We have a week before we need to be in Bolivia for our WWOOFing post, so we decided to go back to Chile to explore the Atacama desert for a few days. There are three bus companies: Pullman Bus, Andesmar, and Gemini, that each run three trips to and from Atacama per week. The bus costs 1600 pesos ($42.11) per person no matter which company you go with. We took a 7am bus on Friday morning with Pullman Bus. The bus ride was uneventful, but our arrival in Chile was marked by some of the now familiar challenges of exploring a new place.
1. The Chileans are very serious about their customs process. Everyone stands in a line to exit Argentina, then stands in a line to enter Chile, and then gets their bags and stands in a third line to have them searched. We declared our Cafayate cheese and wild boar salami , worried they would be confiscated, but it seems it depends which customs official you get. When it came to the actual search, the customs official was much more concerned about fruits and vegetables and let the cheese and salami in.
2. Hostels and other business are hard to locate even if you have an address. Signs in San Pedro de Atacama are very expensive to deter large commercial enterprises from plastering the landscape with big billboards. Of course, this means none of the local businesses can identify themselves, so it took us a while to find our hostel. We only found it because someone inside heard we were looking for it and yelled to us through the window.
3. Relying on ATMs can be problematic. Like in El Calafate, Argentina, you need cash to pay for most things in Atacama, but there are only a few ATMs and they often run out of money. The hostel told us the ATMs usually have money on Fridays. The first ATM we tried processed the transaction but then reversed it without giving us any cash. Thinking we were bumping up against one of those transaction limits, we tried repeatedly to withdraw ever decreasing amounts of money until we gave up and went in search of another ATM. That machine didn’t give us cash either, but at least it was helpful enough to inform us there was something wrong with our card. Our bank had identified our repeated attempts as fraud. Since we needed cash to pay the hostel, we resorted to exchanging dollars, thankful we had brought plenty. The exchange fee (1,000 Chilean pesos = $1.52) was considerably less than the ATM fees would have been.
Having only just rehabilitated our budget two days ago, we knew five days in Atacama would put us over again. Everything in the desert is expensive! We figured accommodation, food, tours for two people each day, and entrance fees would easily put us over $100 per day, possibly quite far over, and we wouldn’t have a lot of flexibility. Instead our plan was to rent a Wicked camper van for four days, three nights and explore the desert on our own. The camper van costs $100 per day to rent, but it is transportation, bed and cooking facilities all in one. Food, gas, and entrance fees were still in addition, so we were definitely breaking the budget, but we could go anywhere we wanted. Best of all, we could sleep under the stars which are supposed to be incredible in the desert since there’s little to no light pollution.
So on Saturday morning, we went to the Wicked office to pick up our camper van and disappeared into the desert for the next few days.
Jess and Eric the explorers