Roos and I said goodbye in Camaná and there I was again on my own. I headed down to Tacna, the Peruvian border town so I could take a shared taxi the next morning to cross the border into Chile. The "taxi" was actually an old seventies chevrolet American car which I shared with a few other young South Americans. Crossing the border was no proble...

Iquique ist auch schon Geschichte, ich bin jetzt in Tacna, die erste Stadt in Peru nach der Grenze, und warte auf meinen Bus nach Cuzco. Auf dem Weg von Antofagasta nach Iquique haben wir einen kurzen Stopp im Zweithaus der Familie Barraza eingelegt, um ein Zelt abzuholen. In Tocopilla, so heisst der Ort, war das starke Erdbeben vor etwas mehr a...

Once we landed safely we got a taxi through the desert and managed to find ourselves an ok hostel, not quite the holiday inn though.  Next we searched for a travel agency which was more difficult than you might think alas we found one which didn´t do the geoglyph tour we wanted and tourist info was no help either so we just decided to ...

Chelsea leaves to go back home this coming Saturday (the 5th of May) and flies out of Lima.  So we have to start working our way north through Chile and into Peru.  I have been pretty much ignoring the fact that our time is running out.  I don't like to think about that kind of shit, I'm pretty good about blocking that out. That b...

I dined tonight, tempted with the 2 pound board menu at "The Flying Cloud Clipper Inn". It is an old timber double fronted building with railed front verandahs on both the upper and lower floors, the windows on the ground floor are huge and leaded in glorious patterned colours, they must be 9 foot tall. As you enter into the twilight  inter...

We set off early in the morning said our goodbyes to Anna and Aidan and caught a bus to the Chilean border. The border crossing was straightforward thanks to the help of a taxi driver who took us across in his big Cadillac. Once in Chile we found a connecting bus to Iquique. We arrived in Iquique a couple of hours behind schedule at about 11 pm ...

We left La Paz and started our journey down to Santiago. Being on a budget we decided that flying down was not an option. So instead we took the local Bolivian bus (costing 8 pounds) down to Iquique. A really lovely beach resort in the North of Chile. It was the most horrendous journey, 16 hours on a bus smelling of urine. Cramped full of Smelly...

With the monster putting up an encore of the night before, my attempts at getting sleep in the dorm failed and in any case, I was missing the comfort of the couch. The flight at Alto Hospicio was incredible and was in some ways a breakthrough as I had decided not to rush and thanks to being calm, enjoyed one of the most confident flights in a lo...

It's an interesting phenomenon that the country which was responsible for the death of Che Guevara is now probably the biggest merchandiser of Che paraphernalia ever. I myself was forced to buy a bright disco-pink tee-shirt with Che's face on the front, which I will gladly model for a small fee on my return. That's if it doesn't get nicked befor...

In Iquique I've found exhiliration and frustration. My busride from Arica to here, which travels the Panamerican highway through some of the most desolate and arid terrain this side of Lawrence of Arabia, was spent in the company of a lovely young woman (Gabriela) and her lovely little daughter (Valentina). As she is about to finish her studies ...