The Great Atacama

Leaving Valparaiso for Iquique, another Chilean coastal town much further north and pinned to the ocean by the Atacama Desert, means roughly 29 hours on a bus as you drive first south to Santiago, and then transfer to an overnight coach. I´ve heard nothing but praise for Chilean buses so far, but this trip was awful. For lunch we had a shrimp, shredded cabbage and mayonaise sandwich-- which I couldn´t finish-- and for dinner we had a chicken filet and mayonaise sandwich, although I could never find the chicken. Mayonaise and a hamburger bun; that about sums up Chilean cruisine for me.

I did read about 200 pages of Garcia Marquez´s Love in the Time of Cholera, although that, or the interminable journey, or both, made me sick for home. I wanted to play music again, and I wanted to ride my bike to Waffle House, or Cook Out, or El Rodeo, or all three. To make things worse, the Atacama Desert, which I had such high hopes for, kind of appears and disappears without warning. After hours of dust and boulders and trash along the side of the road, you finally reach hours of sand and small rocks and trash along the side of the road. Tire tracks run like scars through the landscape, never to be washed away by rains that never come. Only at sunset does the desert redeem itself; the foreground gives way to the brilliance of the suns slanted rays, and the hills stand silhouetted against the everchanging pastels of twilight. But it´s all over too soon, and then your eyes are forced to the tv playing a low quality vhs without sound or subtitles. The desert is a melancholy place.