Calama Sprint in between

The actual plan was to drop off the car at the Hertz city office today at 17:00 and then take the night bus around 23:00 for about 5 hours to the north to Iquique.

Somehow, I didn't like the whole thing, especially since the address and pictures of Hertz Chile, where the city office should be, had nothing to do with each other. So the night before, I decided to return the car earlier instead of driving around with my suitcase for no reason and reserved a room here in Calama, at least to be able to store my stuff.

In the morning, I went to Calama and indeed there was an address for Hertz, but I couldn't drop off the car there. But they could at least tell me where to get rid of the Hilux, which turned out to be the case. Took a taxi to the hotel and there I explained to them that I wanted to use the room as a love hotel, literally, since the night bus was supposed to continue at 23:00. The lady at the reception (who turned out to be married to a Chinese from Shanghai who has been living in Chile for 20 years) gave me the tip where I could ask at Turbus (one of the many bus companies) if I could exchange the ticket and leave earlier, and offered to store my suitcase (I hate luggage above all else and have never understood how anyone can carry even one gram too much, even the 14 kilos are actually too much, I'm slowly getting rid of ballast).

So I did, walked to Turbus and asked....puedes cambiar la bileta and indeed I got one of the last seats on the 4 p.m. bus, Asiente (Seat) 3 right in front with a clear view.....great, now I can skip the night walk to the and the morning walk from the bus station.

The people are so accommodating and helpful, no matter what you have, as long as you can communicate a little bit. I'm really impressed by that.

The journey itself was rather unspectacular, because apart from the desert, there was nothing to see, so today only one picture. This inconspicuous country road is the Ruta 5, part of the Pan-American Highway, which is probably the longest road in the world....