilland Comet, one of my favourite aircraft of all time.

When I asked about it, Felipe took me through to see it. Picked up, it was dropped (happily not by me), and at least one propellor came adrift.

When we looked at the plaque on the model’s base, it turned out that it was the plane flown by one of Felipe’s forebears, C.W.A. Scott – winner of the London to Sydney Air Race, the “the world’s greatest air race,” in 1934.

Scott flew a DH88 named ‘Grosvenor House,’ as is – by no means coincidentally – the model plane we partially crashed.

A fascinating glimpse into a very different part of Chilean society – and a wonderful lunch. We would meet Felipe and Heather later in the day at the Awards ceremony, though that is the subject of the next blog.

And then, after the lunch we headed across to Recycápolis Central to meet another part of the team – and to engage in another book signing session. wonderful people, great buzz.