So we arrived in San Pedro de Atacama pretty tired, now hot, hungry and thirsty, and craving a shower. As we walked through town with our big backpacks on trying to find a working ATM, the tourism office and a hostel to stay at, we finally got our first taste of true backpacking- exhilarating and also exhausting. We finally got cash out- Chilean pesos are about a 480 exchange rate with the USD- it's very confusing to pay in denominations in the ten thousands for small things!!! And found a cute little hostel where we're bunking with two Belgian guys and a nice lady from Geneva. After a nice lunch and a hot shower we felt much better and spent the afternoon out on the patio, planning our next move. We have now booked a 24 hour bus ride to Santiago (which I may not survive) and our first nights stay there. That evening we had some drinks on the patio with our roomies and checked out a local bar. Met lots of cool people, including some Canadian Navy guys based out of Esquimalt, here on a exchange type thing!
The fun night made for a pretty lazy morning, breakfast, check out and just hanging on the patio of the hotel in the shade (it's so hot! Almost time to toss the jumpers and mittens and replace them with more shorts and tanks- yay!). Drawn into town by the appeal of ice cream, we ended up renting bikes and biking into the famous valley of the moon. We didn't make it too far into all the main attractions since we were short on time before our night bus, but we were okay with it- still saw nice scenery the whole ride :) It was a fun way to spend our last afternoon there.
After turning in the bikes it was a rush to grab our backpacks and walk to the bus station. We booked the nice 'Salon Cama' seats for a couple extra dollars since I was dreading the 24 hr ride so much, so soon enough we were cozy and asleep. All was going well until 4am, when we were woken up by someone telling us we had to get off because we broke down! It was a little bit of groggy, pitch black chaos of grabbing our bags from the undercarriage and getting onto another bus... And then on that bus we were only allowed in the shitty seats, despite the nice ones which we had paid for being empty- doubt we will see that refund haha! Ah well, the rest of the trip went surprisingly fast and we arrived in Santiago safely :)
-Court
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