However, hitching wasn't an option from Uyuni to Chile. After a whole day's frustration we realised we would have to get the bus. We then learned there would not be a bus for two more days. Instead we went to Argentina.* We crossed over at Villazòn and saw our first real signpost for Ushuaia, a mere 5,700km. Of course we wouldn't be taking such an easy route as that.
Our first day was one of great rides and beautiful views, both whilst driving
and at hitching spots
The road that ran into Chile was a major one for trucks coming to/from Paraguay and Brazil and the tax-free zone in Northern Chile. This was good news for us (though bad news for Paraguay, it doesn't produce anything and hasn't since 1870) and we coasted easily through the mountains, as marching armies of cacti surrounded the road, giving the impression of having frozen, arms raised, just as you looked at them, like a huge game of What's The Time Mr Wolf.
Our first night in Argentina was spent camping and symbolically drinking Argentine wine. It is hot in the daytime up in the Altiplano and the altitude puts you at real risk of sunburn, but once the sun goes down it gets cold. We got a great ride through the Argentine/Chilean border, which was a very stupid border indeed and we kicked our heels there for several hours. We passed straight through the tourist hotspot of San Pedro de Atacama and were in Antofagasta by nightfall, having gone from over 4,500m above sea level to the coast in one day.
Apart from San Pedro, the north of Chile is functional mining country. It feels like being back in Canada. The same pick ups, the same boots on the men standing around (doing that manly rocking about on their heels discussing large lumps of metal thing), the same desolate landscapes peppered with towns full of nothing but grids of houses, small shops and the the odd grimey strip bar. With the exception that here in Chile towns that used to serve the same function for nitrate stand empty, ruined and half swallowed by the desert, a warning of what happens when the resources run out.
There is not much to do in Antofagasta. It is the most expensive city in Chile but without much to visit to justify that unless you have a very highly paid job in a nearby mine. We did meet another traveler though and together found a cluster of other hitch hikers, casual workers and hippies camping on one of the beaches. As it took us a while to get going in the morning we ended up spending a full day there, making and selling our little flowers and drinking Chilean wine (well, it's even more famous than Argentine after all). We soon adopted a small crowd of sixth formers who we made late for school exchanging Chilean recommendations of music and film (look up Los Bunkers for some sixties inspired Chilean rock that we liked) for teaching them English swear words and how to make the flowers. After a night on the beach,
the next day, Friday, it was definitely time to get going again. The hitching continues easy and friendly here and we were surprised to find ourselves in a truck going all the way across the desert. Unlike the glimmering salt flats or the shifting golden sands of the Sahara, the Atacama desert was brown. That made the effect all the more uncanny as it looked like normal dirt and hills from back home, just dirt and hills on which not a single moss or insect lived for hundres of miles. We love deserts. We arrived in La Serena in the early hours of Saturday and found our first couchsurf in weeks. We have fallen on our feet with an incredibly friendly and welcoming family who are looking after us with showers, beds, good food and more wine, and letting us play with their pack of hounds.
Today we visited a museum of archaeology and saw some of the Rapa Nui (Easter Island) heads and a lot more about precolombian Chilean cultures. La Serena is pretty sleepy on a Sunday so we will be chilling out for a while before we get going again tomorrow.
Our first night in Argentina was spent camping and symbolically drinking Argentine wine. It is hot in the daytime up in the Altiplano and the altitude puts you at real risk of sunburn, but once the sun goes down it gets cold. We got a great ride through the Argentine/Chilean border, which was a very stupid border indeed and we kicked our heels there for several hours. We passed straight through the tourist hotspot of San Pedro de Atacama and were in Antofagasta by nightfall, having gone from over 4,500m above sea level to the coast in one day.
Apart from San Pedro, the north of Chile is functional mining country. It feels like being back in Canada. The same pick ups, the same boots on the men standing around (doing that manly rocking about on their heels discussing large lumps of metal thing), the same desolate landscapes peppered with towns full of nothing but grids of houses, small shops and the the odd grimey strip bar. With the exception that here in Chile towns that used to serve the same function for nitrate stand empty, ruined and half swallowed by the desert, a warning of what happens when the resources run out.
There is not much to do in Antofagasta. It is the most expensive city in Chile but without much to visit to justify that unless you have a very highly paid job in a nearby mine. We did meet another traveler though and together found a cluster of other hitch hikers, casual workers and hippies camping on one of the beaches. As it took us a while to get going in the morning we ended up spending a full day there, making and selling our little flowers and drinking Chilean wine (well, it's even more famous than Argentine after all). We soon adopted a small crowd of sixth formers who we made late for school exchanging Chilean recommendations of music and film (look up Los Bunkers for some sixties inspired Chilean rock that we liked) for teaching them English swear words and how to make the flowers. After a night on the beach,
the next day, Friday, it was definitely time to get going again. The hitching continues easy and friendly here and we were surprised to find ourselves in a truck going all the way across the desert. Unlike the glimmering salt flats or the shifting golden sands of the Sahara, the Atacama desert was brown. That made the effect all the more uncanny as it looked like normal dirt and hills from back home, just dirt and hills on which not a single moss or insect lived for hundres of miles. We love deserts. We arrived in La Serena in the early hours of Saturday and found our first couchsurf in weeks. We have fallen on our feet with an incredibly friendly and welcoming family who are looking after us with showers, beds, good food and more wine, and letting us play with their pack of hounds.
Today we visited a museum of archaeology and saw some of the Rapa Nui (Easter Island) heads and a lot more about precolombian Chilean cultures. La Serena is pretty sleepy on a Sunday so we will be chilling out for a while before we get going again tomorrow.
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*An alternative title for this post was "We've come to Argentina by mistake, are you the farmer?" but this was limited to those Withnail fans who are laughing already.
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