Our bus broke down in the driest desert on Earth.
We were halfway through the six-hour journey from Antofagasta, the industrial port on the ocean, to San Pedro de Atacama, the dry speck of a town in the middle of a desert, when suddenly the bus began to rattle and the driver pulled over.
The doors swung open onto the dusty shoulder, where the sand had long ago worn away the median, and the tourists climbed out with their cameras and backpacks, pulling out snacks and taking photos of themselves sprawled on the dunes as if on the seaside. The locals stayed inside, reading wrinkled newspapers and curling their feet up on the empty seats beside them, making pillows out of jackets and shutting out the sun with the flimsy curtains that never met in the middle.
I couldn’t stay out for very long. After a few minutes away from the bus with its even line of shade cut out like a black rectangle against the sand, the sun began to make my skin tingle and I could feel my pores contracting, trying to hide the moisture from the sun’s rays.
The sand rolled away endlessly in every direction, with the line of black asphalt snaking through it, disappearing suddenly behind a dune, then emerging again in the distance for only a moment before melting away into a mirage. I snapped my photos and went back inside.
The bus was dead. They were sending another one to pick us up, but we would have to wait. I already regretted going outside. The sun had made me thirsty and I could feel my heart beat, one step too fast, pushing the thin air through my veins. San Pedro is at 8,000 feet, so the humidity in the air is very low, averaging 10%. Even the Sahara averages 25%.
But I had nothing to drink and no one to ask as a steady stream of passengers pushed past my armrest and climbed down the steps. Through the front windshield I could see them lining up alongside the road, their bags stuffed between their feet, their eyes looking past me and the bus and out to the horizon. I stood up in my seat and looked through the rear window. A speck of dust on the window moved slightly and then began to crawl slowly towards us, forming into the shape of a car. I watched as it passed the bus, stop a few hundred feet in front of us and then become obscured by people running towards it. The rear doors opened out like wings to let in the hitchhikers and then flew off to San Pedro.
They left in groups of two and three, some with their thumbs out, most just waving to passing cars until they slowed down enough to run alongside them, their hands grasping at door handles, the other clutching backpacks and plastic bags filled with snacks and water bottles.
I could imagine the driver smiling as he pulled over to pick me up, asking if I was alright, offering me a drink of water and then sharing stories in broken English, with enough time ahead of us to get to know each other. He would invite me to stay with his family, and the reservations I had made and the plans I had organized would be replaced with something deeper, more meaningful, a living experience of Chile in the dead desert where not even a plant would grow.
The cars kept stopping and the passengers kept leaving, until an hour had passed and I still sat motionless in the seat, determined that the next car would be my ride and that I wouldn’t be left behind with the old and the fearful: those with too much luggage in the hold and not enough strength to carry them, and those raised on stories of murders and disappearances of hitchhikers on the back roads of America.
I stood up and pulled down my backpack from the overhead rack, and as it tumbled down onto the seat, the straps clattering against the rails, I could make out a car beginning to take shape from behind the dirty window. I pulled the backpack onto one shoulder and dashed outside, looking backward at the looming shape as it got closer and closer. It was my car. It was my family. It was my real experience.
And then through the desert heat, like a mirage, I saw it clearly: it was the replacement bus.
