Caldera

Day 227 – Caldera, Chile

I’m grateful for my host in Vicuna to have sent me herr in Caldera rather than my original destination, Copiapo. It is nicer to be in a small seaside town than in a bigger, inland one.

When I arrived last night, I started planning in my phone my next leg. Than my operator explained that I was out of data, so, time to recharge. I went looking around, got in a weird conversation about UFOs with a shopkeeper with suspiciously red eyes (I wish I was making that up), and finally found an ice-cream shop that was selling phone recharges. 

And then I not only still not had internet access, but it was clearly telling me I had a credit of around 10,000 pesos (I recharged 6,000). So a member of the staff at the hostel kindly called customer service for me. Their solution didn’t work.

I waited for this morning: still not working. He called again, the first solution didn’t work… By the way, I learned that access to some social media (WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and so on) is free with a valid sim card!

So by the next call to customer service, we finally got the answer… Yes I have credit, and I have to use ut to “buy” some internet option! Such as 1GB for 30 days, or 7 days illimited night surfing, you see the idea.

So… I have so much credit I’m not sure what I’ll do with it!

But waiting for that to be settled, I spent a nice day at the seaside. It’s this strange weather where it’s too cold in the shade, too hot in the sun unless you are in the wind, in which it is so perfect that you don’t feel the sunburn coming up. So I moved quite a lot from patch to patch!

I have my night bus at 22:00; when buying the ticket, I was missing 1,000 pesos, so the lady rewrote 30,000 instead of 31,000 and sold it to me. So apparently prices are… not a fixed thing. It’s also the first time that the internet price is lower than the counter price.

But I had a nice comfortable seat. There wasn’t quite as much legroom as in the previous bus, but I managed. So the night was okay. I wished they had a better selection of movies though, not only was it gore (the kind of movies where a group of people are stranded where a few other people hunt them and kill them one by one in nicely bloody and awfull manner, leaving bloody, mangled corpses to be found), but they played it twice. Not exactly kid-friendly.

Now is the morning after. We arrived one hour late, not that I mind, one more hour of sleep.

I went to buy a bus ticket for San Pedro de Atacama (I’m in Calama, nothing to do with seafood), and since I had two hours to wait… I went for breakfast in a small hole in the wall, where I got a succulent sandwich with a freshly blended mango juice.

Since the witing room is empty, I must have missed a previous bus… No matter. I have time!

(I’m now at around 2,500m above sea level.)