Buses, busses, bussses.

Holy crap, hooray!! We´re in Chile!
Last night we wheeled in to Arica, the northern most town in Chile, right next to the border. Only about 350 hours by bus to Santiago!! Okay, maybe I exaggerate a little, but boyoboy, is this country ever long and skinny. We aim to be in La Serena for La Navidad. It´s about 600 km north of Santiago, so it´s pretty close. This place (Arica) is a lot like Banff (except that its a beach town in the middle of an enormous desert). It´s choked with tourists (mostly wealthy Bolivians) spending loads of plata (precious metals, slang for cash) on Christmas crap. We had to take a day off from the buses, though. Tomorrow we head off down the antipodean string bean that is Chile.