Iquique to Arica was a long journey but a little boy in the seat in front of us on the bus kept us entertained. He was about 4 years old and kept popping his head over the seat with a red nose and dark sunglasses on. He must have done it about 20 times and each time Gem found it more funny, to the point where she had tears rolling down her face!

When we arrived at the bus station we knew the hostel we wanted to stay in was too far away to walk so we were looking for a taxi when the little boys Mum came running after us. She wanted us to follow her and we did. She took us to her husband who spoke perfect English. He said that he wanted to give us a lift to the hostel and loved the fact that we had come to stay in his home town. So we put our backpacks in his boot, took a seat with the little boy (who was almost wetting himself with the excitement of having two gringos in his car) and set off. The guy is a Chilean miner and he told us where to go in Arica, dropped us off right outside the hostel and even gave us his number in case we needed anything whilst we were there. What a lovely family.

Arica was our last stop in Chile and is more of a boarder town than anything else so there is not much to do, hence not many photos. We walked to the train station as we had read that we might be able to take the train to Peru but the station was closed and we were told trains no longer go that way. We saw the church in town that was built by Eiffel, the same guy who built the Eiffel tower! The whole church is built from metal, looked quite pretty but nothing to write home about. We went to the supermarket and bought some mince meat and tacos and made them back at the hostel. We had an early night as the next day we would need to figure out how to get to Peru by road.