I am currently at the Pierre Auger Observatory in Malargue, Argentina. It's the main building of a large cosmic ray detector that's spread out over 100's of square miles. Malargue is a town of about 20 or 30 thousand people and sits at around 4,500 feet. The flora reminds me of the Palmdale/Lancaster area. They have a number of tall trees lining the streets and nearby fields to serve as windbreaks, but you can get glimpses of the Andes which are quite spectacular.
The internet in my hotel is pretty slow, but I'll try to get some more photos up when I can.
In this first photo, you can see the main building of the observatory. It houses a visitor's center as well as administrative offices, labs, and the computer room. Attached to the main building is another structure that has a machine shop and high bay facility for maintenance and repair of the parts of the detector.
In this photo you can see the support building. Attached to it on the right is the tank they use to store their purified water that they use to fill up their detectors.
Here is one of the spare detectors. There are 1600 detectors spread out 1.5km apart. Each tank has it's own name, some of the local schools were able to name some of the tanks, but apparently the whole naming thing began when the first few were named after the girlfriends of the first few grad students.
This is a building across the street. I don't know anything about it other than it appears they are doing work on it, I hope they are trying to restore it.
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