Punno, Peru

Before I even got off the bus I already booked a boat tour for the floating islands, my stay for the night and the bus to Cusco. Wow that was easy. Those Peruvians really have it figured out.

Punno is the Peruvian city off the coast of Lake Titikaka. It is most well known for the floating islands. The floating islands are artificial islands made by the Incas. They made the islands out of reeds from the lake. They are really quite amazing. They built houses and other building on these islands. There are communities of over 2,500 people on these islands. Mind blowing!

So I took a boat with what seemed like me and 50 Israelis (This is very common in South America). The boat toured us through a whole bunch of the floating islands. We checked out their houses and saw some very interesting bird wildlife that are pretty much pets of the local Incas. They also made boats out of the reeds and some other materials. They were pretty gnarly looking. Somethng you´d see out of a cartoon in the Amazon.

After surviving the barrage of locals trying to sell you everything imaginable, the boat dropped me off in the island I would be staying at. It was in a hut that had a queen mattress resting on a pile of reeds. It was really cool, the more rustic, the better. The only problem was I was the only one staying that night. It was cool though because I met a bunch of people at dinner from a later tour. After I talked with one of the workers for a couple hours. It was quite the Spanish crash course. He tried to convince me to trade my jacket for his old ass green jacket. Heeeeell no, I´m not giving away certified Kicking Horse quality.

I woke up early the next morning to a shooting of a Peruvian music video. Oh man, that was hilarious. If you ever come to Peru, you will really see how different Cumbia is from Western music. I find quite funny, well, except when the same CD is played over and over for three days straight in a tour. Anyhoo, the band was called Golf +10. I´m pretty sure they had no clue what that meant. It was 5 guy and one girl. The guys would dance with giant vases behind the girl who was lip sinking the music. I really want to see the final version of the music video, it would be sooo over the top.

So after that incredible show, I jumped on a boat to Tequila. This island was actually a natural island where a specific local Inca tribe lived. They had their own traditions, clothing and ceremonies different from the other Inca tribes. They all wore tuques symbolising their marital status and their rank in society. If a man wore a rainbow coloured tuque it meant he was amongst the leaders of the island. They also showed us one of their traditional dances that representing the knitting of the clothing. Apparently, the men did all the knitting on that island. Go figure, I suck at knitting. I would not fit in. The island itself was very beautiful and scenic. It had the same style of agriculture on the land as Isla del Sol. The scenery was amazing. It had a 360 degree view of the lake and the surrounding mountains. Overall, and amazing sight and a great tour. I hope all the old people on the same tour enjoyed it even though they were dying from the elevation.

After lunch we took the 500 steps down to the boat and headed back to Punno where I caught a bus to Cusco. I´ve heard so much about Cusco. Bring it on!

Copacabana, Bolivia

Three hours and I was in the middle of souvenir shop central. Copacabana is known as the Bolivian side of Lake Titikaka. Many people go to Copacabana to check out the Isla del Sol. It is a very nice scenic island inhabited by the Incas.

I wasn´t able to take a boat there that day as planned because the boats only leave in the morning and early afternoon so I decided to grab a place to stay. A nice, quiet and more importantly, cheap place to stay did the trick.

The next day I woke up super early for breakfast and to catch the boat to Isla del Sol. The ride is an hour and a bit and great chance to enjoy the Lake Titikaka views. The island itself is covered with the Inca technique of agriculture. The Incas cultivate the land by molding it into shelves. Bolivian land is very mountainous so the Incas invented this technique to avoid errosion and maximize the surface area of the land so they could plant more. The top of the island is probably 400m high. That meant quite the hike to get up to the trail which was about half way up. They had a trail all around the island but the problem was they only give you about an hour on that island then they leave. I wanted to squeeze everything in. So I walk hustled half the three hour trail then went to the very top. It had an insane 360 degree view of Lake Titikaka. Unfortunately, I didn´t have much time to enjoy the top. 12 minutes to get down! So I run dodging Incas, donkeys, llamas, pigs, running through crops, you name it! I finally stumble to the bottom sweating from the 3000m+ elevation and barely make it. The driver was just docking the boat.

