After being dropped off in this sandy town, we headed to the center. I immediately noticed a difference. People here were much freer than in the other parts of South America I had seen. They wore shorter and tighter clothes, they had tattoos, and seemed generally laid back. I got beach town vibes even though we were in a desert, not near the ocean. We stopped by a bike stop to ask directions to the bus station. Following the man's directions, we found the station easily, and it wasn't a far walk from the center. However, the heat was a force to be reckoned with. We were lucky to find a bus with seats that was leaving at 9pm that night and allowing us to arrive at the Chilean/Peruvian border early the following morning.
After purchasing our tickets, we headed back to the center to get some food. It's a touristy area, so there were plenty of options. We settled on a spot and followed it up with some ice cream and souvenir shopping. The town was very small and within a couple of hours it felt as though we'd seen it all. I'm glad we didn't have to spend the night here.
At the ice cream parlor, we made friends with the employee who was working in Chile because of a lack of jobs in her home country, Bolivia. She was very kind and allowed us to leave our heavy bags (over a week worth of all our things in one backpack each!) behind the counter and explore a little. It was interesting to talk with her about her experiences and longing for home. I also found it interesting that the music she had playing from her iPod consisted of many English songs, most of which were by Selena Gomez. She spoke of a desire to learn English, but thought it was very hard. Meeting her was a lovely surprise in our few hours visiting San Pedro de Atacama.
After a long few hours exploring in the desert heat, we headed back to the bus station. There, we boarded our bus and headed to the border to continue the next leg of our journey. There were some scary aspects of the bus and some difficulty getting from border town to border town, and I will detail them all in the "How to go through Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and back in only 1 week: My Travel Experience" post!
Thanks for reading! Please share and stay tuned for next week's post!
What's Next
This post covers just a portion of my journey. I have so much more to share! Stayed tuned and subscribe for notifications about my upcoming blog posts.
I'll be talking about...............
-My Mollendo Beach Town Day Trip
-Semana Santa in South America
-Colca Canyon and its Condors
-The City of Arequipa
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