We had a long and boring, yet kind of stressful, travel day today. First, we had to pack up all our stuff in Valparaiso. We loaded into our unscathed car. So many people warned us of cars getting their windows broken at night, so we had constant low-level anxiety about it until we drove away. Nick masterfully navigated the tiny hilly roads in the manual car, but it didn’t stop me from feeling nervous about it. I relaxed once we were on the highway.

We had a 1.5 hour drive back to Santiago. We returned the rental car and took the shuttle to the airport. We had plenty of time to kill so we had lunch at the airport. Nick and I always debate whether we should eat before or after we go through security. His thought is that you don’t know what you’ll get on the other side, so it’s best to eat before you go in. I’m anxious and like to get as close to the gate as possible, even if that means eating an overpriced and soggy airport sandwich. Today we had horrific hot dogs (if you can call them that) on the outside. Supposedly Chile is known for these. Mine was topped with chicken nuggets, guacamole, sweet barbecue sauce, and nachos. A stoner’s munchie dream but I was entirely too sober to enjoy it.

Millie got an ice cream cone for ICF. Not our healthiest lunch.

We got to our gate and were forced to pay to check three of our bags. I hate the gate agents who seem to get off on charging us for bags. They’re like the meter maids of the sky. Of course the overhead bin space was 80% empty.

The flight to the desert was about 2 hours. I had the shade down the whole time because the sun was intense, and when I opened it as we were landing, it looked like we were landing on Mars. We are in the driest place on earth.

While paying for our new rental car, they asked us where we’d be taking it. We explained that we’d be going into the city to get groceries and then heading to San Pedro. They warned us not to leave our bags in the car at the grocery store because it is common for thieves to break the windows to take them. Jeez!

Nick waited as a guard while Millie and I ran in to do supermarket sweep. We got all the basics. I made all sorts of foreigner mistakes like not weighing my fruit, but we figured it out and got on our way.

We had another 1.5 hour drive on this side of the trip, out to the small town of San Pedro. It was SO dark. We could see a million stars even though it was only 8pm.

Flat, empty nothing. Millie started to complain of feeling sick, which was strange because she’s normally fine on straight roads. We realized it might be the altitude. Even though everything feels flat, we’re about 8000ft above sea level.

We met our Airbnb host at a gas station and followed him along dirt roads to our little house. This was another situation of feeling like we might be brought to the location of our murders, but luckily the drive terminated at a beautiful little house in the middle of nowhere.

He spent a full hour explaining the area and the house, and so we didn’t start making dinner until 9:30. We were starving. I made sure to drink lots of water to help ward off altitude sickness. Millie didn’t get to bed until 10:30. We are here for 6 whole nights so we have plenty of time to acclimate tomorrow.