We made a pit stop to some old ruins that they called a museum. Strage. And then we headed back to Copacabana where I caught my bus for Punno in Peru. Whew, that was an exhausting little trip...

La Paz, Bolivia

Oh man, La Paz Bolivia. Probably the craziest city I´ve been to in South America. If you want to do stuff out of the ordinary, this is the place. You will either love La Paz or hate it. You could probably guess what side I was on.

So I stayed at the infamous Loki hostel. Loki is a chain of 4 hostels through Bolivia and Peru. They are notrious for big parties, nice rooms and tons of gringos. Sounds good to me.

The first day we checked out the witches market. It´s a market that pretty much has normal Bolivian souvenirs but it´s notorious for llama fetuses in jars and other weird little trinkets. I didn´t know anyone who would´ve wanted a llama fetus sooo I decided to pass on the purchase. We also dropped by the infamous San Pedro prison. Two weeks ago people were able to go on tours in that prison. This prison is smack dab right in the middle of La Paz. Why would they put a prison in the middle of a city? I have no clue. This prison was very special because it had a very interesting community inside of it. The prisoners families lived in the prison as well. Prisoners would have their own businesses inside of the prison and there were some very notrious characters in the prison. There was a famous book written about San Pedro called Marching Powder. Apparently Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie got rights to make a movie about San Pedro. Watch out for that, should be a good one. Anyhoooo, the reason people can´t do tours there anymore is because they let a CNN reporter in who did a documentary on it which attracted even more press. Then there was a riot and somebody got stabbed in the prison. At that point they decided to stop the prison tours. So we went there just to check out the scene. There was a reporter and a cameraman trying to do a story in front of the prison but things have been so tense between the guards and the media that the guards made them leave right away. I even had to be super sneaky just to get a photo of the outside of the prison.

That night we hit up a really good restaurant where I finally found some good chili in South America. They didn´t have any in Chile. Can you imagine? Weird. Apparently that restaurant turns into a really good discoteca. I found that hard to believe because it looks like a normal restaurant. Things are defintely different in Bolivia. After dinner we hit up a cool lounge bar. It was a cool place but a very complicated night. Not cool, but they happen...

The next day, I was flying solo for the first time in my trip. My Italian friend left for Chile. I decided to hit the tour companies that day and barter the shit out of them to get some super cheap prices. I was quite successful finding a price that was less than half the price they offered at the hostel. One word of advice, never by tours or pretty much anything that they refer because they always give you gringo rates. This goes for anywhere in South America. If you straight to tour companies and barter them down you can get the same thing for a third of the price. Other than that I walked around La Paz and checked out some cool plazas. Another reason La Paz is a crazy city is its layout. If you check it out from a viewpoint it looks like a meteor dropped into the middle of the city. It´s a giant undulating valley of a city. Some houses are way high up on the mountain and the middle of the city is low in the valley. It´s quite the spectacle.

Some Canadians guys and I took it easy that night because we were hitting up the world´s most dangerous road the next day. Haven´t heard of it? Google Death Road and see what you come up with. This road killed hundreds of people a year. I´m talking skinny dirt roads with no guard rails, not wide enough for two cars and some sketch ass rocks. Oh ya, rock and mud slides are a norm for this road too. Their is a new road that is used by cars now. There are still some cars that use the old road so we still had to watch out for oncoming traffic. Soooo, we decided not to do it super hungover at 7 in the morning. That was a good choice. We didn´t want to be add to the 13 tourists that have died biking that road.

When we finally got to the top of Death Road we were greeted by a thick fog. I´m talking can´t see five feet in front of you. Great! This road wasn´t dangerous enough already. So we started off on the paved road and man, we were not taking it slow. We had to be hitting speeds up to 70 to 80 kms. We were going the same speed as the traffic because it was all downhill. I thought my wheel was going to fall off because that guy was spinning all over the place. With that said, it was super fun.

