Calama

So Friday morning in San Pedro we packed our stuff and went to the bus station to travel to Calama. There we were gonna stay 1 night before early morning flights would take us to our first destination in Patagonia, Coyhaique, with a short stopover in Santiago. The bus was gonna take about 2 hours, turned out to be very warm and a nightmare for Machiel. Not completely fit yet, he suffered from blocked Eustachian tubes which messed up his pressures and completely blocked his hearing.

Arriving in Calama, the bus we were in hit a bunch of electricity lines that were hanging across the streets because the roof windows were opened. A bus employee quickly closed them and we drove on. That happened to be the street however where our next line bus would drive through that would take us to our stay for the night, and when we arrived there on foot we saw the chaos it had caused. Most importantly, it appeared no busses were gonna stop at that busstop anymore. Thankfully a taxi wasn't much more expensive and we arrived at our stay.

While Machiel was trying to get his hearing back and battle his nose cold, a stressful discussion started about if he could fly, especially 2 flights in a row, what else we could do with our booked flights, what our insurance situation was, etc. After calling our insurances and precautionarily reserving a taxi, we decided to try and sleep, wake up in the middle of the night and see how Machiel was doing. Since that appeared to be worse instead of better, we had to conclude to reschedule our flights. We then visited a clinic Saturday morning (the owner of the apartment very kindly drove us) where after a speedy check-up Machiel got an injection and subscribed more medicine than he had seen in years.

Since then we're trying to recover as good as possible, enjoying the slightly better climate of Calama versus San Pedro, the friendly hosts, and better nights of sleep. Our flights are now scheduled for Tuesday morning.Read more