Chañaral, Chile

We awoke at what we thought was an early hour, as the sun was just coming up, but in reality, it was already seven. Entering Chile meant another time change. We are now four hours ahead of home. Time changes don’t seem as weird when you fly somewhere, but when you drive, your days are dictated by the sun, so our sense of time has been progressively getting more skewed. We sat, taking in the sunrise, and enjoyed some hot chai. The chai felt good on the hands in cold high altitude air. We commented on just how quiet it was here; so quiet that you can hear ringing in your ears.

We had a few more hours of bumpy roads, and then the road progressively got better as we neared civilization. The final section of landscape before we came to a town looked like a moonscape. Nothing but grey ash and rocks for as far as the eye could see. Probably left over from the puffing volcano that was now in our rear view mirror.

As we entered the first large city of Calama, we were taken aback. People were dressed nicely? Signs marked all the roads and intersections? People drove like civilized beings? This little town could easily be in Arizona. We were amazed at how similar Chile is to America. A complete 180 from what we experienced in Bolivia (South America’s poorest country). After gassing up and getting some money out of the ATM, we headed out to the coast to catch the Panamerican highway south. While Chile is more expensive than Argentina, we figured we could clock some fast miles south on their good roads.

We drove the rest of the day, heading towards Parque Nacional Pan de Azucar (bread of sugar). We left the desert and went into the fog of the coast, and found a great campground right on the beach. We were once again amazed that we had the place completely to ourselves. We were treated to perfect temperatures, no bugs, and the sound of waves crashing for the night. Our first beach camping experience that was actually enjoyable…