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home sweet home

we heard about a ghost town on the way to iquique. turned out to be one of the most amazing stops on my trip so far! the town used to mine nitrates for fertilizers but when that industry went bust, the town was deserted. now, you pay 1000 pesos for an attraction that requires no upkeep (where does the money go?). but I'm SO not complaining!

as a collage artist, the entire town was an art gallery - chiping paint, broken glass, rusting metal like lace, collapsing buildings, dust everywhere, garbage, poetic graffiti, broken down cars. and the best part was most buildings are open and you can walk into most everything. if I wasn't traveling (with a tiny backpack) I would have left with armloads for future art. we wandered for hours, took loads of pics (hopefully get these loaded soon). THIS was an inspiring day.

made a quick stop into iquique - what a beautiful city! you arrive on top of a 500m sand dune overlooking the city. we drove to zofri - what's supposed to be a cheap market. it turned out to be a chilean shopping mall but it was nice to be surrounded by so many material things, hear xmas music in spanish and see decorations. I keep forgetting christmas is coming.

we lost track of time, realized we're now getting back to arica around 10:30, not sure if the rental company is open. I teach Guy the expression ¨drive like a bat out of hell¨ and that's what we do on the panamerican. in the end we find the dudes from our rental place, return one grubby dusty car, check back into our hostel and arrogantly revel in how the whole trip turned out in our favor....!

tonight it's off to san pedro de atacama and back into the high altitude. from there, I'm still considering argentina. good bye beaches, good bye hot humid.

as consolation, I'm about to buy my round-the-world tickets for the next leg of this traveling thing. it's turning into over a year more starting in bangkok, april 2006, ending in eastern europe, june 2007. I'll just have to get my tropics fix somewhere along that route...

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