CV: Bus driver, 20 yrs exp. driving straight

Trip Start Oct 10, 2001
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Trip End Feb 19, 2002


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Flag of Chile  ,
Sunday, February 3, 2002

A traveller must adapt to any environment he or she is surrounded by. The physical and cultural uniqueness of South America had semi-erased my memories of home and the feeling of comfortable sleeps or the meaning of weekends or opening the mail boxes or "friends" who speaks the same language as me. As we crossed the never ending deserts of northern Chile, my mind was in a wondering state, like Jim Morrison of the Doors talking to a Native American Chief in a Arizona desert in his drug induced state. The question of life suddenly tickled my brain cells as I looked outside the complete nothingness of the Atacama Desert. No traveller or even a camel can survive this land, the driest place in the world.

The bus was going straight, it had been going straight for the past 12 hours as it cruised down the desert highway at 140km/hr. There was no traffic, no villagers, no trees, no animals, just the sun and the shadow of our bus going straight ahead House of the Rising Sun -- The Doors
House of the Rising Sun -- The Doors
 . I wondered how Pizzaro or Simon Bolivar had conquered this land without fresh water, I wondered how did the government built the highway, I wondered how much did our bus driver gets paid for his wasted life on a desert highway. Just imagine his CV reads: Bus Driver, 20 years experience driving straight on a desert highway. I guess it could be worse, it could have read: Feng Pan, computer engineer, 20 years of looking at a computer screen. For the rest of my life, whenever I'm bored of doing the same thing over and over again, I will imagine the Chilean bus driver cruising down the highway through the Atacama, I will feel his pain, and I can live another day.

We stopped at the largest city in northern Chile, Antofagasta, for fuel and food. We arrived around 2pm, in the middle of a siesta, and the city was a ghost town. The most exciting thing was we changed our bus driver; to us, the chubby Latino was like Mao Ze Dong leading the Chinese Red Army through the Long March. Our long ride continued.

Time was insignificant as the sunset colored the sky bright red and then purple. Me and Juliette was alternating between the state of semi-paralysis and sleep as the movie was playing for our entertainment. Our legs were numb, our backs were stiff, and our eye had lost their ability of recognition, the line was blurred between reality and dreams and desert mirage.

At sunrise, after two nights and one full day on the bus, we arrived at the central bus terminal in Santiago, it was a very modern bus station with shopping and restaurants and air conditioning. We haven't walked into a clean bus terminal since Mexico City; finally, after months of "roughing it out", we are in a 1st world country, and a modern city. As we walked to the subway station on a Sunday morning, the street were empty and the temperature was already hot. A quick and safe trip to the city center, then we checked in at a cheap hostel. My first impression of Santiago de Chile was an impressive one.
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