Hola everyone!  Long time, no posts.  We’re sorry.  That’s because we have been doing a lot of, well, nothing.  After leaving Puno, we had a much more sedate trip back into Chile to the Northern beach town of Iquique.  The weather up there was very strange, being very sunni early in the morning, then becoming quite overcast by 2 or 3.  That did not deter us from some much needed beach time.  The water was artic cold, which is too bad because we wanted to do a little wave jumping but on some days we managed to get waste deep before sprinting out.

Iquique would be a nice tourist city if they cleaned up all the drunks on the street- 7 days a week, 24 hours a day- and all the mangey dogs.  Can’t say we have ever seen so many strays in one place.  I don’t think they have a South American Bob Barker encouraging you to spay and nueter. 

Along with beach activities, tanning, reading and such, we managed to locate the local McDonalds, which has now become our haven in strange new places.  Aside from tanning and walkind, we didn’t do too much.  Oh Kristen did jump off cliff, more on that later.

It should be noted some interesting people we met at the hostel:  A Australian family is traveling with two kids under 12 for 5 months, which is crazy in and of itself.  However, their son had this chesty throaty whoopng cough that was kind of his way of announcing his enterance or identifying his whereabouts at any time.  Not only was he a little strange, but he would sit down randomly and different tables with people fromt he hostel, but then he’d cough all over their stuff.  Gag.  We also hung out with two south african boys with hedge funds.  If only we had had more time together…..

Elisa