Day 24 – Thursday, February 19, 2026
This turned out to be somewhat of a weird day.
The tour to the mine started only at 11 am, so I rolled into town after breakfast. The previous day I failed to discover that there is a pretty central square with a nice church. A group of youngsters were rehearsing for Bolivian folk dance — why Bolivia, that remains a mystery. I also met beautiful Pocahontas.
A pretty church
Youngsters performing Bolivian dance
Beautiful Pocahontas
A minor detail — I had bought a large plastic bottle of fine mineral water the previous day — and I cooled it the entire night in a fridge. I accidentally dropped it, it rolled away. Then I heard a large bang from under the tires of a car. You guessed — that was my precious cold water. Oh well.
The explosion must have startled this dog
The tour. Of the mine. What shall I say. It had way more smoke than fire. Loooong wait times at each station and there were quite a few of them. Selfie culture is rampant and by the time each member of each family found the appropriate angle to be photographed in every possible combination... you know what I mean.
We started an hour later than planned. The first photo opp, supposed to be 5 minutes, turned out to be 25. Then came the ghost town that had been abandoned some 20 years ago. I have no idea what we were doing there for roughly an hour (selfie, selfie, selfie). You can find a lot more forsaken and forgotten industrial zones in many places in Hungary or elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
Not too interesting ghost town
The one and only highlight was the actual open pit — it is 4 km long, 3 km wide and 1 km deep; so if my failing math knowledge is correct, humans have dug away some 12 cubic kilometers. Massive — all in the search for copper.
This was pretty impressive — 12 km³ dug out
Look how small that otherwise large truck looks
...and just take a peek at this huge piece of equipment
The tour was supposed to end at 14:30; it was an hour later by the time we got back. Considering the time I had spent the previous day getting admission and using the major part of the day for one — granted, impressive — view, it was not really worth it.
I considered my options. Yes, I do want to visit San Pedro de Atacama and its surroundings — meaning backtracking some 100 km. I could bike there, try hitchhiking, take a bus or rent a car. Let us see what happened next. Spoiler alert — nearly all of these.
I decided to bike the 100 km — or at least do as much as I can. I knew I would have to sleep somewhere in the desert — been there, done that, so no biggie.
In Calama, I filled up my supplies to the brink, was carrying plenty of water and food and set off around 4 pm. Outside town, I crossed the Loa River, which is the source for oasis. Yes, even the Atacama Desert has its own river.
The desert has its own river
Quite a surprise came: I had massive tailwind — it was pushing me up like crazy. One mile followed the next, while the altitude kept increasing steadily. By around 6 pm, a quarter of the distance was behind me. Heck, maybe I'll just ride through the evening? There would be a strong incline ahead, but then a huge downhill section would come.
There was a windpark and I thought of Trump’s recent remark that wind energy is for stupid people. He for sure would know.
Large wind park
The weather gods were not with me. While outside Calama I had pleasant sunshine, I saw massive signs of trouble in front of me. What was raging ahead was a regular thunderstorm — with lightning, thunderbolt — and apparently even rainfall. What, in the driest area of the world?
First, the road veered (once it did, the rest was straight) away from the storm. Hey, thunderstorm, I tricked you out! Wrong. There were more and more lightning bolts ahead. I deemed it unsafe to continue riding — and this was a good decision, as we shall see.
It was time to turn around
It was time to switch to hitchhiking. I was fine whichever way I would be picked up — either heading to San Pedro or heading back to Calama.
Ten minutes later, a van stopped heading back to Calama. It was a cool guy; he had lived in Florida for 15 years and had a lady friend from Hungary, called Niki. He raved about goulash and csirkepaprikás. Small world, eh?
He was driving to the airport, where I knew (from Annette, the German lady who had picked me up at the observatory) there are rent‑a‑car companies.
From a previous life, I am a VIP member of Avis, so went directly to that counter. At 7 pm, I was too tired to make a full‑fledged market study about the prices. Anyhow, I rented a nice Hyundai SUV, in which my bike fits perfectly — and started driving towards San Pedro, into the darkness, which was illuminated momentarily by huge lightning.
Huge lightning
Some cars coming the opposite direction flashed their headlights and blinked; I had no idea why. Then, suddenly, I understood. The storm had caused a flash flood of sorts, with thick, muddy water mixed with rocks, stones and trash filling the highway. It was dark, so I did not see and drove right through it. Within a split second, my windscreen was filled with mud and the unmistakable sound of my tires riding through thick mud could be heard. Luckily, the car kept going straight and after 2–3 seconds the ordeal was over, but I had a huge scare. From there onwards, I reduced my speed, as this was not the only place where water flooded the road. It took me some 90 minutes to cover the 100 kilometers.
An interesting thing is that as I am writing this story at the end of March, I asked two AI providers to tell me how many rainy days had been reported in the region. The answer? None! The reason for this is that the rainfalls are, while intense, localized and short‑lived — so they do not reach the official statistics.
I made it to San Pedro de Atacama — and found a place a few kilometers outside town. Weird — at the motel, I was bitten by a fleet of mosquitoes. Who would have guessed?