Transit Day

Day 218 – La Serena, Chile

I woke almost early today -I had a bus to attempt to catch. My hostel informed me that they couldn’t really call a taxi for me, people were rather using Uber here. Since I wasn’t feeling like installing the app, I decided to catch a taxi at my usual taxi stand. The one at the bottom of the hill.

That meant, of course, going down the steps with my backpack. My newest conclusion is that if I didn’t have a heavy cross-shoulder bag -with computer, sometimes a bottle of water, etc-, my backpack would be a far lighter burden.

But I found a taxi and arrived at the bus terminal. There I tried to get a ticket from the company I used to arrive in Valparaiso, but they all referred me to another -which I didn’t understand until a kind lady took me to the right counter.

So I got a ticket, more expensive than with the first company, and that wasn’t mentioning the arrival time. At least, since La Serena was the last station, I wasn’t really worried about not getting down at the right place. (I’m naive, sometimes, I know.)

Everything started well. I got used to buses in New Zealand with regular stops, where you can get down and stretch your legs, maybe buy a snack. Here, there are toilets onboard, so you don’t need to go down, and if you want to stretch your legs, just walk in the aisle.

As for buying snacks, well, vendors come up at some stops to sell some onboard before going back down.

And then at Ovalle, we got told to leave the bus to get onboard another! I’m guessing combining the passengers in only one bus made sense, but I didn’t like it… especially since I had to trust that my bag had been transferred! I tried to make sure that I could see it in the hold, but it was apparently “behind”. Not the reassurance I was looking for! Fortunately it arrived with me.

So I was at the bus station at 9:30 am this morning, got a bus at 12:00, arrived after 7:30 pm… a day in transit.