Iquique

After an overnight bus from San Pedro de Atacama, Marissa, Kate, Liz, and I arrived in Iquique at 5:30 am.  We checked into our hostel early and took naps, then woke up a few hours later, showered, ate breakfast, and went out to explore the city.  Iquique is completely different than San Pedro, as it's right on the beach, chilly, windy, and more of a city than San Pedro is.  It was absolutely beautiful, though, and after a few problems with getting bus tickets we went and had a picnic on the beach.  We spent the rest of the day exploring at eating at the market.

Iquique:

Cool graffiti!:

Getting ready for Fiestas Patrias:

The next day, we got up and went... paragliding!  It was absolutely amazing (I'm beginning to realize I use this to explain everything, but it's the truth!).  We spent about 40 min/person flying over the city of Iquique.  It's said that Iquique is the best place in South America to paraglide, so of course we had to jump at the opportunity!

Liz getting ready to jump:

In the air:

We spent the rest of the day going to artisan markets and exploring a little more.  That night, we took yet another overnight bus to Copiapó, Chile (this is the northern city where the 33 miners are stuck underground).  Copiapó was pretty lame... except for me almost getting robbed by a gypsy!  Because our buses were messed up, we all ended up having to take different buses to get back to Santiago.  I was sitting on a bench reading my book when all of a sudden this gypsy lady comes out of nowhere and sits next to me... she starts talking to me in Spanish about money, and I specifically told her that I didn't have anything to give her.  She's said, "Please? I can read your hand!" And then proceeded to take my hand and kept being like, "oh yes, una vida larga" about my palm, and when I tried to grab my hand away she just tightened her grip, takes her other hand, and starts feeling up my pocket on my left hip. She was like, "oooh, I feel money in there" and starts to take the things out of my pocket (which by the way was just a bobby pin and a bus ticket) and I got SO freaked out and told her to stop bothering me and to go away!  I finally grabbed my hand away and I told her to stop bothering me a few more times, when she finally went away but then went and huddled with this elderly gypsy and her small child, who were looking at me and pointing... I got soo freaked out and I grabbed all my stuff and ran to a cafe. I got harassed by a few more people who tried to read my palms but after that I just didn't make eye contact with people.

Copiapó:

That night, after meeting up with my friends and their different buses, we took yet another overnight bus back to Santiago.  Out of the 8 nights we were up north, we successfully only spent 3 of those in hostels... I was dirty and tired by the time I got back, but I was happy to say that I did everything I wanted to without spending too much money... haha!