The plan was to take a later bus this morning as the the early bus to San Pedro de Atacama (San Pedro for short) was pulling out of the station at 7.40am and considering the way we slept yesterday there’s no way we would be able to get up and get ourselves organised so early.
We bought tickets for the 11.40am departure, so waking at the unearthly time of 7.50am worked out fine. I can’t believe that we’re sleeping so late after our month in the pacific islands rising with the sun and sleeping when the sun goes down, now it’s a case of just waking up when we feel like it.
We make our way downstairs and in to the small kitchen, dining area for breakfast. We’re greeted by Andres, he fills us in on the news as an interpreter and we discuss local politics and education. I’d really like to learn more from Andres and given more time in Santiago I’m sure we could while the day away on many subjects. I really like this guy, he’s genuine and passionate about his country and his city. It as time is becoming our enemy this morning and with our breakfast over we have to excuse ourselves and ready our bags for the next stage of our travels.
With packs done and Andres taking a picture to show his wife Francesca how little we’ve packed for the next two months. There are sincere farewells and offers made that should we ever cross paths to look each other up.
Our next challenge is to navigate the cities subway with no Spanish skills, this proves harder than we expect when we’re faced with purchasing a swipe card to enter the subway system. But like in most international cities we’ve travelled through, the more helpless you look the sooner a young local will dash to your aid. The young lass led us to the counter and with as much English as she could remember she workout our our co stings and bought us two subway cards and loaded one way fares to our destination on them. Ah, Santiago you can be proud of your youth. With a quick Gracias, she dashed off to catch her train.
When traveling like this you get pretty good at quickly reading the metro map, working out how many stops and just counting them down. For us it’s 11 stops along the #1 line (25 minutes). The exit is simple and we just followed the Tur-Bus signs to the terminal. We knew by our ticket that our platform was #1 and as we were 20 minutes early we just now needed to sit and wait.
Loading one small back pack unto the cargo we’re soon onboard. I’m glad we’re on the lower level of the double decker bus. It’s a lower centre of gravity and won’t sway as much should we have any twisty roads to traverse. The scenery gives way from city suburbs to steep rolling hills and then we start to see giant cactus trees on the side of the hills, yup we’re in South America all right, all the trees are different.
Elena steals my headphones and has first dibs on the window seat. I soon discovered that the input socket for the headphones is a little on the intermittent side so I give up. Elena gets to watch the onboard movie (in English) while I bash out yet another blog. I have movies on the laptop but as she now has my new headphones to block out the sound of the bus I darn task for them back. So when she’s finished I’ll catch a movie then, meanwhile I sit back and enjoy the ride.
These long haul busses are kitted out with flat beds and. The leg space is phenomenal. It’s 25 hours to San Pedro, the bus is speed limited to 100kmh so it’s now time to just sit back and enjoy the ride. When we selected our seats the lady asked us in Spanish Uno, Dos? We weren’t sure what she was on about surely she could see we needed two tickets. It wasn’t until we were on board that we discovered that the poor lady was trying so hard to ask us which preferred seats we wanted 1 and 2 or 3 and 4 as 5 and six were single seats (she was trying to seat us together). Fortunate for us we wrangled seats 1 and 2 as they were directly under the TV. most of the movies showing were in English with Spanish subtitles.
The Bus followed the coast for hours, we passed small villages and a couple of cities along the way, La Serena was spectacular with its huge sandy bay. As day ends the Andes Mountains shine off in the distance, darkness shrouds our bus as we press on into the night. Out here there is nothing, vast empty spaces and the odd car. I wonder how the natives managed to tame this wide wilderness.
Its after 10pm when we pull into Copiapó and we disembark for a 15 minute stop. The bus is backed away from the terminal as Elena buys a cup of tea and a small flat hot bread that looked like an Indian Nan bread. I see our bus driving away and start to run after it. Just as well our driver sees me and sounds the horn…. on another bus, I was running after the wrong bus! Sheepishly I get on board and sing quickly and quietly into my seat.
As we’re so engrossed in movies we’re the last ones to turn in for the night. the screen is turned off and we doze off rocked by the bus as it starts to climb away from the coast. Elena continues to read her kindle until the small hours.
There’s flickering light coming in through the curtains and I struggle to sleep as long as I can. It’s 9am by the time I push the button and tilt my seat to a semi sitting position, I’m struggling to open my eyes yet Elena’s away before me looking out the window.
The surroundings are now more desertlike and the trees are now nowhere to be seen. We’re entering the Atacama Desert and the vastness is massive. It’s hard to get a fix on distances across the desert, occasionally we’d see a truck in the distance and guage th size of hills and mountains by that. I’m guessing our visability to be close to 100km and yet the mountains look huge and close. Their height is impressive and in 3 days from now we’ll have to climb over then to get to our next destination.
We descend of a plateau into a dry valley with a smattering of trees way off in the distance. This little oasis in the Atacama Desert is San Pedro. Our home for the next 3 days.
