Estoy de vuelta

I am back! Right now I´m sitting in the living room of the apartment in Santiago...after being on a bus for 25 hours it feels really nice to be sitting still in one spot, instead of bouncing around in my seat. The bus ride wasn´t that bad except for it broke down in the middle of the night and we had to wait on the side of the road for about two hours or so until it was fixed. Besides that, it went really well. It´s nice to be back and to take a shower in a nice bathroom. Although, I must stay I miss the adventure a little. The last place that we stayed, San Pedro de Atacama was fantastic. The best place we visted on the whole trip. Our hostel (Hostel Jureke) was awesome. It had a ton of people all around the same age from all over the world staying there. So during the days Birgit and I toured the Desert (I have many pics to upload for you to see), saw volcanoes, swam in geyser hot springs, saw the sunset of a valley called El Valle de La Luna, and many other things. Then at night we would cook dinner together and hang out around the fire yapping. I have never heard so many different languages spoken in one place. I learned a lot just from the conversations with these peeps, got to practice my spanish, and learned an Israeli card game called Yaniv. We spent three nights at that hostel before our 25 hour long trek back to Santiago, and I must say I was a little sad to go. It´s always weird saying goodbye to people you know you probably will never see again. Oh well, meeting other people is great, even if it is only for a brief time. Hmm....I guess I haven´t talked at all about the rest of the trip either. Well, I´ll talk more about it when you have pictures to look at...better for the visualization. But brief rundown, before San Pedro, we went to Antofagasta. It´s the second biggest city in Chile, but really wasn´t that big at all. There wasn´t a whole lot going on. We just spent one night there. Explored the city, etc....Then we went to Iquique. We stayed in a nice hostel called Hostel De Catedral. I really liked it....the people who ran it were so sweet, and I referred to the man that ran the front desk as mi abuelito (grandpa). He was the smiliest old man I´ve ever met. We went on tours while we were there to different places in the desert. Saw some neat things like geoglyphs that are thousands of years old (pictures in the side of hills made by ancient peeps...i´ll post pics), visited little pueblos, the desert oasis of Pica, and drank just about the best jugo de mango (mango juice) that i´ve EVER had. Oh, and definitely ate about a TON of Empañadas de queso. We saw a guitar festival too while we were there....it was a nice time for sure. After two night and three days there we left for San Pedro de Atacama...sorry I totally explained this out of order. Like I said, more when I have pics. Alright off I go to do some MUCH NEEDED laundry. I love you and miss you! Ciao!!