Once in the desert, please!

After spending 2 days in La Serena, exploring the city and the Valle de Elqui (a small valley surrounded by mountain chains), we continued our journey northward.

For quite some time... A LONG time...
To be exact, 15 hours.

Well, as a night trip, that's okay and time passes faster than expected. So, after 15 hours, we arrived in the mining town of Calama.

The idea here was to visit the largest copper mine in the world.
Another little knowledge excursion:

Chile is extremely rich in natural resources. For example, 40% of the world's copper yields come from Chile.

So enough with geography and economics!

We had already requested a tour days before, but unfortunately, we didn't receive a response.

Well, and Calama wasn't the most beautiful city, to put it politely.

In plain English:

Calama was an ugly city!

Well, what do you do as a backpacker with a larger time budget?

Keep traveling!

Easily said, easily done. The bus ticket was purchased, and soon we were in San Pedro de Atacama, right in the middle of the driest desert in the world!