We then hit up a little pit stop and portaged to the dirt road portion. This is where things became real fun. This is where the roads were only wide enough for one car, there were no guard rails, rocks the size of your head, ruts everywhere and about every 20 minutes of riding you´d see a cross of where someone died by falling off one of the 100m+ cliffs. What a rush! Dodging rocks, holes, avoiding hitting other riders and taking those turns as fast as possible. We all started slow but definitely picked it up once we got a feel for the road. The road was mainly downhill with some uphills. We rode through a few waterfalls and got to see some incredible views of the valley and the mountain range. I managed to ride unharmed but some people in our group weren´t so lucky. One guy ripped up his arm, another girls lost her city (Haha, weird) and one other guy took a mean spill and slid for about 10m. Good thing he paid the extra for the knee and elbow pads. It took us about 5 hours to finish the road and we ended up in a nice little retreat for a buffet lunch and a algae infested pool. We didn´t jump in the pool...

That night we decided celebrate our own survival at the Loki hostel bar that is going on every single night. We ended up at the infamous Ruta 36 bar. People don´t go their for the beers, it´s more famous for its nose candy. I didn´t do any because it´s not my thing but apparently it´s pretty bad stuff cut with speed. I´m not really into three day hangovers thank you very much.

The next day my Australian friend decided to rock up to La Paz. We checked out the Black Market or lack there of and then made an attempt to get into San Pedro prison. We were going to try to bribe the guards but this guy from New York gets our attention and said he could get us in. He said he would get us press passes and it would be 50 Bolivianos ($8 CDN) each. He said only one of us could go pay for the rest of us. This guy was pretty sketch and we didn´t know what to expect but we really wanted to do the prison tour. While our friend is gone we meet a guy named Daniel from South Africa. This guy was in the San Pedro prison for three years because he tried to traffic drugs into Switzerland. This guy swallowed over a kilo of cocaine capsules and got caught. Brutal! Anyways, he tells us that it is impossible to do prison tours of San Pedro prison and that our friend got scammed. Sure enough, our friend came back and said we got screwed. Oh well, it was worth the try. But our friend from South Africa tells us about an even better tour to a Maximum Security Prison. He said he had a tour going on tomorrow. This was a tough sell because we just got screwed once, but I still wanted to do it.

That night I met up with some Spanish girls we met in Potosi for a Salsa party. Man, Spanish people love their salsa. I managed to get some free salsa lessons and got some solid Spanish practice. Pfff, I can´t believe people actually pay for lessons.

The next morning I woke to hit up the prison tour thanks to the Dutch girls waking me up. Thanks girls! We pretty much had some breakfast told some people about the prison tour and rocked up in a big group to meet Daniel. His ¨bus driver¨apparently didn´t show up so he had to convince a bus driver to drive us all to the maximum security prison. It was about an hour ride to the prison but we got to go to this amazing viewpoint at the top of the highway to see the whole city. It was way better than the first viewpoint I went to. So we finally arrive to this prison in the middle of nowhere. Well, in the middle of nowhere with a primary school right beside it. Haha, weird. Our friend from South Africa had to convince the guards for about 45 minutes to let us in. We didn´t really know what to expect. The possibilty of us all getting screwed over was in the back of all our heads. After seeing him argue with the guards we thought we weren´t getting in but props to Daniel, he got us in.We had to sign in and get a pat down from the guards. Well pat down for the guys, the girls had to take all their clothes off behind a curtain. We then met the infamous Lalo who we found out later runs the show in the prison and is one of the top druglords in Bolivia and perhaps South America. He had to argue a bit with guards again but we were able to get in fine and didn´t have to listen to anything the warden said, haha. We then met Lalo´s right hand man Frias. Frias was fluent in English and was our main tour guide. Our tour guide Frias went to jail for killing a man in a fight and he killed 5 more people in jail. Ok, so our tour guide killed 6 people but other than that he seemed nice. They showed us all around the prison. They had soccer fields, warehouses for woodworking, a gym, games room with pool tables and foosball and their cells were all quite nice. No bars or anything. Just normal rooms. What a weird tour though. Frias would show us a room where ¨two people would go in their with knives and only one would come out¨. ¨Oh and here´s our room where we raise our guinea pigs. Aren´t they cute?¨We then had lunch some of the prisoners. What a deal, they make us lunch too? It was pretty good too, burger and fries. While we were eating our buddy Frias who killed six people pointed to the cook and said, ¨See that guy? That guys is effing crazy! He watched the movie Friday the 13th bought a hockey mask and a giant blade and killed tons and tons of people.¨When somebody who killed six people points out someone else and says they are crazy....I get a little nervous. Some of us lost our appetite at that point, haha.

