1141 At El Sol in Toconao nr Caracoles. Cheap place ate at on day of sandboarding said they were open then said they had no cook til 1230. Hope this is OK but wanted to eat and in a rush. Bus at 1300 and feels a bit of a rush even though it's probably fine.
Just got myself a menu, they do bife a lo pobre for CLP4k. Gonna go for that and sod it.
1144 Staff milling around but won't seem to come take my order. OK, just ordered. Yes unhealthy but portion probably small here and I certainly don't have time to faff. It does come with rice here.
No diet coke here either.
1255 On bus. Hot and sweaty, though there seems to be some kind of air conditioning so should improve.
Did briefly try shoving my main bag under seat but it wasn't going easily so put it in hold. Not a massive deal but thought should try after earlier ramblings.
OK, turns out I am in wrong seat. There are people sat in my seat and I ended up here without realising it. Now some woman caused a fuss and appears to have swapped seats with the guy on my left but I'm still here. Fuck knows.
Bife a lo pobre not great; OK but not great.
Was tempted to buy an ice cream or lolly at the conveniently placed shop at Turbus bus teminal (hidden round the back of ticket office) but figured I'd hold out. Quite low on cash and hope to withdraw some at terminal at Calama, also might as well enjoy a cold snack/drink at leisure there.
Will waffle about last night later.
Oh, limbs a bit stiff yday (eg hurt to reach arms behind my back) after sandboarding day before and still still today. Legs feel a bit weak. Not done much walking last few days but in a way be good to spend a day sat on my arse on the bus. Hopefully will get a bit of walking in in Iquique.
1336 Oh, food was CLP6k all in. I paid with 10k (as soon as I got food, to avoid delays), they gave me 4.5k back and I left 500 on table as tip. Two minutes later they hand me a little receipt for *5k*. Seems a bit of a con, though it's only 500 I suppose.
1440 At terminal in Calama. The 'main' one where I arrive what, a week ago. CLP300 a piss - hope not to need it. One kiosk selling 580ml bottles of diet coke for CLP800 and no large bottles except full-fat Coke, Fanta and Sprite (not even large bottles of water). Bought two diet coke.
Before that went to Pullman Bus window and showed bored looking woman my ticket and asked if it went from this terminal. She said "Pullman Bus". I thought I'd got the wrong company, stepped back and saw it was a Pullman Bus window. She then tapped at a sticker showing pictures of different buses on the window. I said thanks and fucked off none the wiser. Obviously she thinks I'm a bus spotter just desperate to know what the bus will look like up front.
Disturbingly only seem to be Tur Bus buses here (I arrived on one) but the woman at Pullman Bus in San Pedro said it was the same terminal and after all Pullman Bus do have sales windows here.
Withdrew wodge of cash and exposed hidden belt in process. Can't hide it again properly without getting some privacy and I'm not paying for that. Also dropped a wodge of notes on floor while fumbling. Think I got them all. At least card worked.
I guess this isn't quite as long a journey as it might appear with this break here. Under 6h on the bus to Iquique from here if memory serves.
Jingle Bells (in Spanish) is playing FWIW.
1453 Time dragging.
1454 Oh, there is an Atacama Vip bus here now which does at least further assuage my doubts about whether my bus does go from here.
1457 Muscles in leg hurting when I lift it to put through strap of daypack on floor (so I don't forget it when I go). Odd it's worse second day after.
1458 Bus here now! Dunno if I can or should get on but will watch what happens. Looks like Iquique is final destination, which is good.
1522 On bus. Lucked out a little as my seat (on top deck) is the first one behind the stairs, so I don't have any seats in front of me.
Been wobbling mentally between 'why the fuck am I here (in Chile, not *here)' and 'why not?' a bit lately. Both during last hour or two and a bit last night. Feeling a bit down at times, but then better at others. To be honest might be nice to have got out of San Pedro; half the tourists there seem to be about 22 and while in a way I can see what the Rough Guide says about being a nice place to 'kick back', I think I also find it a bit too intensely touristy. I hope Iquique is going to be more like La Serena or Calama, in the sense it doesn't seem to be just about tourism.
