Beaches and beatches - Arica, Chile

After a tiring, but beautiful, hike of the colca canyon, tom and i shared some large beers together atop an arequipa bar and pondered life. i{ll go off on a tangent here, so if you dont{ want to read my meanderings continue on to the next paragraph. I really dig latin america and moreover latin culture. i just feel so at home here. the people of peru and chile have been incredibly kind and helpful to us - further reinforcing my desire to stay in the latin america. so, not only have we seen some beautiful sights, we have met some really wonderful poeople. so, theres my warm and fuzzy part of the journal.

tom and i took the overnight bus from arequipa to tacna, peru. tacna is a hellhole that makes pisco look like my mother{s womb. adding to our delight upon arrival in tacna was that it was 3am and the cold, frightening bus station we had to spend that morning. we survived and took a collective taxi (8 soles) from the bus station to the border with chile. we met a cute chilean girl on the taxi who was extremely nice but a day later wouldn{t return phone calls. was it something i said?

arica was certainly more developed than what we had seen in peru, but it was still a bit dirty. it reminded me of a sunny poland, but with hotter women. we thought that with our white skin we might be able to fit in with the locals. um, no. we were peppered with calls of [tourist[, and chrissy even had some dude go up right in her face and say [rubia![ (blonde). but, it was nice. our hostal (the residential sol de america - which we do not recommend) was okay, but the owner was a douchebag about a lot of stuff, so that annoyed us. while in arica we spent a day at the beach, which was shitty by dominican standards, but was okay overall. tom and i threw the frisbee while chrissy sunbathed. that night chrissy and i threw down at a discoteca. it was expensive - on par with prices at bars in the states (5 bucks a drink), but we arrived pretty good to go anyway. i was having a great time, but for some reason i decided to be an asshole to the bouncer of the place, who apparently had decided he wanted to be an asshole too. he refused to clean up this water that was spilled on the stairs, so i referred to him as a mamaguevo and showed him my finger (you know which one). he then chased me out, and but for chrissy{s charm would have beaten me senseless. but, i made it out alive. we then enjoyed some completos (hotdogs with everything on them) and took a cab home. that was about all the news for arica.

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