It might sound like it´s incredible dangerous to do the tour but they treated us like gold. We our a source of their economy. They were selling us Tshirts and little trinkets and plus, when you live in a prison seeing new people from around the world is a very nice perk. If they make a wrong move the tour would stop. But the biggest reason they don´t lay a hand on us is because of the zero tolerance rules. One time a prisoner slapped the ass of a wife of a prisoner. The husband got to decide whether to kill him or punish him. The husband decided to punish him and the punishment is to hang him by chains on the roof 15m´s high naked for 24 hours. THey said it happened a month ago and the guy is still recovering. They still haven´t seen him since it happened. So in other words, the prisoners were very nice to us. With that said though, there were some of the guys you could tell they had a few screws lose. If they act on one bad impulsem it´s very bad news for us. Soooo, no one asked for some more food from Cook aka. Jason.

After checking out all the different cells we went into Lalo´s room. Wow, this guy has a nicer room then I do. DVD Player, TV, surround sound. He said he was getting a computer in a couple of weeks. These guys get the ful hook up. Some of the prisoners have machine guns! Why do they need machine guns? Once everyone got in and got settled they offered us ¨dessert¨. Lalo had some coke factories in the Bolivian jungle that he runs from the prison. They smuggle coke in and out all the time. Lalo is one of the head king pins in the drug trade of Bolivia and he does it all with a cell phone from the prison. On a good day he´ll make $7,000 USD. These guys don´t mess around. They told us insane stories of the organized killings they committed, the killings in the prison or even the revolution they had a couple weeks before. These guys burnt cells, destroyed the place and held guards hostage to shift the power back to the prisoners. They said two weeks ago guards were every around the prison, but now they are not allowed in the sector where the cells are. That´s part of the reason we were able to do the tour. And Lalo´s connections in the government. The tour only has been legal for two weeks at the time. We were the second legal group to do a tour. Frias told me about his plans to have another even bigger riot where they would do the same and hold some guards hostages. He said to watch for him on the news because he was pretty much insinuating he was going to kill this time. These guys don´t mess around.

So everyone in the group sampled the dessert accept for me and the two Dutch girls. They said it was the best stuff they´ve ever had. It was 95% pure which is supposed to be amazing. We all pretty much chilled and talked about the prison. It was really cool, they said we could ask absolutely anything. My jaw was on the ground from the stories they told us. It was very surreal. The most amazing part is how killing and organized crime is such a normal part of their lives. They had some very interesting perceptions. ¨We are good to good people and bad to bad people. Anybody we kill, they deserve it.¨It was like something out of a movie.

After staying in the prison for about 4 to 5 hours we decided to head back. I was pretty much buzzing the whole time. I couldn´t believe what I saw and heard. That was deifintely the craziest thing I´ve done in South America.

