Day 35

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What a day and where to start! We arrived in Calama, an old mining town at 8am. There were no sign of gringo's anywhere and everyone stared at us like they'd never seen a gringo before! We had until 6am on monday morning for our next bus to Bolivia so explored the town a bit, went for some lunch, watched a opening ceremony of a new fire engine and then went to a mall for dinner and to watch some football! We got back to the station at about 10pm and decided to get comfortable for a good few hours sleep. However, one slight problem arose at 11pm- the bus station was closing and we had nowhere to stay!

In our wisdom we decided that a safe place would be to go to a police station and ask if we could hang out in the reception for a few hours before our bus arrived. They said no but the best place to go was the hospital.

We trundled down to the hospital and it looked ok from the outside, a little small but not too bad. We got in and settled down in the waiting area with our bags. About 2 minutes later a few cops came hustling through the waiting area with a couple of hand cuffed chumps- we gave them nick-names of dumb and dumber!

The next episode from the hospital was when the local community came to join in the fun, the alcoholic tramps! For some reason they loved me (Tom) and insisted on sitting next to me, stinking like booze and bo, like they hadn't showered for years, minging!

Then the police brought through a load more thugs and threw out the tramps a few times before my new best friend arrived. He was the most disgusted person that i've ever seen, he smelt so bad, and slurred his spanish words with his booze breath it was painful! He insisted on sitting next to me before trying to shake my hand which I said 'go away'! He sat down and slept for a few minutes before waking and muttering some more words, then he tried to rest his head on my shoulder! At this point I couldn't handle any more tramps and jumped up, Craig was hiding his face because he was crying with laughter at my friend!! Scum bag!

Eventually 5.30am arrived and we packed up and headed off for the bus to Bolivia.

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