11: "To the north, to the desert: Part 3"

I got up at 8, showered, packed my bags, and walked to the terminal in Jujuy for my bus to Chile.

I saw some other travelers there. We’re easy to spot. I’d thought I was being unique, being way up north in Jujuy.

The Pullman bus came late. The driver opened the hold underneath. It was stuffed with all colors of hiking backpacks.

I got into the bus. It was almost all Europeans and North Americans. More together than you would ever see at any moment in Jujuy. My seat was next to an old Chilean man.

We passed through the Quebrada de Humuahuaca then drove up switchbacks to the top of the puna – the high plateau.

I finished Typee. My pen was open, the cap off, to mark notes on the pages.

I saw ink on my shirt, then on my jeans, then on the seat cover in front of me. I looked right. There was ink on the old man´s pants.

My pen was bleeding. I figured it was the altitude. I put the cap on and put it away, trying to be discreet. The old man’s pants were navy and the small stain would be hard to spot.

The shirt I stained was a button-up I’d gotten at the Dump and Run garage sale at the University of Illinois. I got it the last day of the sale, when everything’s free.

It´s an Abercrombie and Fitch girls´shirt. I´d never had a shirt that buttoned right-over-left before. I took it off a rack along with a Faded Glory plaid shirt. Faded Glory is a Wal-Mart brand.

That shirt got stained in Montreal, with the same kind of blue Pilot pen, when the pen was open and I tossed my shirt on my desk before I went to bed.

I had stained a pair of boxers a couple days earlier here in Salta, when I was writing notes in bed, in the top bunk, and fell asleep with the pen open.

We reached the salt flats. There were vans and cars and motorcycles stopped, people out looking at the white, bright fields, taking photos. There were mounds of salt piled-up, and heavy lifters and a building where they bag and prepare it for sale. There was a restaurant, there, too. We were at 10,000 feet.

On the far side of the flats we saw llamas. The old man nudged me, pointed out the window. When he saw I saw them, he nodded and winked.

We passed a hotel, a place with a few rooms, Direct TV on top, a big gas tank in the parking lot. New and big and clean SUVs and pick-ups were parked there.

We passed a makeshift tourist stall. A few women and children were sitting on the side of road, at the crotch of a sharp, high turn, with a sign and tables and blankets, selling knit clothes, indigenous souvenirs. There were a couple cars stopped, tourists in Gortex and sunglasses looking.

There were more llamas near there, alpacas, too. These were bigger than the others and had polychrome yarn tassels pierced into their ears and tied around their necks.

We were handed our customs declarations. We stopped at the border crossing, at 13,000 feet. There was a pay toilet there – 1.50 Argentine pesos, 200 Chilean pesos. The attendant gave you a fold of toilet paper after you paid.

There were two wooden kiosks up there, too, selling what kiosks sell: soda, crackers, chocolate, water, gum, potato chips, mints.

We got back in the bus and headed higher, to 14,000 feet and the end of the plains. It got grey outside, then began to snow. The land was red, just rocks and sand and hills and mountains. No trees, animals, or bushes. The old man was catching his breath.

The bus was warm and comfortable and steady. I took off my hoody, to cover my lap and the stains.

We passed volcanoes – sharp, even cones, covered with snow. The tallest is Licancabur, 18,000 feet. There´s also Sairecabur, Lascar and Putana.

We got back into the sunlight and away from the snow, heading down to the Atacaman valley.

We got to San Pedro de Atacama and were dropped off at a customs office. There´s no bus station there.

I met my friend Lucy, who’d gotten in a half-hour earlier from Calama, Chile.

We found a hostel and put down our bags and walked to the edge of town. You could look back across the plains to the volcanoes and to where the highway runs up into the puna. Where I’d just come from.

The Andean passes close at night. It got dark out and Lucy and I watched the last cars and trucks come down the highway.

At first, they’re so far away they look like stars. They´re just one bright light. They drift down, in a silent procession, one following the other. Like a constellation falling apart.

The light stays simple and bright and one, getting closer. Then the light splits in two. Then the car or the SUV or the semi pulls up to junction and brakes and is heavy and makes noise and turns left or right and goes on.

We walked back into town and got dinner. We went to a restaurant that was serving chili, which she said no one really eats in Chile.

I got the chili, and a pear smoothie. Lucy got lasagna. We sat next to a fireplace. It started to rain while we ate.