Thursday Nov. 1
There were a lot of early mornings on this trip. The first one was no exception.
I woke up at 3:15 am, after going to bed sometime after midnight. Our flight was around 7:45 am, we had to get to the airport an hour and a half before that, and we had to take transfers to the airport, which we meant that we had to be ready two hours before that. Thus, I was picked up at 4:15 am by a van, headed to the airport.
I am generally one to run late, but, I was in the airport, at the gate 2 hours before our boarding time… It was the worst. I passed out on an airport bench until Susi found me prior to boarding time.
As we took off, I watched the sun rise over the mountains near Santiago. As we touched down about two hours later, it appeared that we had landed on Mars. The red sand dunes of the desert against the blue of the sky was a cool sight.
We took a transfer from the airport in Calama to San Pedro de Atacama. We drove through the driest parts of the desert and it was incredible. The spotting of windmills reminded me of driving up to Chicago, haha. I was amazed as the terrain became more varied, more green, as we approached San Pedro.
Unfortunately, our hostel was 2.2 km away from the center of town, which meant that is was “out of range” for the transfer. (This is a common theme throughout our trip) We were dropped off at the bus terminal with some time to kill. We did some groceries – anticipating that food was expensive and we’d need to make for ourselves. We walked around the town a bit – there was nothing, and then suddenly we turned and there was everything. Caracoles was the main street of the town – with all of the tourist traffic. Susi bought some Coca leaves, and I bought a bandana to keep the sand out of my lungs.
Due to its distance from the town, our hostel offered transfers at certain hours of the day. Susi and I stood at a designated corner in the town – the “meeting point” and waited. After waiting for some time, we got a little concerned – and hot – so we contacted the hostel and an unlabelled dust-covered blue KIA whipped around the corner (for the 3rd time) and let us in. This was the transfer. Mauro, from Argentina, clear from his accent, drove us down the dusty road to the hostel. Apparently, he and his girlfriend, Abi, had been staying at the hostel for a couple months on their transcontinental trip from Ushuaia to Alaska. They were the first of many interesting people we met while staying at the Hostel del Valle de Desierto.
Upon arrival, Susi and I crashed in our room – shared with 4 other girls. Throughout the trip we roomed with girls from Germany, Austria and Australia. Later we made ourselves some dinner, sat in some hammocks as the sun set in the desert and called it a night.
