Speaking of coastline, here y'are. Lots of good shells, too, if you collect 'em, especially the sea urchins.

A little tongue of Iquique sticking out into the sea, with the mountains in the background.

Tide pools with water running off them. The waves were very large, and we frequently saw surfers out there.

Aaaah yes. Backroom storage in the museum. Not the best preservation technique, eh? Oh, Pisco is a kind of Chilean drink.

This is the small village of Huatacondo as seen from the slopes of a mountain. It's where we stayed while we were actually digging the desert. We drove out to the site each day on a scenic-but-crappy road. I think I counted 18 times when it actually went through the stream in the quebrada.

The main plaza of Huatacondo, with a fountain. In the lower right, you might notic a condor picked out in the cobbelstones of the street.

Er, a typical street in Huatacondo.

Llama! Heh, we actually didn't see that many, but this was one of them. The desert isn't exactly llama raising country.

A view of the mountain road from a high point near Huatacondo. The cross is for the holiday of Corpus Christi. Oh yes, we'd also frequently see tiny little doll house sized chruches and things along the Panamerican. These are little shrines marking past accidents. Sort of graves. Er, there were a lot of them.

Me and the quebrada. This was on the day that the attack dog bit me. It only bruised, though, so I went on a hike. Yeah, probably not the smartest thing to do but it turned out alright.

A sizeable waterfall. The road actually passes right over it, through the stream above. Mountain on one side, waterfall on the other.

As I said, the road frequently passes through the stream. Case in point.

Two years ago the town got two whole days of rain. Soil in an environment like this just can't take that...it won't absorb the water. So there was massive flooding. I'm fairly sure this road sign was a victim of that.

Inca ruins by the soccer field at Huatacondo. They don't quite look like the stuff you usually see, do they? They're very late, contact perdiod houses.

Tamentica petroglyphs. There were a bunch of boulders will all sorts of scribblings on 'em that we passed every day on the way to the site.

The site! Well, one room of it. There are actually a lot of structures. I worked in this one most of the time, going through a large pile of ash. Towards the end, though, I got to dig out a post hole out front. Everything preserves in this environment, so those are the original wood posts of the building.

One of the few times we played frisbee during lunch. This gives you an idea of how vast and flat the area around the site was.

Me and my hole! The post hole, that is. I never did reach the bottom. I found a lot of cool stuff in it though- pot sherds, beads, uh...llama dung. Lots of that. I think I got down maybe four feet. Ironically, this was just after I finished reading "Holes."

A skink! There is NO vegitation in the desert save around sources of water like the quebrada (in which case you can get 12 ft tall cattails). The slopes of the mountains are bare bones, and they're very old. Even in geological terms. But you do find wildlife. Like skinks. Fast little critters, too.

These were taken during a day trip to neighboring towns. They're the Pintados geoglyphs. There's actually a lot more than what is shown, too. They were everywhere.

A church in the town of Matilla that dates back to the 1500's. The dome cracked during an earthquake once. Apparently the church was a famous example of restorative archeology.

The town of Pica. It's a tourist trap, but it's a NICE tourist trap. Classy hostels, flowers, hot springs...yeah. Definately worth a visit.