Travelling to Chile

I decided to leave Bolivia early. The gas shortages had made traveling a bit of a nightmare, and honestly, I was just eager to check out Chile. The drive to the border ended up being one of the most incredible stretches of road I’d seen—no other part of my trip had packed in so many drastic landscape changes in such a short distance.

It started with pavement, but before long, the road turned to gravel, then mud. For miles, all I could see was endless, flat, muddy terrain. Then, almost out of nowhere, mountains started rising on the horizon some rugged and covered in rock, others smooth and bare. By the time I reached the border, I was surrounded by towering, snow-capped peaks. The rest of the drive was just as surreal, cutting through massive salt flats where I passed huge salt mining operations. Watching the workers and machines out there in that stark, white landscape was pretty wild.

Crossing the Andes, the scenery shifted again—this time into a vast, dry desert. But the real shock wasn’t just in the landscape it was in everything else. The moment I hit Chile, it felt like I’d entered a completely different world. The muddy, pothole-filled roads were gone, replaced by smooth asphalt and actual lane markings. The chaotic traffic had disappeared. And the city I rolled into? It was lit up like something straight out of North America. McDonald’s, Starbucks, Walmart all the big names I hadn’t seen in months. After spending so much time in more underdeveloped places, it was honestly a little surreal.

I figured I’d earned a real bed, so I treated myself to a hotel for the night and called it a day.Read more