San Pedro de Atacama, a 23 Hour 19 Minute Bus Ride

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We arrived into San Pedro de Atacama around 930a after a night ride that took about 11 hours. The bus was nice and the ride wasn’t terrible, my knee started hurting after a while simply from lack of movement. We got off the bus and I was planning on hailing a taxi however I quickly realized that there were no taxis in this city. You can pretty much walk around it in a half hour or so. There were people handing out brochures for the various hostels in town and one of them happened to be the hostel where our buddy Joey was staying and so we went with the guy, Elias, back to the Hostel Rural to check in. The town was similar to a Wild West frontier town, dirt streets, small shops and everything was dusty and hot. We walked to our hostel in a matter of minutes and got checked in. the place was very quaint and nice and quiet. Joey was out on a tour so Brett and I kicked it around the hostel for a while and relaxed a little after a long bus ride. We decided to take a walk around the city and check it out a little bit and try to find some food since we were pretty hungry after such a long ride. It was hot! That was the first thing we noticed, along with the friendliness of the people and just the calm manner of the town itself. We did some walking and found a little restaurant on a corner that was offering a menu for 2000 pesos, which is about 4 bucks so we decided to check it out. The lady that ran the place may have been the most beautiful woman I have ever seen (not really but she was gorgeous and sweet) and I ordered a tuna wrap with salad and a glass of wine. It didn’t bother me that it was still not even noon haha. The food was amazing and the Chilean wine even better. We watched some program on Chilean TV that was pretty much like Good Morning America for Chile just a little more flamboyant of course; I mean come on its South America. After lunch we walked around the city a little more which we soon realized didn’t take long at all, we saw some of the main Placa and a couple little vendors that were out and about. We returned to the hostel and I did some reading in one of the hammocks and just chilled out. Brett went to check out a few of the tours that we wanted to do and when he came back we decided that we wanted to see the Salt Flats here in the Atacama Desert and also some of the salt lakes that were nearby. We booked the trip and then headed to a local bar since there was a Chilean soccer game on, they were playing Colombia and it was a pretty big deal. We posted up at a bar near our hostel and had quite a few beers; we were good and buzzed by the time we returned to the hostel. We had some water and chilled out some more and Joey was back so we kicked it with him for a while and talked about what he was up to and his trip that he had been on that day. I laid in the hammock with my computer and tried to make a few phone calls via Skype, I talked to AJ finally and he was all good so that made me happy to hear. I also got to Skype with one of my favorite people in the world, a certain Ms. Laura Beck. We chatted for a while and it made me really happy that I got to talk to her and see her; after all it had been quite a while since we parted ways in Chicago. After our chat, Joey, Brett and I went to dinner at a broasted chicken place and enjoyed ourselves a chicken breast and wing and French fries for under $4 which made us all happy that we had full bellies and not too much of a dent in our wallets. We got a bottle of wine for the three of us and went back to the hostel to share it before bed. We listened to some music on my iPod and bullshitted for a few hours and then I hit the sack since we had to get up around 745 the next day. Not that this was a big deal but I knew after a big bottle of wine I would be feeling the effects. I slept alight, had some weird dreams which seem to be the norm down here and woke up before my alarm clock. We packed our things and left them at the hostel for safe keeping while we went on our tour. Our guide picked us up at 815 and he was a pretty cool guy with long hair and sunglasses, tanned from the sun and heat of the desert and he liked to talk. We got on the bus and made some more stops to pick up other travellers that were coming with us on our journey to the salt flats. The first place we went was indeed the salt flats and it was remarkable. It is a national park for Flamingos as well as the salt flats, the birds eat the brine shrimp that live in the salty lakes and there were plenty of flamingos, it was pretty cool to see. The smell of the salt flat was impressive. It wasn’t overpowering but it was a serious smell of sulfur and the landscape was not only extremely vast, but also unforgiving. There wasn’t really a place you could say would be hospitable for miles. The salt surrounded you and the algae in the salt