What´s that smell?

After our volcano adventure, Dad and I returned to our lodgings, tired and very, very sweaty. But it was getting late, and we had some emails we needed to send... so, instead of showering, we just changed clothes quickly and headed into town before the internet cafes closed. A fateful decision.

After finishing with internet, we decided to stop and investigate bus schedules. Our next move was going to be to head up to Peru.... it turned out the perfect bus was leaving in roughly 45 minutes. We rushed back, packed, grabbed a takeout pizza for dinner, and made our bus. No time for a shower, though.

Check out a map of Chile. It´s really, really long. And we taking a bus all the way to Peru. Incidentally, the entire northern section of Chile is occupied by the Atacama Desert, the driest desert in the world. In this desert, there are placed where rainfall has never been recorded. Ever. After our bus ride, it´s not hard to imagine.

Our volcano trip was on a Tuesday. We caught our bus that evening, and rode the bus all night. In the morning we changed buses. We rode the same bus all day Wednesday, wednesday night, and most of Thursday. Then we got a taxi across the Chile-Peru border. Time for a break? Nope. We caught an 8-hour bus that pulled into Arequipa, Peru at midnight. Rather than calling it quits and getting a hostel, like any sane travelers would, we decided to catch the 1 AM bus for Colca Canyon, our real destination.

And so, at 6 AM on Friday, we arrived at the fabled Colca Canyon. We had been in a bus, taxi, or bus terminal for almost 60 hours. Most of our bus ride had been through a baking desert. Immediately prior to our bus ride, we had climbed a mountain. Where we had bathed ourselves in toxic fumes. The moral of the story? We really, really needed a shower. Really.