Ever since the first attempt to book sandboarding, been paying odd attention to people's shoes. ;-) Most of the SYTs in San Pedro wear sandals (and shorts; I must admit in some sense it's quite a nice show ;-) ) but I noticed one with a big backpack at the terminal had a fairly serious looking pair of shoes dangling from it.
Have also noticed, having flipped from super heavyweight last year (tho mostly books and stuff, I think, adding to the real bulk/weight) with a suitcase to one smallish bag this year, just how much stuff a lot of these SYTs seem to be carrying. (And yes, I'm only here for three weeks, but I don't think it would be different if I was here for six months. Once you can't carry enough clothes to avoid the need for laundry, I guess it makes little extra difference how long you're away.) Some of those backpacks are frickin' huge. I guess most of them are probably carrying sleeping bags and the like, maybe even tents. I assume it's virtually de-rigeur to do the Inca Trail, though if I ever do it I'd hope you can get most such equipment thrown in with a tour. (On the other hand, can you rent a sleeping bag? On the third hand, why not if you can 'rent' bedsheets in a ho(s)tel?)
Due to not getting any laundry done (shared bathroom and/or conserving water, and didn't want to go to a laundry) in San Pedro I am a bit stuffed for tops. I may sneakily hand wash a T-shirt at the hostel tonight in the shared bathroom and hope it dries by morning. I will then probably take my jeans and most of my other tops to a laundry tomorrow morning, if I can find one. I will be in Iquique three nights so should have plenty of time to pick them up even if there's a delay. The onebag.com advice to do your own every other night is fine if you have a private bathroom, I guess.
I don't really think the laundry issue can be solved by carrying loads more clothes. However, I brought two pairs of trousers and one pair of jeans and still haven't worn one pair of trousers. Maybe I'm just disgusting but trousers seem much more rewearable than tops. I do think it might have been better to bring an extra top, even if just a T-shirt - the extra weight would be negligible and it would give a bigger buffer between needing to wash clothes. I think on this trip at least the second pair of trousers could have been disposed of. However, on a long trip it might be worth having them, simply because I can wear off-the-peg tops but (though it might be better over here) I can't always wear off the peg trousers (though now I think about it I usually can, it's just when they don't do a short variant I need them turning up.)
Of course if you have too many clothes you can't wash them all in the sink in one go, but I could see value in washing more often than you need but with the extras there for if there's a sustained period when you can't wash anything.
1551 Sat next to slightly fat woman. No joy without alloy. Not massive problem, I'm probably imagining I am a little short of space to my right really.
Guy coming round taking names etc (as usual I showed him my credit-card size passport copy) and for the first time this trip, a contact number (presumably in case the bus crashes).
Every hostel and bus has taken the credit card copy except the hotel in Calama, which insisted on seeing my entry visa document thing (and so got the passport at the same time, as I keep the former inside the latter).
1624 Quite impressive view out front of the road just stretching into distance. Think I sort of managed to get a photo of it. "Unknown" is showing (in Spanish with Spanish subtitles) but not so loudly it's annoying. Mainly trying not to start watching it 'properly'.
Oh, lying in bed this morning still feeling a bit tired, I actually suddenly found myself thinking "I wonder if they got the FX rate subscription stuff for new position analytics sorted". (I think it was subscribing to the wrong Solace cloud, but I wasn't sure why.) Was tempted to e-mail Patrick and ask, but decided against it - I can't help, it's not a big deal and do I really want to know what's going on that badly? Especially when it might all be crap now but fine when I get back.
Let me start to wafle about last night, which I am curiously reluctant to do. Don't think it's last night as such, maybe I am just a bit tired or run down and perhaps just feeling a touch lonely (not at all sure about that). Anyways.
We got the bus out to this site with a little hut and maybe 10 telescopes set up. Met there by a very nice Canadian chap who pointed stuff out with a laser pointer. Was amazing how bright the moon was; as I already said I was lucky to get in on the last night before the moon caused them to stop, but it would be good to do a similar thing again nearer new moon. The sky was still quite impressive but I do think the moon spoiled it somewhat.
During this talk the guy said he had to pop off and some French guy (who I believe owns the place) took over for a bit. Turned out the guy felt something on his arm and was worried it was a corner spider. Yay. Lots of shuffling of feet on my part and lots of other people from then on. Turned out it was just a loose thread in his jacket. He did say that the spiders weren't wandering around on the ground, it was because he'd left his jacket on the floor earlier that he was worried. He did say something about how you could lose an arm from the bite.
