More desert in Chile
Trip Start
Mar 25, 2007
1
63
72
Trip End
Feb 16, 2008
San Pedro de Atacama,
Chile
Saturday, December 15, 2007
We found the cheapest accomodation in town ($8 each compared with $7 for the 2 of us in Bolivia! ouch!), and tried to get some money out of the ATMīs. One of them didnīt take visa, and the guy in front of hamish at the other one asked for 150000 pesos and only got 80000 out! The rest of the money was stuck in the machine. The owner of the shop next door attacked it with pliers and managed to get another 20000 out ($40) but the rest was gone. and the machine was no longer working. lucky we had some US dollars on us, so we changed that into pesos to tide us over. The german guy whose money was in the machine ended up staying with us. The accomodation was a camp ground, we were in a dorm room. Unfortunately for us everyone elseīs spanish was better than their english so that was the dominant language. Serves us right for not learning it properly! But we sampled some chilean wine and went to bed with a bit of a rosy glow.
The next day we were very lazy, we tried to sort out our flight to Ushuaia for NY but the internet was so slow and so expensive we gave up. That evening we went out to the valley of the moon, a crazy ancient volcanic landscape. we climbed to the top of a massive sand dune to watch the sunset, but we were there a bit early and the wind was absolutely freezing so waiting for the sun to go down was a bit painful! Anyway when it did it was awesome and we trudged back to the van.
Then after some more wine with our buddies at the campsite it was an early night for an early start the next day to try and get to Santiago.
We took the bus to Calama, where by spending $3 we had saved $20 on the bus ticket from San Pedro to Santiago, but stupidly believed the relative prices in the lonely planet and ended up taking another short bus to Antofagasta to try and make it even cheaper. Unfortunately this time we spent $8 and saved $4, and had to wait till midnight for a bus. Bugger. Anyway we filled in the time in Antofogasta by spending hours in the first supermarket we had seen in months (a proper european one with all the clothes and electrical appliances and everything!!) which was a bit sad but we had missed the western world more than we realised.
Then we finally made it to Santiago!
