Iquique, Chile

Saturday, April 26
we survived the hottest bus ive ever been on and arrived in iquique on saturday night. we ended up traveling with two guys we met in san pedro de atacama, ronan (irish) and will (british), who are a riot. it turned out that we were all staying at a great hostel right near the main beach of the city. we took it fairly easy saturday night, just grabbing some food and hanging around the bar/restaurant to enjoy the surprisingly good 80s rock band....they were killing it with Lionel Richie; Earth, Wind, and Fire; Journey and others. iquique, as it turns out, was a great spot to relax for a few days and catch our breath. the town is up and coming, and it hopes to become the major beach attraction in chile....however, it has a ways to go. but, the beaches are nice and there is some good surf...although the water is absolutely freezing.

Sunday, April 27
on sunday we walked around the city looking for the different paragliding excursions and checking out the various churches and other monuments in the city. when we returned to the hostel we found that several other irish travelers were staying there as well...it was actually 8 of the craziest girls i have ever met (two of whom ended up being friends on ronan, our fellow irish traveler). it turned out to be a great find. we had been told that sunday was incredibly slow and that we would not find anything going on in town. so, we proceeded to entertain ourselves with food and booze, until around midnight when one of the staffers of the hostel recommended that we head out to a karaoke bar in town. about 15 of us (brits, irish, dutch, and ben and i) arrived at the karaoke bar to find 5-7 locals sitting in the bar area just relaxing. we quickly changed that and took over the mic. we proceeded to make complete fools of ourselves (and our respective countries) for the next hour until the bar filled up with locals who, in turn, grabbed the mic from our gringo hands. a little while later, the karaoke bar turned into a disco and then continued to go back and forth between the two roles until we realized that we were the only people left in the bar...around 5:30am.

Monday, April 28
i spent the majority of the day at the huge duty free zone just north of town and then at the beach. it was great to not do much and relax in this lazy beach town. that afternoon, all of us at our hostel decided to have a bbq and we drank and ate wonderfully for hours. then we decided we would have another go at karaoke and returned to the same bar we had visited the previous night...pretty sure the staff at the bar did everything they could to prevent our entry, but there was no stopping our gringo army. we proceeded to embarrass ourselves once again, with the highlight coming when ronan and will (our irish and british traveling companions) attempted to sing Ice, Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. it might have been okay except for the fact that the karaoke display screens failed to have the lyrics for this song...ronan and will did not have the words memorized and were left standing on the stage with mics in hands with nothing to sing. the crowd was not pleased. once again we shut down the bar, and somehow i ended up being on the last to get a taxi to return to the hostel. when i arrived, i was unable to wake Lalo, our local night watchman, to get him to open the gate. after failed attempts to wake him by throwing rocks at the window, i scaled the 10 feet wall (which was lined on top with arrowhead like spikes) and managed to jump to the other side. this was not the best idea i've ever had and now am dealing with a bone bruise on my left heal that i hope will feel better by the time i get to cuzco to hike to machu picchu.

Tuesday, April 29
tuesday was a recovery day and was spent entirely on the beach. four of the irish girls had left the night before and the remaining four left in the afternoon. very little was accomplished this day and i went to bed early to try and catch up before our bus ride to the Peruvian border on wednesday.