Arica and Lake Titicaca

We arrived in Arica the northest big City in Chile and went on the search for our hostel. It was a nice place, we shared a room with 2 canadians and it was my first hostel where I got a welcome snack... We also had our own kitchen and bathroom, really nice.
The next thing we did was going to check out the bus times for the next day to Peru, the problem was just that the people told us there won´t be any busses going to Peru the next day because of a strike... We said ok we´ll see and went to an internet place to check our mails and there we found out that the guys were in Arica, too. Stefan, Jono and Thomas flew to Arica after their little "adventure" in Brazil, what a nice coincident. We called them up and just a bit later we found us in the city with them and Wally and a lot of Torres de cerveza. Was a great evening. The next day then Amanda and Franzi, Luis and the Spanish arrived in Arica as well and it became an even greater reunion when we found Maria and Chris walking by at the busstation :D
After a nice lunch in the City and some hang out time at the beach we took a bus to Tacna in Peru and it was actually pretty fast, maybe an hour and we were there. YEAH PERU!!!
Peru is really so different from Chile, you see it the moment you cross the border. It is very colorful and the women all wear those big skirts and carry a ton of stuff with them. The spanish gets slower and a lot easier to understand.
Our actual plan from there on was to take a bus right away to Puno to see Lake Titicaca, but after the strike from the day before all busses were booked out, so we spend a night in a very simple and also very very cheap hostel, had some food from a street stand and took the first bus in the morning around 8am. The thing with the busses in Peru is, you should never trust on their given schedule. We planned on arriving around 5, seeing the lake doing some stuff and taking a night bus to Cusco, but like always everything came a bit different :D
We arrived arround maybe 8.30 and then decided to stay over night. Amanda and me were pretty hungry and went out to get some food and we found this really nice little pizza place across the street, sooo good, Pizza baked over fire and coca mate tea.
The next morning we went to get our bus tickets for the night and walked down to the harbor to take a boat out on Lake Titicaca. We went on those swimming Islands made out of reed, it was pretty interesting to see that people live like this, its like a whole village out of islands like this.
soon more... :D

In the hostel...

we met a really nice American Lady who told us about all her travels, she like started out in Argentina a couple month ago and worked her way up through whole Chile, mostly through hitchhiking, crazy. She told us the next day she wanted to go on and visit the gigante de Atacama, a great big drawing made in the ancient times out at the desert. We spontanously decided to go with her and as soon as the new day started Lucie, Mara and me were off to the desert. The gigante is really pretty big and in the middle of the desert in the total silence.
After being out there we enjoyed a nice lunch in a very little town, think it was called Huara or something similar and then or ways splitt again Mara went to Arica and we hitched to Humblestone. It was actually pretty easy to get a car to stopp and take us :D Humblestone is an old Salpeter town,
where you can go around and visit all the old buildings and production places, which was really interesting, especially seeing how the people lived, we read before in our lonely planet that the people working there were kind of bounded to the area and the boss from the factory also owned the city and paid the people in special money which they could only use in the city and so he kind of got all the money back and non of his workers could leave him because they didn´t have real money.
The time came that we felt like no more walking and we left and stopped another car at the street which took us back to Iquique.
The next morning then we catched a bus to Arica. The funny part was we were waiting for it and it was late and then when it was there we didn´t know that it was our one, because it said Atacama Vip as company and we booked Pullman, but apparently they are working together but nobody told us, so we got it like last minute, when they called out our seat numbers :D But anyways it was a great ride, about 10 minutes into the ride the guy came up to us and asked if we would like to move downstairs to the more comftable cama seats, because he wanted to start cleaning the upstairs, so we said why not and really enjoyed the next 5 hours in the bus :D
Ok time for a second breakfast, I will continue later ;)

Vacation

Hallo mal wieder :D
Guess where I am... YEAH!!! Buenos Aires, but just for a day so...
Lets start from the beginning. I cant believe it, its already about 2 weeks ago since I started my journey.
It started out with a lot of goodbye evenings, like the one at Mels place we bought a lot of stuff and made sushi, sooo yummy. Then the last friday night we spent at the Australiens place, kind of the way we startet into the semester :D Was a very late night. The next day Stefan was off to his adventure and I had to pack, really not easy, how do you know what you will need in a 4 weeks vacation??? and I had to pack everything else as well and move out of my room.
Then the next morning it startet, I said bye to my hostfamily and left to meet up with Lucie with who I would spend the beginning of the vacation. Her hostdad drove us to the busstation and after buying a few empenadas for the ride we were off, 26 hours up north :D Was such a nice ride, I had to get back a ton of sleep and was out for about 20 of the hours.
Then we arrived in Iquique, it is such a nice city, the busstation is packed so, I really dont know how they do it but there are busses over busses and one blocks the other. Our hostel there was a bit weird, they cleaned up our stuff in the closet and there was always a person on the floor and you kind of felt watched, but all in all it was nice, with a great church on the other side of the street.
The city was just lovely and the beaches, with soo high waves. We went to eat everyday, you could get a whole meal with soup, segundo and drink for about 2,50 euros. In the hostel ... to be continued... have to free the computer...