Apart from that distracting me a bit (no-one saw, felt or publically imagined they saw or felt anything, by the way) and the moon making things a bit crap, that bit was quite cool.
He then took us over to the telescopes which were set to point to various things; he talked us through them then we wandered around looking through them. This was a little bit underwhelming to be honest; yes I know I have been spoiled with top notch professional photos etc, and it was still sort of cool, but have to be honest. I was wearing contacts but it still seemed to require hovering my head near but not touching the eyepiece to see stuff properly. The view of the moon was quite cool, as was Jupiter (you could just make out the bands) and three of the Galilean moons. There was a view of a globular cluster which was sort of cool, the tarantula nebula which wasn't amazing, Betelgeuse (yes, it was redder than with naked eye but still) and a couple of others which may come back to me.
We then queued up and the guy took photos of the moon with our cameras through another telescope. Will upload them, they are quite cool. He actually guessed approximately the right model number of my camera (as he said after, he handles thousands) and said there is a hack available to make it take RAW images, which might be worth investigating when I'm back home.
We then went into the hut for hot chocolate and a moderately entertaining Q&A session before getting the bus back.
We went miles out of our way to drop people off at hostels in the middle of fucking nowhere. We actually drove past the hostel I was at the first two nights almost as soon as we got back to town, before all the detours. No big deal though.
Oh, I said last night about those dogs going out when I opened the street door. No one said anything this morning (though I tried to hand my keys back to a cleaner, who didn't understand my Spanish - I do actually wonder if she was English-speaking in hindsight, she looked a bit of an SYT doing a temporary job - and then successfully to the youngish bloke who took my reservation, so I didn't see the owner.)
Would be cool to go do that astronomical tour or similar another time with no moon. The spider issue worries me slightly, even if they apparently don't wander around on the ground. (I could half imagine him saying that just to stop people worrying. Also half wonder if he really did think there could be one on his arm and didn't want to take the chance or it was a set piece, either to put us on guard or add a bit of excitement. Gut feeling is it was genuine.) Half wished they'd mentioned spiders at booking time, but maybe I wouldn't have gone if they had.
1649 Just passed a sign. 293km to go.
1650 Just passed another. 330km to go. Maybe I misread one. Not important, just a bit bored and slightly tired.
1808 Think I did drift off a bit earlier. Yawning a bit now. Not entirely sure why. Another film on now, don't know what it's called though.
1841 154km to go. If we really don't get in til gone 9 it must be mountainous later; according to the LED display at the front, we're doing about 100km/h when it's flat and more like 30 where it's mountainous.
Surprising number of people seem to be sleeping on the bus.
1916 95km to go.
1922 Wondering if we stop off somewhere else first.
Even if we do get in, as I assume we will, 2120ish, wondering if I should pop out and see if there's a half-decent bar nearby. On the one hand the idea of a quiet night sort of appeals, on the other hand it will be just a bit awkwardly early to go to bed and I don't exactly want to waste the night. I might hope to be checked in by 2200. Wouldn't be looking at anything major, just a quiet beer and maybe get a small initial taste of the local nightlife.
We'll see, I guess.
1927 Guy is collecting rubbish. He has done that a little ad-hocly before but this seems more systematic. Maybe we are nearly there.
Dunno why I'm getting so 'excited' over exact time of arrival. Though I suppose if we did somehow get in early it might be twilight rather than dark when I'm needing to get from the bus terminal to the hostel. Definitely plan on getting a taxi if at all possible.
1931 73km. This is fascinating, isn't it?
1948 Stopped in some small place I've forgotten the name of (Pozos something I think). Couple of itinerant vendors. One selling chicken mayo sandwiches. Oh well, at least she was up front. Not exactly starving but perhaps oddly am a little hungry.
1951 51km
1954 Dropping a few guys off at some bus stop at side of the road in the middle of nowhere.
Bum hurts from sitting, back hurts. Oh well.
2019 Just finished showing 'Inception'. Sort of 10% watched it. Looked kind of interesting.
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