La Serena - Iquique

We made an early star this morning and had packed the tent up and walked 1km to the bus stop just in time to get the 9am bus to La Serena! We arrived at about 11.30 after driving once again through the beautiful valley which we were awake enough to enjoy this time and straight away went to see about getting a bus to San Pedro de Atacama. To our dismay and great disappointment there were no seats left on the bus and they were all booked up for the next 3 days :(( We couldnt afford to stay in La Serena for all this time as the hostels are really expensive so we made the decision to head on into Bolivia early and give ourselves some more time there. We got tickets on that evenings bus to Iquique which left at 11.30pm and put our bags in storage so we could go and look round the town for the day. Firstly we found a huge shopping mall where we purchased various food for the journey as it was going to be 19 hours and then as we hadnt eaten since dinner last night I finally managed to persuade Andy that I was in desperate need of nuggets and as there was a McDonald's in the mall we bought some for brunch :)) Leaving the mall behind we headed into the centre of town which really is very pretty with some beautiful buildings and no end of churches and monestaries all in different styles. We enjoyed wandering the streets and looking at the small craft markets until eventually we found the tourist info centre where we asked for help to book a bus ticket from Iquique to La Paz as they couldnt do it at the bus station! They too were unable to help and we were told that we'd have to wait until we got to Iquique and book one from there...providing there was any space left of course (this sounded very Cuba like to us and we weren't hopefull!). We returned after a rest in the park, to the bus station and not really knowing what to do with ourselves for another 5 hours decided to go and look round the other mall which was right next door. We wandered about and sat people watching and even found there was free wifi (until our battery died) for ages, finally deciding that we would have to try pizza cones which were being served in one of the many fast food restaurants. They were only a dollar each and were really quite tasty, we enjoyed them for the novelty too of course and may have a go at making them ourselves one day. Lastly we went to a few department stores that had various camping equipment and eventually found what we'd been looking for, a very small gas stove as the fuel for the one we had been using is useless! The stove is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and so takes up very little space or weight we also found some blow up neck pillows which we'd refused to pay $10 each for in the airport and were here at the bargain price of $4...even better a bargain when she only charged us for 1 making them $2 each!! Happy with our purchases we made our way one more time to the bus terminal and at 11.30 got on our bus which had even more comfortable seats than the last one and before we had barely made it out of the town, our neck pillows were being put to the test and we were both fast asleep!