The next day Matt and I walk around town and I grabbed my bus ticket for Copacabana. We checked out some stuff in the market and pretty much chilled most of the day at the couchsurfing place. It was with this American girl that pretty much let anybody surf her place. It was like a couchsurfing hostel. There were 6 couchsurfers there at a time minimum. People just slept everywhere. As you can imagine it wasn´t the cleanest place, understandably. That night we had a big couchsurfing party at her place. It was super cool to hear everyones travel stories. The cool thing about couchsurfers are they are more hardcore travelers. They stick with the locals more and do the more unique things. I´d say they are the best people to get travel advice. Matt and I headed over to Loki hostel´s bar to meet some people to go out with. We headed over to the Salsa bar I was at before with some cool Danish girls. We all had a really good night that lasted till the wee hours of the night. That makes it all that better for sleeping in the bus. I plan all this stuff out.

The next day I barely caught my bus for Copacabana. Lake Titikaka, here I come!

Sucre, Bolivia

We jump out of the bus and immediately do the routinely search for a hostel. We were able to find a super cheap one that was pretty nice. It even had a fountain in it! Stay in hostel with a big ass fountain in it...check. We got there pretty late on Saturday so we only really had time to eat and get ready for the nightlife.

The city of Sucre itself was probably the most scenic city I´ve been to in Bolivia. The plazas are very nice, it has many nice buildings and it is surrounded by mountains. You could tell people in Sucre were a lot better off then the rest of Bolivia. I think that´s because it´s a government town. Sucre is Bolivia´s old capitol city but it still has the judicial courts and many other government establishments. The Bolivian government decided to switch the capitol city to La Paz.

That night we went to a really cool discoteca called Mitos. It was recommended by a few locals so it was pretty much a no brainer. There were a good mix of gringos and locals. Overall, great night. Matt and I got pretty tipsy that night, didn´t we Fabby?

The next day Matt left for Santa Cruz and my Italian friend and I checked out the sights around Sucre. There are many nice buildings to see and there is an awesome view point in the Northern part of the city. We were able to catch the sunset and I even had my sights on a golf course that was across the valley. If I hadn´t already got my bus ticket I would´ve stayed and played a round. Too bad....off to La Paz...

Potosi, Bolivia

The good news is I survived hypothermia in the bus, the bad news is I was still freezing my ass off when I stepped outside of the bus. I thought it was the broken windows that was making that bus cold but it was the freezing cold weather in the highest city in the world that was doing the job. I tried using my Canadian flag as a blanket buuuuut surprise, surprise that wasn´t warm enough. Naturally, we jump into a cab and pick the first cheap hostel we find. Beds? Check. Cheap? Check. No fire breathing bed bugs? Check. All right, lets sleep.

The next day´s game plan was to hit the silver mines. Other than being the highest city in the world, Potosi is known for its huge silver mines. Sitting at 5,200m working up there is no easy task. We took a tour up there and suited up like good ol´miners. We then bought some presents for the miners which included pop, coca leaves and of course 90% alcohol. The tour guide let us check out some sticks of dynamite. Matt and I really wanted to buy some but we had no money. The other guy who had money didn´t want to buy it. Don´t ask me why.

Once we got up there we were greeted by an incredibly drunk miner. He couldn´t even speak Spanish correctly. He wasn´t even halfway through his shift! After his little show we headed inside the mines. We first watched a giant pressure drill drilling holes for sticks of dynamite. They didn´t hold back on the dynamite, that´s for sure. We then went deeper into the mine to give the miners a little help. We pulled up a few buckets and let the boys drink their moonshine. It´s the least we could do. After, we mined for some silver and zinc and got to keep some nuggets. I´d say the craziest part of the tour was when we met Tio and talked to the miners. Tio is a devil that the miners worship to receive good fortune in silver and zinc annnnnd not die. If you´re good to Tio, Tio will be good to you. We also talked to the miners about the life of a miner. It was clear that it´s a very tough life. Miners there die at an average age of 35. The one miner said death is slow but certain. The work is very dangerous and the gases they breath in slowly kill them. It´s a tough line of work but it provides good money for their families. Pretty surreal stuff...

