(old) Cold showers and hot baths.

It was a rough start to our tour when we woke up to no hot water and no breakfast in the hostel. Since we could see our breath we skipped the cold water shower and pulled out some cookies to tide us over until we got the breakfast the tour company had promised us. And looked forward to the hot water shower we’d get tonight. We didn’t let it get to us probably because we were getting out of San Pedro before we went bankrupt. The tour office was just a couple of blocks down the road. There was already a small crowd waiting although at this early hour no one was feeling particularly talkative. Or perhaps they hadn’t had their hot showers either.

Right on time, a guide appeared and shuttled us over to a waiting minibus. There were twelve of us in total but we weren’t all traveling together. This was just the bus to the border where we’d be separated into our different tours, depending on how long we had signed up for. Chilean tour companies aren’t allowed to got into Bolivia and vice versa and since we were only 20km from the border this journey was going to be a short one, that is until we got to the Chilean border post just outside of town. The two Colombians onboard had forgotten to bring their tourist cards with them and we had to wait a half hour while the driver took them back to their hotel to fetch them. Then it was back on the bus for the drive past the turn off for the Argentinian border past some volcanoes to the Bolivian post another 45 minutes away. Even the word post is perhaps too strong a description. It was just a hut in the middle of the desert. There was nothing in sight in either direction except a burnt out bus shell yet the Bolivians had taken care to put up a free-standing gate across the road, perhaps not realizing that the hard packed desert on either side of the road was probably easier to drive on than the potholed road they were blocking.

We were given forms to fill out and then waved into the hut one at a time to pay our entry fee. The fee was a surprise since we hadn’t needed to pay one at the Peru-Bolivia border and when I raised my eyebrow at the $2 they wanted they showed me the official-looking seal in my passport that my money bought. Our border crossings in Central America taught us that individual border posts are good at coming up with official looking receipts for fees at supposedly free crossings. But rather than protest I reminded myself that $2 was a lot less than the useless bus tickets we’d had to buy to get into Panama or the $150 the Americans had to pay.

Once we were all paid up and stamped in we were divided up into three groups – those doing a one day tour, those doing a two-day tour and the 6 of us who’d signed up for the full 3-days to Uyuni. Unfortunately for us 3-dayers, our jeep had yet to arrive so we huddled into the bus to protect ourselves from the bitterly cold wind that was blowing across the desert. The cold got to Adrian’s bladder and with nothing except the burnt out bus to hide behind he ran off to do his business. He returned quickly breaking the ice with the rest of our tour mates by providing a full report of his journey.

“Don’t go back there,” he warned the rest of us.

Apparently the burnt out bus was the local toilet for everyone crossing the border and was a minefield of excrement. It must have been bad because Adrian didn’t even ask for the camera so he could take a picture. Either that or he knew I would have denied his request. Before he could launch into more detail, the jeep arrived saving us from the cold as well. The jeep driver jumped out and began loading all of our bags up on the roof of the jeep. He did an amazing job of fitting it all up there and even more amazingly, the vehicle didn’t topple over under the weight. Now it was time to fit all of us in the vehicle. Adrian and I hopped into the back and let the skinny others share the middle and front seats. Our driver was just about to launch into his introduction when Adrian interrupted him to ask about breakfast and was distressed to hear that it wasn’t coming for a while. But at least it silenced him long enough so that we could all introduce ourselves and let the guide begin his tour.

Up in front was Kai, a young German guy on a three-month whirlwind round the world tour. In the middle was Tony, an older German guy on an extended vacation in Bolivia and next to him Bart and Anna a Dutch and French couple (respectively) on a 6-week vacation of South America. Our guide didn’t speak English and his name would become the subject of much debate amongst us over the next few days. Was it Ruben? I heard Brugen? I thought he said Robeto? Even Kai who was half-Spanish didn’t catch the name as he stepped in to act as translator for all of us. Instead we just avoided any situation which would require us to call the guide by his name.

Our first stop was the park entry office where we had to pay our entrance fee. Adrian asked if this was where we were having breakfast but Ru-bregen-erto just shook his head and with a small smile said no. Anna and Bart went to the take advantage of the washroom located in the office thinking it a better option than the bus at the border. But judging by their expressions when they came back, perhaps not too much better. With our entrance fees paid we piled back in the van and headed to our first site, Laguna Verde. Amidst the dusty desert, it was a perfect aqua colour that reminded me of Llanganuco in Peru. Our driver drove past the other tour vans and headed up to a ridge overlooking the lake so we could take it in. It was the perfect spot but not perfect enough for Adrian who once again asked if this is where we were having breakfast. And once again our guide shook his head no although this time there was no smile.

