The lunar-like landscape near San Pedro de Atacama, with its snow covered mountain peaks and conical volcanoes might well be described as a Chilean outpost. It took Elenka and I 16 hours to get here by bus. It’ll take us longer to get out. 

Three days in the San Pedro desert was enough. Our ratty little room with broken shower head, leaky faucet and an entranceway door that doesn’t close properly was just one of the reasons we wanted to leave. Costs for everything in San Pedro are sky high. Our plan was to catch the next bus to Salta, in Northern Argentina. We went to our hotel reception and asked if they could procure bus tickets for us. They shook their heads in the negative, as if this question had never been asked of them. We went to the hotel next door. Same question, same befuddlement. We headed for the tourist office in the town square where we were told we would have to go to the bus station in person, a twenty or so minute walk under the desert sun. OK, but could we pay with credit card or US cash? And would they have any idea what the bus tickets might cost? Pesos only, no idea of the cost, was their answer. We felt like we were on the moon. San Pedro is a small town which caters almost solely to tourism. And there’s really only one way in and out of the place. Hotel clerks, and especially tourist officials, should have this most basic information forged in their brains.

We didn’t want to load up with Chilean pesos that couldn’t be used in Argentina. But we didn’t want to make two trips to the bus station either. After deliberation we got a bunch of pesos from the ATM and off we went. There are three separate bus companies that do the San Pedro - Salta route. But each and every one of them was sold out for the next three days. Deep dark sighs. Then a light bulb went off above my head. We’d fly. There’s an airport just 100 kilometres to the north, in the city of Calama. We raced through the desert back to our ratty room and commenced googling. The light bulb went dark within moments. With two stops, one in far off Santiago, and the other in who-knows-where, the plane takes longer than the bus. And it’s $800 per head.

So, back to the desert bus station we trudged, where damned if we didn’t find that we could have paid our bus fares with Visa all along - stupid tourist office person. We have just enough pesos left for a few cans of refried beans, a couple of bottles of Carménère, and a rent-a-tent. At night the stars are striking in the darkness of the desert.  

On the good side, we met a young Austrian named Hieronymus, who teaches environmental history by day at the University of Salzburg, and conducts an orchestra by night. We dine with Hieronymus each evening in a little restaurant - which accepts Visa - just down the street, where he gives Elenka and I true stories of the past and a much needed education on the finer points of the symphony. It’s what travelling is all about. 

Whenever anyone, anywhere, asks me where I’m from I happily tell them and they automatically assume I’m French. A woman from Buffalo, which is very near the Canadian border, once asked me my name. She then repeated what she thought I’d said, ‘Jacques,’ and apologized for her poor French pronunciation.    

While bicycling in the Atacama Desert, Elenka and I stopped to watch people skiing down sand dunes (see photos). We were standing beside a woman who was going on and on about the skiers in an accent that was as Irish as Irish could be.

I said to her, “Top of the mornin’ to you. You must be from Ireland.”

“How did you know that?” she said.

“Just a guess.”

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“You tell me,” I said.

“United States?”

“No.”

“Australia?”

“No.”

 “New Zealand?”

“Nope.”

“England?”

“Nyet.”

This response completely threw her off. “Well I can’t really say, then?”

“Canada,” I said.

She looked at me as though I was pulling her chain, and said, “I never would have guessed that.”

                                                                        *

Afterward: Looking back from 2021– While the bus journeys didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, here are the distances, along with times it took to get from A to B to C.

Santiago to La Serena — 472 kilometres — 5 hours

La Serena to San Pedro de Atacama — 1,160 kilometres — 12.5 hours

San Pedro de Atacama to Salta — 469 kilometres — 3.5 hours