We found out that night that it was a big Bolivian holiday. Don´t ask me which one but there was a big party in a concert hall that night. We hit it up with a group of Spanish girls. The party was going pretty normal playing classics until there was an intermission where they turned off the music and turned on the lights. Weird...then they turn off the lights and a local Bolivian band comes out of no where and start playing in the middle of the dance floor. Everyone starts dancing around the band in a rotating circle. It was so weird but so fun. These Bolivians sure know how to party. After my ears were ringing from coumbia and I was a little dizzy from dancing circles around this band we decided to call it a night.

The next day we scarfed down breakfast and headed down to the bus for Sucre. $3 bus...not bad...

Bolivia Tour

After an hour ride we entered into a freezing cold Bolivia. Pretty much all of Bolivia is at a super high elevation. Right away everybody slipped on their warm clothes, ate breakfast and checked into Bolivia. The first day was almost all sightseeing lagunas. Each laguna had its own distinct characteristic about it. Usually each one was characterized by a unique colour. Some of them even had some flamingos chilling in them. After seeing many different coloured lagunas we jumped in the thermal hot springs. That was a nice break from the bumpy jeep ride. We got to relax in a nice hot spring with a beautiful view of the mountains. What better to cap off hot springs then to check out the geysers. These were several wholes in the ground of bubbling mud bogs that were tons of different colours. They were super cool to watch. You could also see hot steam coming out of the ground. The whole place stunk like sulphur of course. People were kicking rocks into the bogs to watch it explode mud and others were pretending to push their friends in. I tried to get a photo of me farting from the ground using the steam spray but it didn´t really work. Gotta use any chance I can get…

That night we had a very humble dinner and went to bed very early because we had an early day ahead of us. But oh man was it cold. I had four crappy blankets and all my clothes and I was still freezing cold. I had to take my sleeping bag sleep in that with everything I mentioned before and warm up in the fetal position. Ya, I had a great night of sleep, haha. I found out the next day that the temperature was -20 in a hostel that had no heat and had bird´s nest for insulation. Ya, that´s why I came to South America, for minus 20 degree weather.

After barely surviving the night before we were off to see some flamingos! And buy some I mean thousands. We went to Laguna Colorado and saw so many flamingos. I was seeing pink everywhere. So after we got some good photos of the whole lake and some good close ups Matt and I decided to make them fly. Rocks would scare a few of them but it wouldn´t really do the trick. So I decided to charge a big group of them. That got em going. You have to go straight to the source to get what you want.

After all that running we headed to the famous petrified tree. It is a rock that looks just like a tree in the middle of the desert. It is surrounded by many other super large rocks. Everybody climbed the rocks, some hurt themselves and everybody had a good time. We then headed up to the highest elevation point in the tour. 5,000m! Whoo, it was getting harder to breath. From this point we got a great view of the surrounding mountains. From there was a long ride to our hostel made out of salt. Not completely salt but the majority is. The walls were hardened salt and the ground was covered with salt rocks. It was quite the unique hostel and we never ran out of that one condiment which was nice.

The last day was the day we finally hit the salt flats. This is the largest salt flats in the world. It used to be a giant lake but it dried up into a giant salt flat. You don´t have to go far before you see salt for miles and miles and all you can see on the horizon is the surrounding mountains. We hit a less touristy island in the middle of the salt flats where we actually saw a funny looking rabbit that kind of looked like a squirrel. We also saw some funny looking cactuses, but hey, which cactuses don´t look funny looking? We then hit the hotel in the middle of the salt flats so everyone could take there wacky photos. The big appeal of the salt flats is you can´t tell depth perception. Picture a desert of sheer white as far as you could see. You can´t see any reference points so you can´t tell how far someone is. That´s where the fun begins. We took photos of us eating eachother, surfing coke bottles, using the jeep we were driving in as a toy car and many more funnier ones. You´ll have to stay tuned for the photos when I get back but they are hilarious. We didn´t get enough time in the salt flats because our tour guide was a bit of a Dbag but we complained and got another solid hour in the salt flats after.

