Iquique

My first bus break down in almost 125 hours of bus journeys. 2 hours into the trip there was some electrical problem so we turned back to the last small town and waited a few hours for them to find us a new bus and for it to arrive from Calama. Had said ¨Hi¨ briefly to the only other gringos on the bus an english couple Chris and Miki, but the breakdown meant we had plenty of time for a chat and even watched some of Happy Gilmore at the ¨dairy¨. The rest of the trip was uneventful, but due to the delay we arrived late in Iquique and went to the nearest hostel we could find (literally a block away from the bus station) called Catedral cos it was right across the road from the cathedral! I had hoped to do some laundry while here as I had collected quite a lot of dust in the desert but being a sunday they weren´t open. Checked out the town and the beach (wrong season for swimming hopefully when there´s more people here they clean up the rubbish) had an amazing lunch - cerviche (marinated fish salad), fish soup (all sorts of shellfish bones etc) and fried fish with a salad. As well as that had a great fresh mango and orange juice from a nearby stall. But I decided I´d seen quite enough of Iquique and didn´t need another day there so headed for the bus station. It is a beach resort town with a great central plaza and main street paved and lots of trees and sculptures but the rest of the town could do with a serious paint job. The pelicans were very cool also but best you see the photos, coming asap.