Calama

Monday, May 5 – Day 139

I catch a bus to Calama, and prepare for the worst. If I can’t get a tourist card here, I’m just going to show up at the Santiago airport tomorrow morning and be an ugly American until they let me on the plane.

Inside the front door of the police station is a surly officer that is not interested in trying to understand my problem or my broken Spanish. He gets tired of me and just points to a door down the hall and tells me to go there. Inside, to my surprise, there are three pretty attractive girls. They’re also friendly, and get a laugh out of my situation – I really don’t think that they get a lot of tourists in their office. I told them that I’d take them all to lunch if they took it easy on me, and bam!, two minutes later I have my replacement card and we're going to lunch. The policeman at the front looked a little pissed as I walked out the door with the three girls, but hey, that’s what he gets for being a jerk.

Calama exists because of copper mine here. The Chileans claim that it's the largest open pit mine in the world (I think it may be the largest producing mine, but the Kennecott mine is Utah is bigger - like anyone really cares about mining anyway). Anyway, it's a really ugly place, and I'm happy to just be passing through.