Pepper trees at Paranal

A few trees, mostly peppers, welcome the visitor at the main entrance of the Paranal Residencia, an award-winning building that is part of the base camp for the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT). The Paranal Residencia also contains two gardens with subtropical vegetation, and a swimming pool, to provide some greenery and maintain a higher level of humidity indoors, giving some respite from the arid conditions outside in the Atacama Desert. On the horizon, the enclosures of the VLT are opening at sunset on Cerro Paranal.