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Published: October 25th 2009
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Christina and I on the busWe had to leave our hotel really early to make our flight to Calama. Our flight left at 7 a.m. so we needed to get to the airport early. We left the hotel around 5 a.m. I got up and made eggs for the myself and the girls in my room. Since we were leaving so early we had to miss the hotel breakfast. Since it was so early in morning there wasn´t any traffic so it didn´t take too long to get to the airport. We breezed through check in and security and soon were on our way to Calama.
The Calama airport is really tiny. It is one of my favorites because they let you get off the plane and walk on the tarmac to the airport. Most other airports pack you onto a silly little bus just to drive you 100 yards to the airport. It is faster and more comfortable just to walk. We got our bags and waited for everyone to use the bathroom and change since the temperature was a lot hotter! While we were waiting Lindsay G and Jess B both jumped on the little conveyor that brings your bags and rode it around
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I´m a miner to the outside. It was really funny and no one seemed to care. It was really little and it just went outside and the back inside about 15 feet later.
Our tour guide was waiting for us outside. I could tell right away he was kind of sassy and I was right. haha. We boarded a bus and were on our way through the desert. Our first stop was the Chuquicamata copper mine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuquicamata --in case anyone wants to know more). There were big trucks everywhere. One big dump truck cost $4 million dollars!! Just one tire for the trucks costs $20,000. We drove around the mine in a different tour bus with a nice lady guide. We had to wear hard hats. The mine was just so big! We stopped at an overlook where we could just look and take pictures. We spent around a half an hour there. We drove through the deserted town of Chuquicamata. The miners and their families lived there until February of 2009 but they have all relocated to the town of Calama because the town was too close to the mine. It was really weird to see the town all empty. The tour
guide joked that the town is all ready for a movie to be filmed since everything is all painted up and nice still.
After our mine tour we drove to our hostel in San Pedro de Atacama. It was called the Casa de Don Tomás. Our rooms were not quite ready when we got there so we left our things in the lobby and I went and lounged by the pool for a bit. We ended up getting into our rooms earlier than we expected. They were pretty nice. I roomed with Catie and Hayley. The only downside was that we couldn´t drink any of the tap water. I accidentally drank some in the shower one day and I could definitely taste why you shouldn´t drink it! After we settled into our room we walked to main street. We looked in some of the shops there. It seems to be a big tourist town, not much else. We went to a little store and bought water, cheese, and butter. I still had bread left from the day before so I made a little sandwich for lunch. Around 4:30 our tour guide and bus returned to get us for the night.
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big excavator We went to Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley). We walked to a cliff edge to look and we also walked through a canyon a little further down the road. We ended up just driving through Valle de la Luna because we didn´t have time to stop. We were trying to get to a certain place to watch the sunset. We finally arrived at our destination. It was pretty but it was really windy and cold. The tour company surprised us by setting up a little table with snacks and drinks. There was water, juice, pisco sour, olives, cheese, peanuts, granola bars, and candy. It was really nice and I took some great pictures. Hayley, Alison and I climbed up on top of a little hill. Hayley was trying to take a picture of Alison and she took a step back, stumbled on the rocks and fell. She was worried that she broke Alison´s camera but it was fine and we were worried about Hayley, but she was fine too. Well, she was fine until she looked at her camera and realized she had broke the screen. She was so upset because that was her spare camera. She had gotten
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big 4 million dollar truck sand in her good camera and hadn´t gotten it fixed yet. We just sat up on the hill trying to comfort her until it was time to go. I felt really bad for her.
We returned to the hostel after the sunset. A bunch of us sat outside and had tea. It was really nice. We figured our later that Hayley could still use her camera if she looked through the viewfinder but it didn´t always work and it was hard to see. It was worse for her because she doesn´t have the best vision. Some pictures are better than no pictures though! It had been a long day of traveling and sightseeing and I was ready to get some sleep.
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