Way out of the desert

The Christmas morning. 6am. We woke up half an hour ago, packed everything and now we're sitting in the dark outside the hostel, waiting for our transfer to the airport. The early morning hours in the desert are always special. It's still cold. The sun is slowly rising over the mountains. There are still stars, the light is constantly changing and so is the view. Really beautiful. It's good that we've been awake so early on the previous tours.

6:12am. And when will we start to get nervous if the transfer works!? Helmut suggests 6:30am. Actually unnecessary, I think, everything has always worked out so far. We weren't picked up on "German time", which seems to be a popular phrase here when everyone should be on time for the bus, but it still worked out. 6:22am Helmut is already walking across the courtyard to see how and where he wakes up our hosts on the holiday, I'm googling the transfer company, a TransVip bus is coming... and driving past our house.

6:24am. A white van stops and asks for Helmut. So we load it up, pack in 2 French women and off we go.

7:45am. We're at the airport with plenty of time.

The Chileans have built many very straight roads through the desert here. On our tours, I have often wondered how they manage not to get tired while driving, and not just once have we had the feeling that we should ask the driver a question. Our driver is awake this morning, despite the holiday, driving very slowly and carefully, stopping at all stop signs, like 99% of all drivers here. Even if there is no one to be seen for miles. He gets nervous when a green Jeep (everyone drives Jeeps here) appears in front of us and starts making serpentine shapes out of the straight road. It seems like he wakes up every time he crosses the center line and the small bumpy markings. Fortunately, there isn't much traffic on the road, but every time there's oncoming traffic, we all hold our breath. The French women are already hoping that our pilot won't fly like that later, I take out my phone. But our driver explains that there is no police between San Pedro and Calama. He takes out his phone to drive frighteningly close to the Jeep and then take photos of the license plate. Only 30km to Calama. We count down the km on the sign. The Jeep overtakes others, stays in the lane for 10 seconds. Then it starts again. I'm already hoping that it just goes off to the right into the sand off the road. Then it actually pulls over to a side lane before Calama and doesn't pull back onto the road, but stops. Collective sigh of relief. Two people get out, we can still see that, then the car disappears from our field of vision.