a rolling stone gathers no moss

Well we made it out of Cusco, barely, and caught a bus straight (14 hours) to Tacna the Chilean boarder town. We took the fancy bingo bus and I won BINGO. Unfortunately the prize was a ticket back to Cusco where I was not going so Lizzie kindly gave it to the other woman who won for her son. She was delighted and we passed out watching a horrible movie called Bunny House about playboy bunnies and sororities. We changed buses in Arequipa and got on a crap bus that played the movie Taken about 2 young girls travelling alone and then get kidnapped and drugged and put into a prostitution ring and Liam Neeson kicks ass and gets his daughter back and the other one dies. Fucked up movie to play. We got to Tacna and found that there was a strike on the way to Arica and we had to take a train to get there. For the record this is the third strike we have encountered on our journey.
We went to the "train station" which looked like a giant green barn and waited to buy our tickets for the alleged train. We ate guava ice cream sold to us from a woman on an ice cream bicycle with her 7 year old son with a neck tattoo. Lizzie ventured down the street and came back with 2 waters and an 11 pack of Pall Mall lights. She claims this was the only kind they sold. We smoked them, they were horrible. We finally boarded the "train" which was a single BOXCAR made when the boxcar children where still in existance and the petticoat was in style. We found seats and crammed in the back with a bunch of chilean women who looked like Real Housewives of Arica. There were 2 windows and about 65 people on the boxcar. I had swamp ass and Lizzie played nice and we made it alive.
We got to Arica and chatted with 4 Isreali guys who were going on a post army trip for 6 months with their final destination at Carnivale. They were nice and we got our shit and found the hostel and made our way to dinner. We ate on this promenade type street with 4 high schoolers playing classical music and i ate amazing fajitas that had flavor unlike any food we had prior. Chile is much more modern than Peru or Ecuador and the people don´t look at us quite as strange. Things are more expensive and they have McDonalsds and text messaging but they still don´t accept any american dollars for exchange that show the slightest signs of wear. Bizarre. We spent another day in Arica. I caught a cold and we did nothing of significance.
We left that night again almost missing our bus and I was sick and Lizzie was crazy and we were off to San Pedro de Atacama in the desert. We were told this was a direct bus here (14 hours?). We were awoken some time in the middle of the night to get off and bring our bags to a wooden rack and we stood there and then 15 minutes later got back on. Lizzie was pissed. We got on the bus and the lady in front of us was missing (Sumira) and her friends in the other seats assumed the was downstairs...I guess sitting in someone elses seat. We got to Calama and we had to switch buses and only then did her friends realize that the bus left her in the luggage stop in the middle of nowhere at 4am. Well 20 minutes later Sumira showed up and looked quite horrible and she was pisssssssed. We got on the bus, came here, walked around in the heat, found a cafe playing Barry White and Radiohead and ate breakfast then found a hostel and then took an evening tour of the Moon Valley.

This is Lizzie´s epilogue:
We did a tour of Valle de la Luna, our fellow travelers were scary. A french woman with a mustache, cat eyed sunglasses, lipstick streaming from her chin to her nostrils and a sexy pair of pink cankles exposed by her wildy print capris. We had to break free.......
As soon as the van stopped we ran down the dunes blasting Sea of Cortez, total moment.
Our second day of the desert sessions started out with A LOT of wine, a little too much wine to have before 3pm in fact.
So basically we bought a tour while I was still inebriated and a few hours later we found ourselves in the middle of the desert staring at salt lakes.
But it was chill because our tour guide looked like charles manson, so we dug it............
Then we watched to sunset and the salt made everything do the shimmy shimmy shimmer dance, it looke like Alaska expect in the desert. Ally listened to Jimi Hendrix and danced, I listened to Leonard Cohen and felt like crying, two very important things to do in life.

All in all Chile is turning out to be a good idea.