we left Santiago on a rainy friday morning. got on the twenty four hour bus to iquique. this sounds pretty horrible but it is actually not as bad as you would think. the seats are called semi cama which means they fold at a forty five degree angle and there are also leg and footrests. not so bad. we sat through about a million movies. some of which were good, and some of which were horrible. -the marine- starring a wwf wrestler is pretty bad but much more entertaining than the art house flick -perfume-which allegedly is a decent book, but as a movie…well pessimo

we arrived in iquique the next day and Carol had prepared a gigantic almuerzo. it was great to see her again, but it was weird because eight years ago she was in college and living at home and now she´s married and making these fantastic lunches. Her husband is a great guy and they are really cute together. we napped a bit after eating and took off strolling through iquique. Iquique is full of really old colonial wooden buildings. things have changed a bit since I was there last. They built up the beach a bit to make it more tourist friendly and they closed the main colonial street to car traffic and put a lot of salt sculptures up.
this is the view from Carol and Rodrigo´s apt.

the next day we woke up early and left for La Tirana. It´s a town of about eight hundred people, but once a year, they have a huge religious festival and roughly two hundred thousand people pass through over a course of about two weeks.
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we´re going to easter island!!!!!

before we left, we looked into tickets and they were a lot. They´re still a lot if you buy them here but significantly cheaper. we have to make some weird adjustments to our travel plans to pull it off, but it seems worth it. we´re still trying to figure some things out. Here´s what we got so far.

leave tomorrow on a 26 hour bus for iquique. then go to the festival de la tirana. google it. it looks crazy. spend some time with Carolina and her husband (Fernando´s sister, another old friend). overnight bus to calama / a couple days in San Pedro de Atacama. total desert. 5 hours of electricity per day. my favorite place in the world.

return on a plane.

then hop on a plane to easter island on july 24. look at moai, ride mountain bikes, chill on the beach (78 degrees, water is comparable, not the greatest but much warmer than what we got going on here). return on the 30th. and then spend the remaining time split between santiago, vina del mar, and valparaiso.

we´re going to bag a visit to la serena which was supposed to be on the way back from calama but really that´s a small price to pay.

if you are too lazy to check the flickr page. here are some pics from buenos aires and a few from here.

cementerio recoleta

madonna´s grave. well not madonna but the lady she played in that movie Evita.

in a japanese garden in buenos aires

in front of the casa rosada -president´s house (still buenos aires)

La Boca

last one from argentina (until I upload everything at home). an orquestra de tango. they were really good. I bought a cd from them. it´s awesome.

the view from Fernando and Sergio´s fancy apt. this is taken from the window of the guest room.

the hilton santiago…just kidding. it´s their apt!

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ipodomatic, originally uploaded by geekpunk.org.

Ipod vending at oakland air port… What no iphone in a3.

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Big trees, originally uploaded by geekpunk.org.

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A city for the single, originally uploaded by geekpunk.org.

With the exception of this rad climbing gym on hayes valley sf is really a town for the single…

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(Just so you know, Jim is making me write this so he can watch the tour.)
After watching people freak out about the snow, we went back to our apartment, cleaned, and got ready to leave the following morning. The people that we were renting from showed up about 20 minutes early, which was also 5 minutes after we realized that Jim had lost his ATM card. So there was mass confusion for a few minutes as we tried to simultaneously finish packing and look for the credit card at the same time. I stopped panicking when I realized that Spiderman had told us a million times that we´re not responsible for fraudulent chaaaaarges. We decided to go to the McCafe so that we could check the bank account: Since NOTHING in Argentina opens before 11, there weren´t any other options, and there’s something really funny about getting free internet access in a McDonalds. No one had made any charges, but that could be because none of the stores were open yet. (Jim canceled the card; it´s not a big deal.)

Then we went to the airport. International flights involve a lot of beauracracy in Argentina: First, you wait in a huge line to check in, then you wait in line to pay the departure tax, after which you wait in line to pass through passport control. Next, there´s a line to have your baggage screened, and finally, customs. When we checked in, we were told that we´d be leaving from Puerta A. Then, while we were waiting, we kept checking the monitors to see what gate we´d be assigned…and there was no information. Nothing about a gate, or anything about Puerto A, so we thought that there was just a huge delay in deciding which gate we´d use. And reps from the different airlines kept circulating, announcing flights that were about to leave and searching for missing passengers, so we didn´t worry. Then, I looked up and saw that our flight´s label had changed from “on-time” to “last call” without a gate assignment. So we started running around trying to figure out where the hell our plane was. Jim stopped a flight attendent, who looked at us as though we were truly idiots, and truly screwed, and informed us that our plane was getting ready to take off on the other side of the airport. (She used this tone of voice that seemed to imply that the airport was so big that we would have had to start hiking the day before in order to make the flight.)

I´ll pause so that you can all picture my out-of-shape ass trying to keep up with Jim, the triathlete, as we ran through the airport. (Actually, it wasn´t a very flattering picture, so don´t try to imagine it.)

After sprinting, we got to Puerto A, ran breathlessly onto the waiting bus and….sat for another 15 minutes, while everyone else who was confused as to the difference between a gate and a puerto arrived.

The flight itself was pretty uneventful. Since the tour broadcast is almost over for the day, I´ll let Jim fill you in on our arrival, how nice Sergio and Fernando are, and how I got drunk and totally started laughing hysterically at some poor guy on the elevator last night.

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Sf ridding dirty, originally uploaded by geekpunk.org.

So for he most prt not too many fixie rats… And most people wear helmets.. This one as outside a wine bar

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Were not in bawlmer anymore, originally uploaded by geekpunk.org.

I mean it was ok and all… But it as served on ice… W/ no old bay… Thats just wrong!

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so it snowed in buenos aires yesterday.

people freaked out because it hasn snowed since 1918. everyone broke out their camera phones and everyone was running around trying to do the things that they think people do when it snows. snowflakes on tongues etc. there were videos on the news of people making the lamest snowballs and snowmen in the world.

i tried to take pictures of everyone taking pictures with their cameraphones. there is this hilarious cameraphone commercial here where everyone is just jumping up and down chanting”Foooooto foto foto foto”
over and over and jen and I cant stop doing it but yesterday it seemed totaly appropriate

since it has been super cold we cheesed out and saw some movies. quick review:

the contract - pretty bad. held my attention the whole time. but pretty bad. i like morgan freeman and I like john cusack. that said. i like ice cube and ice t but TRESSPASS was still pretty bad.

ratatouille - we managed to find a version in english with subtitles as opposed to dubbed in “neutral spanish” or dubbed in “argentine spanish” (aLL of which are avaialble)

funny as expected. oddly enough. riveting action scenes.

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jollibee, originally uploaded by geekpunk.org.

Holden takes in some of cherokees phillipines… Childhood… Memories…

Daly city california

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