the dry, dry earth

click here to see some photos of our journey to the desert. read about it below.

a week after pisco

It took two days on bus to get to the desert. Pisco was a desert as well, of course, but not in the common sense of the word. It fulfilled very few of my previous connotations of what it meant to be a "desert": solemn, solitary, and even perhaps spiritual. Pisco was rarely ever any of these. Our time spent there was incredible, but it wasn't the kind of desert I'd ever dreamed of visiting. San Pedro de Atacama, on the other hand, was exactly what I'd imagined. And yet it managed to surprise us with each further step that we took out onto its lunar landscape.

. . .

After leaving Pisco we took an overnight bus to the border crossing at Tacna, then plunged further south into northern Chile. Aside from the slightly more blossoming landscape, dotted with jagged rocky cliffs and coastal fauna, it nearly resembled the dry, barren dunes of Pisco and its neighbors. Upon crossing the border and rolling into nearby Calama, however, we began to notice we were in a different world altogether. It took a different shape. No longer were the delapidated roadside shacks and half-ruined coastal towns a common sight; their emptiness and sagging facade giving off an impression of a post-apocalyptic attempt at recreating civilzation. By comparison, Calama was a well-developed Western city. There were traffic lights and Western bars, well cared for cars and nice clothes. We watched in awe from our high, 2nd floor bus seats as more obvious signs of more widespread wealth approached us.

As we were waiting for our connecting (second) overnight bus to the small desert oasis of San Pedro de Atacama, we ventured into another new unknown: our fifth country and fourth border town added to the growing list in our minds and passports. We had a single mission aside from giving our legs a break from their seemingly permanent 90-degree bend that they'd become so accustomed to. We had to get our hands on our first real introduction to the country: a quality Chilean beer. Our noses brought us to a well-hidden corner store nestled back in the comforts of small, winding residential streets across from the busy bus terminal. "What's the best national beer you've got, sir?" The old man behind the counter turned to the fridge for a moment, stroking his chin before reaching inside the frosty glass to pull out two large bottles and set them down on the counter in front of us. "Well, I'd have to say Budweiser and Heineken are my two favorite Chilean beers." It felt both like a welcome sign that we were one step closer to home and yet disheartening that those might be the best "national" beers he had. We settled for a satisfactory Escudo and called it a night.

We awoke to the bright, hot rays of San Pedro de Atacama glaring at us from outside the bus window. 8 a.m. and already over 70 degrees. The beauty of that dry, red earth could only be matched by the reflective blue of the cloudless sky.

We rented bikes that day and set out into the scorching heat for the Valle de la Luna; the Moon Valley. By the time we finally got to the gates of the national park we felt like we'd been thoroughly beaten by the high midday sun. Soon after continuing into the park, however, all our fatigue quickly gave way to sentiments of complete and utter joy as we made our way along the winding desert road.

The desert was:

Drier than a bone been dead for too long.

Oven hot.

Big Open Sky,

All the way to the horizon.

So silent your own thoughts shout louder than your voice ever could,

Belly-out-all-the-way hollerin'.

We climbed through small salt caves that wound like capillaries through the mammoth rocks strewn clumsily across the landscape.

The sun scorched us and died our hair as white as the weightless desert rocks, at least in our minds.

We hurdled our eyes over ancient windswept plateaus and breathed in the deep oranges, reds, and purples of the rolling mountains.

We painted our faces with joy,

Carved smiles soul-deep with the desert sand.

And then we stuck out our thumbs. The following morning we packed up before dawn. The morning stars watched us as we stuffed our lives into bags and changed out of our desert smiles and into the hardened faces of road warriors.

Dogs followed us to the Aduana. We waited there until they opened shop, trying to charm truckers with a sign, "Salta!," it said. And we held up a canteen, hot with water for mate. We had no luck.

Four and a half hours later, with still no exit stamp on our passports, no ride out, and even less confidence, we dragged ourselves back to town. The dogs came back with us.

The next day we gave in and bought the most expensive bus ticket thus far in the journey. It felt like when you're 12 years old and fall out of a tree. It was hard to breath for a while.

Then, finally, in a flurry of long lines, border paperwork, and roadside Argentine empanadas, we crossed the mountains and started heading down: still going south.