After we’d all had our fill of the view, we piled back into the jeep and drove to another small lake remarkable only because of a small flock of flamingos camped out nearby. Adrian was about to ask if this is where we were having breakfast but I stopped him. Of course this was where we were having breakfast. There was a small hostel just over a ridge with a good view of the lake and an empty dining room. We may have been in the middle of nowhere but breakfast was already an improvement over the typical bread and jam we’d been offered at other hostels. This place had cheese and it was real cheese not the weird feta-mozzarella cross we’d had for the last 7 months. Adrian was finally happy as were we since we wouldn’t have to listen to him ask when we were going to eat. Thanks to the leftover bread on another table we had plenty of food. Kai left us to scout out the bathrooms and accommodation and it wasn’t promising. We hoped that our luck would be better tonight. We paid one last visit to the flamingos before getting back into the jeep.

It was another hour until our next stop which Rubregenerto told us were called the Dali rocks. This was a bad name since we all conjured up images of rocks that looked like melting clocks or cities on giraffe legs and when we got there they looked like a bunch of boulders in the sand. I think the guide sensed our disappointment because he quickly moved on and promised us we’d love the next stop. We were headed to the hot springs although considering how cold it was outside I wasn’t sure how fun or how hot the springs could actually be. When we pulled up I was encouraged by the sight of 5 others already in the springs steam rising up from around them. However, that still didn’t solve the problem of the blustery cold wind that we’d have to fight before we got into the water. I was about to point out to Adrian that there was also no place to change into our bathing suits but when I turned around he was already in the midst of stripping down and jumping into his trunks in front of our group and the 20 others standing nearby. He jumped into the water and repeated ad nauseum “nice, nice, nice”. Well if he didn’t care neither did I. But I did care about exposing my bottom to everyone. So I wrapped a towel around me and somehow managed to change without flashing everyone then ran into the water before hypothermia set in. Kai joined us but the others passed. The water was indeed hot and super relaxing but with all the minerals I don’t think it was the best choice as a substitute shower. We soaked in the bath as long as we could mostly because the idea of getting out of the hot water and into the freezing cold was so unappealing. But eventually, our guide told us time was up. It was still freezing and the wind on wet skin meant certain wind chill frostbite. I sucked it up and quickly managed to get changed back into my dry clothes without exposing my bare ass to everyone else and without getting my dry clothes wet. Quite an achievement.

Just beyond the springs was another hut. This was our lunch stop. Inside it was filled to the rafters with folks from other tour groups. The room was just a dining room and the food was provided by the tour companies and there was a definite difference. The Japanese had a major spread while others were eating rice and not much else. Our tour group fell somewhere in the middle and considering the cost it was pretty good. The best part of the stop (after the bath in the hot springs) was courtesy of one of the older Japanese women. She pulled out a bag of origami peace cranes which she proceeded to hand out to us backpackers. She didn’t speak any English but understood everyone’s garbled version of Domo Origato (I stopped myself from adding Mr. Roboto, disappointed aren’t you?). It was such a simple gift but we all loved it and I wished there was a Canadian equivalent to break the ice as we traveled – Timbits? Hockey Pucks? Touques? Not quite the same. Although I wish I’d had a touque at that moment – it was freezing.

It was time to get back in the jeep and this time we all changed our seats which meant poor Tony was crammed next to Adrian in I in the middle. Oh well, at the very least we warmed up quickly. But it was a short cramped ride as not too far from the hot springs we pulled up to a field of smoke and boiling mud. Signs warned that this was a dangerous field of volcanoes (photo above) and I suppose it was although the volcanoes were only an inch or two across although constantly erupting. The steam-smoke was a noxious sulphur mix that made it hard to breath and hard to enjoy the warm so we headed to a windy spot to view the field. That required us to walk over suspiciously unstable parts of caked mud and I expected us to fall through into the boiling mixture just below the surface. Of course we didn’t and Adrian accused me of being as melodramatic as the warning signs. However, warning signs aren’t common in Bolivia so I figured they must be there for a pretty good reason. Too many boiled stews of tourists was my best guess. At this point the driver called us over to make a decision. We were headed towards the Laguna Colorado and afterwards we could go in one direction and stay in a refugio with no electricity or running water and tomorrow we’d see more lakes and the arbol de piedra or we could go in another direction and stay at a better place with lights and water (and a shower) and tomorrow see other rock formations. Faced with the prospect of roughing it we all voted for the nicer option. Although I was a bit torn because I wanted to see the rock tree that I’d seen in photos. However, the guide told us that we’d see lots of rocks like the arbol. So I felt better and I’m sure I’d feel even better after that shower.

Laguna Colorado was a giant pink lake covered in flamingos. But these weren’t ordinary flamingos they were super smart. Or at least it appeared that way. The closer we tried to get to them the further away they got without appearing to move at all. Somehow these birds could bend the laws of physics. We all tried to get close to them but nothing worked until the convoy of Japanese tourists pulled up at the opposite end of the lake causing the birds to motionlessly move right in front of us to get away from them. Good for us but bad for the Japanese tour group – perhaps they should have tried giving the flamingos some of those cranes.