Later, we arrived in Uyuni had some dinner and jumped on a bus to Potosi. This was my first experience on a Bolivia bus and what a start it was…

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

We were welcomed in this dark small town in the pouring rain without a hostel. After bouncing from hostel to hostel we finally found one that was half decent, cheap and available. San Pedro is a very touristy town that is well known for all the tours you can do all around the town. If you walk along the streets you will mostly see gringos. You can´t say this about many towns in South America.

The next day we opted to do the Moon Valley Tour. This involved biking out to the desert valley that looked like the surface of the moon. There were many caves, hoodoos, salt mines and the valley was surrounded by mountains. It was very scenic and there were cool things to check out along the way. You needed any excuse to stop biking at that altitude. We went to the very end of the moon valley to check out the sunset. Well, we got there a little early so Matt and I decided to take some jumps with our rental bikes. What else are you going to do with your rental bike? The sand was a bit bogged so we didn´t do anything impressive, haha. We trekked some hills and got some good snaps of the sunset and started the long trek back in the dark. We made a long pit stop at the salt mines but really only found a weird salt house that was probably haunted by salt ghosts. We didn´t want to mess with salt ghosts so we headed back to the road. Oh man, what a sketchy ride back. Matt was the only one with a light but wasn´t enough. This road was up and down, super bumpy and had many surprises on the way. Matt nearly killed himself on a hairpin turn. But we finally made it back gasping for air.

Instead of doing one day tours of lagunas, salt flats and mud baths we decided to go balls to the wall and do the 3 day Bolivia tour that ended in Uyuni. Basically, this does all these things plus more in a 3 day tour that ends in Bolivia which we were headed to anyway. So, the next day we met our group and we were off!

Antofagasta, Chile

This time we stepped out of the bus with a direction. We knew what hostel we wanted to go to and we had directions how to get there. Yes, light years ahead of our past efforts! For some reason it wasn´t that easy. We caught the bus looking for a plane crashing into the roof of a discoteque that is close to the hostel. We waited for over and hour and saw no crashing plane. We ask the bus driver and he said we passed it and drops us off in shanty town central. So here we are walking around this place where people probably never even seen gringos before and are licking their chops at the thought of mugging us. Once we finally found someone who knew what was what in the town we found out that we took the right bus but in the wrong direction and we were in the exact opposite end of town. So, we decided to have some Chinese food and catch the same bus. After a long bus ride we finally see the crashing plane and we walk to the hostel.

Turns out the hostel is owned by a guy from Squamish. Cool! It was a really nice place that was right in discoteque central. Once we got all setup we decide to grab some grub for a big O BBQ. We grabbed the biggest steak we could probably find. I don´t even think they had to cut the cow for this one. The owner of the hostel just made the BBQ himself and that day was the opening debut. We sure put it up to the test with this steak. I´ve seen smaller pieces of meat fill freezers. And it was one hell of a steak too. Haha, so why am I going on about this steak? Well, there was nothing much else to report about that night because it was good Friday and none of the bars are open in South America on that night. We got the memo late on that one.

The next day we checked out some of the Dunes with the hostel owner and his brother. We caught some great views and did some fossil hunting too. Antofagasta is a famous hotbed for fossils. I found some fossilized shells and what looked like mussels. No dinosaurs though…

We checked out the fish market later on and had some pretty tasty seafood empanadas. This place is apparently the place to be on Saturday afternoon in Antofagasta. It started out as a fishing village and now is more of a port town. The fishing roots are still strong though. Once Matt and I got back we found a brand new ping pong table. Oh snap, it´s on now! It was ping pong tournament till the late hours of the night. We even setup a flood light at night. Once that finally finished we checked out the night life of Antofagasta. Not impressed! The bar, the vibe and the girls. So close to Argentina and yet so disappointing. I have no reasonable explanation. Nuclear meltdown in an adjacent town?

The next day we got in as many ping pong games as possible and then headed for our bus to San Pedro. You have one last chance Chile!