I got up early in order to buy my bus ticket to the Chilean capital of Santiago. To my surprise I was able to pay for this with my credit card – I don’t think I have been able to pay for anything with a credit card since buying my air ticket from Panama to Medellin 2 months ago – it certainly makes travel so much easier! Maybe, one day, budget hotels and even shops and restaurants in Latin America will accept credit cards.

Before departing on my very long bus trip south in the afternoon, there was the small matter of wanting to first visit the world’s largest copper mine. This is Chuquicamata which is a short colectivo ride north of Calama. They run tours for visitors, which are well organised. I happened to meet the New Zealanders I’d seen in San Pedro, and we all joined a tour. They showed us a film first, and then took us a little way down into the huge open pit in a bus. The size of the trucks they use to carry the ore out is astonishing – you don’t realise how big they are until you see something else alongside.

After spiraling back up to the surface, we were taken on a tour of the smelting plant, where we were shown molten copper being poured into huge crucibles and then into molds to make copper ingots.

It was clear that Chuquicamata is run very much with “First World” organisation and resources. After the smelting plant, we were given a very good lunch… and then it was blasting time! At a fixed time every day everyone has to be out of the pit so that the day’s blasting can safely happen. Of course, at blasting time there is inevitably a row of overenthusiastic foreign backpackers lined up along the rim of the pit, with their cameras at the ready..

Having had enough of copper mining for the day, and having slipped a piece of what could, in theory, have been copper ore into my pocket to add to my mineral collection, I got a colectivo back to Calama. After resting a little in the hotel I headed for the terminal, and at 4pm boarded the bus for what, in retrospect, I hope will be the longest bus trip of this entire round-the-world trip! There was a short stop in Antofagasta, but then the trip down the coast commenced….

The night came and went, and on we sped down the length of long thin Chile. I had wondered about stopping at places on the way south, but my book “South America on a Shoestring” was not enthusiastic about anywhere in particular. By midday on 29th January the bus was only 3 hours from the destination which seemed like barely any time at all at this stage. Finally the suburbs of Santiago de Chile appeared and at 3:15 pm, nearly 24 hours after boarding the bus in Calama, I gratefully got off at the main terminal.

After checking into the Hotel Caribe where I shared a room for 4, I went to the post office to get my mail. There were 5 letters waiting for me. For some unknown reason, one friend had written my name as “Malcolm Everig” – kudos to the Chilean postal workers for figuring out that it was for me and putting it in the right slot for me.

I then went to the Club Andino (mountaineering club) to enquire about possible ascents of mountains in the central Andes. I haven’t yet decided on a plan for the next week or so, and my book implies that it is not out of the question even to consider Aconcagua – the highest mountain in the Americas. The Club Andino person explained that Aconcagua is a serious undertaking, normally climbed from Argentina, and that it will be best to ask in Mendoza, on the other side of the Andes, if I am going there (which I plan to).