The guide then told us it was time to go to our accommodation for the night. It was another hour of driving to Villa Mar – weirdly named since there was no sea anywhere nearby. But that wasn’t the only disappointment. Our “deluxe accommodation” was a six bed door and the showers were there but none of us could figure out how to get them to work. Not at all what we expected. This was the first time we were staying in a dorm on our trip so we warned the others about Adrian’s snoring. Oh well, nothing like a sleeping on top of each other to ensure our group would bond. Just behind the guesthouse a woman was washing clothes in the stream oblivious to the fact that it was freezing. Just beside her llamas grazed on the bit of grass growing on either side of the trickle of water. It was pretty but it was also too cold to explore so I hid back in the room trying to get some blood and feeling back into my fingertips. If the rest of the trip was like this I was in trouble - I only had that long sleeve polo shirt and a windbreaker and this was full fleece weather. The others headed into the village to explore (and look for a pub Bart said half-jokingly) while Adrian headed up to climb the rock cliff that circled the village. But everyone returned in time for dinner. Bart hadn’t found his pub but Adrian had found a store selling beer by candlelight so we created our own pub atmosphere over our soup and spaghetti. It was probably just the alcohol but for a brief moment I was actually warm so I left the others and crawled into bed fully clothed hoping to wake up with all my digits unfrozen.

(old) Beam us outta here Scotty.

Tonight we were off on the night bus to San Pedro de Atacama so it was time to put our affairs in order. Not because we feared for our life or anything so melodramatic but because San Pedro was a small town on the border with Bolivia and where we hoped to join a Salt Flat Tour back into Bolivia. That meant we might not have internet for quite a few days. The hotel here in Iquique supposedly had wifi but I had been unable to connect to it and their desktop in the lobby was so slow that after 20 minutes it had yet to load up the home page. I hoped that this was just the hotel connection and not a sign that the internet had taken the holiday off as well. Ivan and Catalina had told us that where they were staying was full of posh restaurants and hotels and we set off in that direction beach combing for a coffee shop with wifi.

We packed up all our gear and checked out of our room leaving all our bags except for my pack and computer in their storage room. Then it was time to walk down the beach towards posh Cavancha. Today the waves were huge and the water was full of surfers taking advantage of the swells. But they weren’t the only ones. The beach was absolutely heaving despite it being what we considered a bit too chilly to be sunbathing. The surf competition was still going on and with the big waves the experienced surfers were battling it out so we pulled up a rock to watch the action. Beside me Adrian continued to chant one, two, three, chum pretending to jump up on his invisible surfboard in some sort of imaginary competition with the pros. I didn’t ask him if he was winning but did tell him it was time to go when the backpack and computer got too heavy.

At the far end of Cavancha was a totally different world from downtown Iquique. Here it was nothing but those shiny condos and five-star hotels and restaurants that were way beyond our price range – or at least that’s what the linen table cloths and wine glasses said to us. But most of them looked closed anyway. There was no sign of a coffee shop with or without wifi. We considered heading downtown where we had seen a place with wifi but doubted that it would open today. So we kept walking all the way to Playa Brava. All though it was a wide beach it was empty because the waves here were deadly. Not even the surfers were brave enough for Brava. There wasn’t much in this area and we were starving and headed back to Cavancha to try and catch a bus into town. However, on our way back through the condos and hi-rises we took a different turn and discovered a bunch of restaurants that were open. One even advertised it had wifi so although it looked quite pricey we decided to give it a go. The prices were steep but we decided to just enjoy the ambience and the wifi and order anyway. I had my first Peruvian ceviche (albeit in Chile) and a salad while landlubber Adrian stuck with steak and potatoes. While we ate I used the wifi to upload some photos. It was a shot upload session since there was no plug and my weak battery quickly drained. There was more bad news when I used the little power I had left to look up some info on San Pedro. The hostel prices were ridiculous - $40 for a room with shared bath!?! I just hoped that we’d be able to find a tour out of town as soon as possible. We sipped our drinks as slowly as possible and just before dark we headed back to the hotel to get our bags and head to the bus station a few hours later.