water around you changed to different colors, most notably pink which is why the flamingos are pink because they eat so much of the brine shrimp that live in the algae that they turn pink. We hung out there for a while and got some photos, the water was so calm the mountains in the distance shone like mirrors on the small lake and it made for a wonderful photo op. once we left there we passed through some small towns on our way to see two larger lakes that were more impressive. We drove for about forty minutes and finally reached the first lake, we couldn’t see it at first. The backdrop was of three volcanoes and these yellow scrub bushes that dotted the hills around us. The bushes looked soft however to the touch they were extremely prickly and sharp! The juxtaposition of the blue lake, which we came upon after walking for maybe fifty yards, with the yellow bushes and the snowcapped volcanoes in the background was nothing like I have ever seen. Not to mention that the entire serene landscape was as quiet as you can imagine. I could hear the ringing in in my ears from everyday life just standing in the midst of this beauty. We walked a little ways down to the bust that was waiting for us and got back on and drove to see the next smaller, but deeper salt lake. The two lakes are connected underground by water channels and the guide said that often times during the rainy season, if you can believe that in a desert, the lakes become one and the entire area floods. We hadn’t eaten all day, our breakfast was scant, nuts and raisins we had left over from our previous bus trip, so we were starving and ready for lunch. We boarded the bus and headed to lunch some forty minutes away. On the way however, we stopped at a place that was very cool to me. The place where the Tropic of Capricorn passes through the mountain ranges. All around us were piles of rocks, some small, some large and we learned their importance. We learned while on the Inca Trail that these rock piles were used by the indigenous cultures as an offering to the gods for safe passage on their journeys and generally as good omens for life itself. This site however offered something more. Our guide told us that the rock piles were originally used by Pre Inca peoples as a way of telling directions and as a guide for travellers along a given route. The key to the code if you will is the Andean Cross, or the Southern Cross, which I’ll include a link to a photo. It’s divided up into four quadrants that make up 28 days and depending on how many rocks are stacked in a pile, you can use the Andean Cross as a key to the code and decipher which way you need to head based on how many lines are drawn in each quadrant. It was really quite ingenious and amazing, probably the coolest thing we learned on our excursion of the day. After that we piled back into the bus and finally headed to lunch. Before we stopped at lunch however we had one last site to see, it was the oldest church in all of Chile, built by the early Spanish conquistadors when they came and raped and pillaged the land. It wasn’t super impressive to me but the fact that it was so old did hold some significance. We were all famished however lunch was amazing. We had vegetable soup with a chicken breast, quinoa (a local grain like corn) and rice with Jell-O as a desert and tang as a drink. I was in heaven after not having eaten for seven hours! We left lunch and headed to a small city called Tacoana where we saw a small church and I bought a few trinkets for the folks back home. After that we got back onto the bus and headed back to San Pedro. When we arrived in the city we said goodbye to our guide and Brett and I bought some food for sandwiches for dinner as well as snacks for this arduously long bus ride we have in front of us, 24 hours to Santiago. By the time you all read this we’ll be in Santiago, but right now I am on said bus typing this memoir. We got our things together at the hostel and we were wearing out our welcome there as these people clearly weren’t happy that we were still there yet hadn’t paid. Most times these places don’t care but I think that since it’s the low season and they are starving for business it was a small issue. We talked with a few Chilean girls that were at our hostel before we left and Brett and I polished a bottle of wine and set off for the bus station. We sat for a half hour, ate our sandwiches, which consisted of avocado, salami, and cheese. They were so delicious. We boarded the bus and here I sit typing this as the sun sets over the mountain range in front of me. We have the first seats on the top floor of this bus so we have a perfect road view. I’ll update everyone tomorrow evening from Santiago. God Speed.

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Comments

[Dad]

WOW
This place is amazing. What beauty, what history, what solitude. 1435 that's incredible. Thanks. be safe in the big city. Love You.