Read Ian Rankinīs Black Book whilst waiting for the morning fog to clear. Sun came out at 11.45am, as it does most days here. Played table tennins with Antoine then headed to beach with Roberto where we met his girlfriend, Sylvana. After some lounging on the sand headed for McMeal (the first in about 2 months I think). Reatsurant had plaque comm...

After reading up on the border crossing from Peru into Chile, we pretty nervous about the various options (bus, collectivo, private taxi). At the end of the day, the whole experience was about as strange as we expected, but much easier. Sure enough, when we arrived in Tacna, Peru there were guys meeting the buses looking for passengers to take a...

Well it looks like we can't really get out of this town for a few days...the buses across the Andes into Argentina (and moisture) are booked until the 17th. So we'll divide our time between Arica and San Pedro de Atacama, which is about 12 hours from here in the higher desert. Arica is fine to hang out in...it's just that the minute someone tell...

HOT HOT HOT !!! and dry...this place gets 2 mm of rain each year...that's about the smallest distance you can make between 2 fingers... not much rain. I'm glad the hostel is cool...if you're in the shade and there's a breeze, it's manageable. But don't try to spend time on the beach between 1 and 4....we did yesterday and never quite recovered. ...

I was sooo happy to be in Arica, because it is a coastal town. I actually teared up a little bit when I saw the ocean. I arrived around 8pm on Monday, after a full day of travel and was pretty tired. I checked in to my hotel, then went to eat at El Arriero and had some great salmon. I went back, had a rare cigarette, read a bit and then went to ...

So here we were stopping off after our nightbus from Bolivia and we had a few hours to kill before our next bus on to La Serena (in Chile) and we were having a hotdog when Luce noticed a car moving with no-one behind the wheel!!! Then the earth started to move literally (not because of Al's good looks!) with cars shaking and the ground rumbling ...

From Arequipa we went to Tacna (night bus, 6hrs), whish is a border town to cross into Chile. In Chile, the first town we came to was Arica, we got a taxi across the border from Tacna to Arica, we were very cautious of this as there are so many dodgy taxis, but this is the main way of crossing the border from Peru into Chile. The journey was goo...

On arrival we booked our ībusī to Arequipa in Peru for the next day and got a taxi to our hostel. We were greeted by a friendly german girl who promptly handed us a free ice cold beer - marvellous. We relaxed for a bit, drank our beer and admired all the writing on the walls before first attemting to buy a phoneard and failing before getting a s...

Wednesday 21st March Docked by 8am at Coquimbo, a mainly industrial port, but allowing us to access a local town called La Serena, so we took the coach in. It is a lovely place - beautiful town square with a huge variety of trees, a lovely friendly market area, and generally just very friendly without any hassling which often goes with cruise sh...

Hallo from Chile!! Peru...you were amazing, but unfortunately time waits for no man!! Again, we jumped on a bus to take us to the Peru border..and from there we got ourselves a taxi into Chile and Arica. There was 6 of us in the one car to be driven through the border..Eoin and myself in the front, Eoin had the special seat, cosied up intimately...