MEMORIES from the 5th Latin American School of

High-Energy Physics

Recinto Quirama, Antoquia, Colombia

15 - 28 March, 2009

The fifth School in the new series of Latin American Schools of High-Energy Physics took place from 15 to 28 March, 2009, in the Conference Center, Hotel Recinto Quirama, Antioquia, a charming restored colonial house, situated in between the villages of Carmen de Viboral and Rionegro, some 2.200 meters above sea level, and close to the Medellin International Airport in Colombia.


View towards the Auditorium Building

The School was organized by CERN with the support of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science; together with the University of Antioquia, Antonio Nariño University and the National University of Colombia, Bogota; the Ministry of Science and Technology, Brazil; and CLAF, the Centro Latino Americano de Fisica.

Professor Marta Losada from the University Antonio Nariño, Bogota, acted as local director for the School, strongly assisted by Enrico Nardi from the University of Antioquia, Medellín. The other local committee members were Carlos Quimbay from the National University of Colombia, Bogota, and Juan Carlos Sanabria from the University Los Andes, Bogota.

Fifty-nine students coming from 16 different countries, together with 11 Colombian “listeners”, attended the School, and following the tradition of the School the students shared twin rooms mixing nationalities, and in particular the Europeans mixed with Latin Americans.

The 12 lecturers came from Europe, Latin America and Israel. The lectures were complemented by daily discussion sessions led by four physicists coming from Latin America and one from the US. The lectures were given in the main hall where the students also displayed their work in the form of posters on a special evening session during the first week. A special lecture by Profesor Ricardo Callejas entitled “Botanical Exploration of the state of Antioquia during the XIX century" should also be mentioned.

According to the School tradition the students displayed their work during a poster session the first week. The posters, which were of excellent quality remained on display for the remaing part of the School.


Enrico discussing a poster

The participants certainly appreciated the friendly hotel staff and not the least the chef, Mr. Juan David Jaramillo, who provided an excellent and varied menu throughout the school.


Important people at "work" after dinner


..and very late after dinner

Due to the efforts of Enrico, the School probably had the most exciting and interesting social programme of any of the previous schools, and most of it either for free or at a specially negociated low cost.

One could mention a group of 36 folkloric dancers and musicians from Universidad de Antioquia, a boat trip to the Parque de las Culebras, visit to the village of Guatape and to El Peñol, a 200-metre high granite monolith with 650 steps that the participants climbed.


El Peñol
See also this link

One evening a Tango show was organized performed by the group Che Tango with 4 musicians, one singer and 4 pairs of dancers.

During the weekend a full day excursion was organized, first to the Water Park, los Tamarindos, and then a visit to the colonial village Santa Fe de Antioquia (see the FULL address:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR1ZAXaWbac )
The full day ended with an excellent dinner and an exciting dinner show at the splendid restaurant, Palmitas, overviewing Medellin.


Exciting Dinner show at the restaurant, Palmitas

During the free time the students had the possibility of swimming in the pool, playing football on the green, strolling or riding horses in the nice surrounding forest.


Horse riding

At the end of the school the students themselves organized the traditional School Banquet, where among other events one of the students presented his own summary of the school.