Sand and Sea: Northern Chile

Well, after freezing our asses off in the mountains for the last month or so, finally, we made it to the ocean. We came down from San Pedro on a night bus to the town of Iquique. It´s a bit of a tourist trap, being famous for duty free good, glitzy casinos, and Miami style beaches. Kind of reminds me a bit of Brighton in England. The town retains much of the Georgian and Victorian architecture of the 19th century and with a nice wooden boardwalk through the town and along the beach, it made for a great place to relax for a couple days.
After a couple days though, with our destination goal of Peru, we were ready to keep heading North and so after a half a day on a bus going through the never ending colorless desert, we finally arrived in the town of Arica, another beach resort on the border. The town itself really wasn´t anything to write home about (which is ironic, since that´s exactly what I´m doing), and since it is the dead of winter, no one was on the beach, but we found a great hostel near the beach and run by a friendly Kiwi, so we were happy doing nothing for a couple days. But since prices in Chile are several times what they are in the rest of the continent, our time in the country had to come to an end pretty quicky, so we were off to Peru once again. The border was fine - 5 of us packed into a 20 year old taxi, which had to be hot wired to get going, and getting searched for all those bags of cocaine that we might be smuggling. We got a flat tire at the border, which is just one of those little delays that you might expect once back on the Peruvian side. But we were back to the land of cheap food and friendly people, so we were happy to be back.
All in all, I would have to say I was rather disappointed with Chile. Of course I say this having visited only a handful of places in the very North of the region. I realise that a country spanning from the tropics to Antartica has far more to offer than the region I seen, and someday I´m sure I will give it another chance by visiting the moutains of the South. But, if I am honest in my opinion, I have to admit to having little positive to say about the Chilean people. Of course we have met some great people, and the odd person on the street even smiled once in a while. However, as the 40th country that I´ve visited in the last 5 years, it was far and away the most unwelcoming yet. We had heard before coming into the country that many of the locals, paritularly in the traditional desert North, are rather sceptical about the influence of the tourism on their culture, and in many way hold a contempt for foreigners. Unfortunatly, this was exactly how we felt, and it was rare that we came across locals who seemed comfortable with our presence. It was rather frustrating, since the North seemed to have many things interesting to offer.
So as you can imagine, we were happy to return to Peru. We are now in a town called Arequipa, yet another beautiful town steeped in colonial history, cathedrals, and distant volcanoes. It´s one of our final stops before we head home in 10 days so we got lots to see and some hiking to do....