19th December 2024

Another alarm waking us, another travel day. 

We ate breakfast, packed and headed towards the airport glad to be moving away from the city. On the plane, settled into our seats, safety briefing complete and the plane moving on out towards the runway it surprised us to hear that we had to turn back to the airport due to issues with the air con.

We sat on the plane for about an hour docked while the engineers assessed the situation only to then disembark, informed that our new flight time was 3:30pm. LATAM did provide us with food vouchers where we could spend about £17 each in the airport minimart. 

We loaded up with armfuls of muffins, crisps, an array of chocolates, sweets and biscuits courtesy of LATAM. We ate the lunch we had made with breakfast leftovers and passed the time working out how to get to the hostel now that we would miss the last bus to San Pedro de Atacama. We boarded again, settled into the same seats as before, but this time, successfully took off. 

A few hours later we arrived in Calama and waited another hour for a shuttle bus. The first hour of the drive was uneventful, straight roads through dusty unoccupied land. The last half an hour though became increasingly interesting. A mountain range grew bigger with a beautifully symmetrical triangular volcano as the focus point. The sun then began to set and the dust ridden valleys glowed a burnt orange colour.

We pulled up to the hostel, the sun now on the horizon holding the last of its light as a strong red line, the rest of the sky a dark indigo. Too tired to go out for dinner, we feasted on LATAM funded snacks before crashing, glad that the next couple of days would involve no travel!