After spending a month in Bolivia, it's finally time to move on. When planning our trip back in 2012, I was so apprehensive about coming here and even tried convincing Bernie we should skip it. Everyone (who'd never been to Bolivia) kept warning us of the dangers, but I can say that never once in the whole time there did I ever feel physically scared.
Bolivia is such a great country and if you are thinking of traveling to South America, do not miss out on this gem. I really have left a bit of my heart here and will have to come back at some point to collect it!
Anyway, as I mentioned before, we had to go back the way we came from the tour to get to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. There are no direct buses, so once again we had to drive through the desert in a 4x4. Since they can't drive through the desert in the night, we had to stop in a village called Villa Mar for a few hours. The other people in the jeep were 2 fun girls from Belgium and a retired French couple. It was super fun chatting the first 4 hours till Villa Mar; the French couple used to own their own candy supply business and told us some great stories. Old people are so wise.
Once we reached Villa Mar, I went straight to bed - the lack of sleep, changing temperatures and altitudes caught up with me and I had a bad cold. I woke up directly at 5 am to continue the journey. We drove till the Bolivia - Chile border where we had to to through immigration at what I can only call a tiny shed. After the formalities, we had to change to a Chilean shuttle bus to drive us into Chile.
What a difference already! Roads are tarred, lots of road signs, buildings are painted! We went through Chilean immigration 15 minutes later and finally entered... Japan! Just kidding, but we were surrounded by scores of Japanese tourists!
After that, walked in absolute hot sun, still in layers, to our hotel Mamatierra. The ATMs in the city all didn't have money so we exchanged our leftover Bolivianos and bought crisps and I don't remember any more of the day because it was so hot (we were advised to drink 4 litres of water a day) and I was so tired and was finally going to shower after 5 days. Welcome to Chile!
Bolivia migration border check
Wearing 7 layers, was so cold
Welcome to Chile
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