Caldera

We started getting ready at 03:30 and everyone was walking around like zombies. At some point we noted that we hadn't seen the couple from Brazil yet this morning 🙈 We wanted to check on them but realized that we don't know which one was their room... So we started knocking on every door shouting their names which was either returned by an angry NO or silence. Shortly after 4 we had found them and were on our way to a Geysir field just 10 minutes later so it wasn't a big issue. the drive to the geysirs took 2 hours and on the way we saw the beautiful sunrise 🌄❤️ But also the car had trouble shifting the gears, so directly when we arrived the driver and two other drivers started working on it 🙈 The geysir field was beautiful in the morning sun colouring the area. But it was pretty cold up at 4960 metres... Luckily they had fixed the issue (or at least did something) so we could continue with another 20 minutes delay.

Next up we made a short stop for 10 minutes at hot springs right next to a laguna. As we didn't have a lot of time, we just put our feet into the warm water and enjoyed the views over the laguna with snow covered Andean mountains in the background. Then it was time for breakfast at the border crossing where our drivers did the paperwork for the National Park. After breakfast we walked to the first checkpoint where the paid fees were checked, then we were driven to the Bolivian border control. There we needed to pay a little fee and got the exit stamp. Afterwards we switched to the busses to go through the Chilean border control and get ultimately dropped off at the bus terminal back in San Pedro de Atacama 😌 The tour was great but also very exhausting. The people who we met were amazing and made this tour better 🙂

On the bus to Calama we were together with the Polish couple, Lukasz and Julia. They'll take a flight to Santiago tomorrow morning and we're trying to get on the next bus. Unfortunately this turned out to be more difficult than expected because all the busses we asked were completely full for today. The last one, Turbus, had luckily two spots left for 10pm. We booked it and then had 8 hours time to kill before our 20 hour bus ride 😁 First we went to the main street and walked along searching for a spot to get a late lunch. It ended up being a beer and burger place which was decent. Afterwards we searched for a supermarket to get some supplies for the bus drive. The first ones were small corner stores until we went to a Jumbo Supermarket. It was huge, super clean and had a huge variety, especially of German articles... From small town beers to chocolates but also baking stuff 🤨 We used a bit the free Wifi until we went back to the bus terminal to repack our luggage.

The bus was perfectly on time and we made ourselves comfortable in our home for the next 20 hours 😁Read more