Instead of taking the tour all the way back to Uyuni we opted to get off at the Chilean boarder. We didn't plan on doing any travelling in Chile but just couldn't face any more Bolivian bus journeys! Also, we discovered that flying out of Bolivia to Buenos Aires, in Argentina, from where we're soon due to fly to New Zealand, is more complicated and expensive than we thought. So we decided to make our way to Buenos Aires over-land instead.
The jeep dropped us off in a particularly unremarkable spot in the desert, from where we were herded onto buses to be taken to the boarder. We knew instantly when we had reached Chilean soil as the tyre tracks in the sand suddenly became paved road. Paved roads... Only after spending a few weeks without them can you truly understand the joy of paved roads!!
It should have been simple, the plan was to spend a night in San Pedro de Atacama, the Chilean border town, then the next day jump on a direct bus over the Argentinian border and onto Salta. But "the best laid plans..." and all that. We were (naively) expecting that by passing over the border from Bolivia into Chile we would be immediately transported back into the developed world. So imagine our surprise at finding ourselves in a small, dusty town, built entirely from mud-brick, with far more of an Indian feel to it than European, or even South American for that matter, without even twenty-four hour electricity!
Someone told me that San Pedro is the hottest place in the world and I'm pretty sure that that's bollocks, but none-the-less it's bloody hot! So there we were, wandering around this little mud-brick town, carrying all our stuff, in the relentless heat, when we discovered that all the hostels were full. We staggered from place to place feeling less and less optimistic until finally a lovely lady took pity on us and sent us to a new place, which was kind of like a campsite, on the edge of town, with a few rooms to rent. Despite the fact that it actually cost more than we were used to paying for a nice room with private bathroom, cable tv, WiFi etc, we were pleased to take it!
The next disaster of the day involved us discovering that the only cashpoint in town wouldn't accept our cards. So we had no way of getting any money. It was very stressful I can tell you. With all the money in the world if you can't actually access any and you're miles from home and don't know anyone, what can you do? We couldn't even leave town to try and get somewhere with another cashpoint as we didn't have any money for the bus! Nightmare! However, that potentially disastrous situation was resolved remarkably easily in the end by someone showing us the location of the town's "secret" cashpoint (?!) that did take our card!
Once we had some money in our pockets and could relax a little we discovered that San Pedro is actually a nice place, something of an oasis in the desert, so things seemed to be working out again. Until... next disaster... the buses over the Argentinian border are all full for the next week. Bloody marvelous! Anyone who would like to look at a South American map will see that the potential options for crossing over from one side of the continent to the other are somewhat limited by the fact that the mighty Andes mountain range runs down the middle of it. Our next nearest option, therefore for crossing over was via the country's capital, Santiago, a mere twenty-two hour bus journey away!!!
So to cut a long story short, that's what we did, and believe it or not the bus journey wasn't half bad. Then once in Santiago we found that European-style Chile we'd been hearing all about. So there's really not too much more to tell about Chile really, we spent a couple of days taking in the cities' sights and rode on a cable-car through a huge park over-looking the city and got to eat some nice food and drink some good wine, for a change. But do you know what? It just doesn't feel like South America.
Ben:
I only took the one photo in the entire of Chile!
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