Bye bye Bolivia; Hello Chile!

Bye bye Bolivia; Hello Chile!

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, South America

I got up this morning just before my alarm went off at 4:15am. I packed up my few things and was sitting at the breakfast table at 4:28am. We were meant to have breakfast at 4:30am and leave at 5am. The inconsiderate group I’m with decided not to wake up until 4:30am and then were not ready to go until 5:20am. I hate waiting for people who are just rude. If you have a valid excuse, then fair enough, but they are just lazy. And rude.

We went to see some geysers, which were pretty cool. There was a lot of steam, and bubbling mud, but there were also tons of people. We were only allowed to stay for about 20 minutes because of the toxic gasses coming out of the geysers, and this time the rest of the group actually listened. We had a short drive from there to some hot springs. I didn’t feel like swimming in the hot springs, and the rest of my group did, so I just got a ride straight to the border with another van. It’s a shame, but I didn’t even care to say goodbye to my group. Whatever, they probably didn’t even notice I was gone. Rude people.

It was about an hour ride to the border and there were only two other people in my big SUV. It was a beautiful ride, and the countryside here looked a bit like Mars. We got to the border, went through Bolivian immigration to leave the country, and then had to wait for about an hour for another van to fill up to bring people to the Chilean border immigration. That was another 45 minutes away. It was a strange system they had in Chile to go through immigration and customs, but we finally made it through in about a half hour, and then they drove us about two minutes into the town of San Pedro de Atacama. This is the first time I’ve ever left one country, and had to drive such a long distance to go to immigration in another country. It seems like a very strange way to do things.

San Pedro seems like a nice town, but very small. There are a lot of buildings made out of mud, with thatched roofs. It’s noticeably more expensive than Bolivia, but I’d been told to expect that. I went out for lunch, had a pizza, and it was big enough to have for dinner as well. My hostel is a nice enough place, just off the beaten track of the normal tourist areas in town. The wifi is on and off, because the owners are literally taking the router from their house, and moving it to the hostel when someone asks for internet. It’s a pretty crazy system. I don’t know why they don’t just get another router. I’ve decided to stay here tonight and then move to another hostel tomorrow. It looks like it has better facilities, so we’ll see.

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