When we bought our tickets the helpful clerk had spoken slowly and repeated everything so I could understood but I was still not 100% sure if I had understood it all. I was still puzzled by the fact that she had said the bus would stop in the middle of the night so we could get some sleep. That seemed weird and when we got on the bus I had trouble drifting off wondering if we were going to be woken up and forced off the bus to wait for a connection to San Pedro. When I finally decided just to sleep and figure it out when we got there, sleep was made difficult by the bus temperature. There were no blankets on board so Adrian and I alternated between sweating and freezing as the driver clumsily adjusted the heat throughout the trip. But we must have fallen asleep and indeed sometime in the middle of the night the bus did stop because when the sun came up, I woke up to discover that we were parked in the Calama bus company office with just Adrian, myself and a couple of other passengers left on the bus. The bus was locked up tight and so was the onboard bathroom. That was the most distressing since I now had to piss like a racehorse. It was also freezing now which did nothing to help my bladder issues. I thought I was saved when the driver opened the door and came onboard. I asked him to unlock the bathroom but he said no and directed me to the bus company office. I quickly ran off the bus only to discover the office just opening up and told by a clerk that the bathroom was across the street in the shipping office. It of course was closed for another hour. I set the world record in pee-pee dancing on the street waiting and hoping that some keen worker would turn up early for work. He didn’t but my bladder held until he showed up. Feeling 10000 times better I boarded the bus as the rest of the passengers filed on for the trip to San Pedro.

It was a 4-hour drive through the desert to the small dusty town of San Pedro. When the bus stopped and as we got off it felt like we’d traveled back to Bolivia already. We grabbed our bags and headed into town to search for a place to stay. The first place had a room for $60. And the next had a dorm that was going to cost us $20 each. Both were more than we wanted to be paying so we continued on to the HI where they at least had a room with shared bath for $40. The price wasn’t great and neither were the facilities but we were sick of walking and after a night on the bus just wanted to shower. However we were told we had to pay upfront and we didn’t have enough cash on us. So we set out once again through the small town in search of an ATM. The first machine we found only took Mastercards and our bank cards are Visa. We were directed to another machine on the other side of the thankfully small town but it was out of service. Now we had to find an internet café so that I could go online to look up our Mastercard PINs that I had stored in my email. But first we decided to stop for breakfast using the bit of cash we had. Breakfast was more expensive than we’ve paid so far and was mediocre like the rest of the town so far. But just next door was an internet café so I was able to grab our PINs while we waited for the food. Then it was back to the ATM which was now only giving out $100 at a time. I took this as a sign that our time in San Pedro should be as short as possible and after paying our hostel bill and showering in the lukewarm dribble they called a tap, Adrian and I went out to search for a tour that was leaving tomorrow.

San Pedro appeared to be a town that existed only for the tourist. The streets were pretty in that generic cookie-cutter sort of way and they were filled by alternating tour companies, cafes, and gift shops. It was like a Disney version of Spanish Colonial South America but at least it made it easy to do some comparison tour shopping. The guidebooks and fellow travelers warn that the tour companies in San Pedro were hit or miss and all somewhat mediocre. We tried one recommend by the Aussies we’d met back in Costa Rica. The rep there told us that the accommodations were basic; they only had dorms and there was no hot water (way to sell) and they cost more than we’d hoped to pay. So we walked down the street to another place that I’d seen reco’ed elsewhere. Their price was 10% less and they showed us pictures of their private rooms and promised hot water. But more importantly they took credit cards without adding a service charge. It was kind of a no-brainer and we booked with them to leave tomorrow. With our escape plotted we walked around the town but just saw more of the picture perfect white washed adobe buildings, souvenir markets, generic backpacker cafes and more pricey package tour restaurants. One of these had wifi so we decided to abuse their facilities. We ordered copious cups of coffee while I finished uploading the photos from the past week. The connection was rather slow and when the restaurant closed between lunch and dinner I thought they would kick us out. But they didn’t and four hours, and $20 worth of coffee later I got all the photos up.

We stopped to pick up snacks and water for the three day tour and then went to find a place where the locals ate for a cheap meal. Our search led us out of town to a not so pretty suburb. The homes were still adobe but were no longer painted and there were no more leafy trees lining the streets. It was amazing that this totally different village lay right next door to a tourist mecca. I thought for sure we’d find a place to eat but the streets were deserted and we saw nothing that looked open. You know in those Western movies when the stranger walks into town and all the locals close up pretending to have moved away hoping to avoid him? Well, that’s it what it felt like as we walked through this side of town. We were the outsiders looking for a meal (not a shoot out) and the locals were all locked up tight inside hoping we’d just go away. It was eerie and unnerving. I know the locals ate somewhere but we couldn’t find it. Instead we ate at the first place we came to back in San Pedro. But being on the edge of town, food was cheaper than what we’d seen elsewhere. It wasn’t the best but at least it cost less than our coffee. The best part came when we left the café. The sun was setting and thanks to some low-lying clouds it was the most unbelievable sunset ever. It was apocalyptic and I expected a space ship to appear out of the clouds (photo above) at any moment and blow up the church in the plaza. And when I looked down the street I wasn’t the only one that felt that way. Every other gringo stood motionless looking up at the sky. Before all of us zombies were beamed up, the sun dipped below the horizon breaking the spell. But I took it as a good sign that we were leaving tomorrow to be beamed up into the other world of the salt flats.