Feliz Cumpleaños a Mi Querido Chile

Cumpleaños feliz
Te deseamos a ti
Feliz cumpleaños Chile
Que los cumplas feliz

 Just ten days after Chile's celebration of 202 years of independence, I celebrated my monthaversary with Chile once again.  I'm up to eight now and my passport now has six Chile stamps for the cops at the border-crossing in Peru to eyeball suspiciously (much like they did last night).  I'm just a tourist, I swear!  

For el dieciocho (Independence day), Jeff and I had three days of vacation from work so we decided to chill in Iquique for the weekend and hit up a few asados with friends.  Then on Monday, we headed up north to Arica in hopes of visiting Lauca National Park  and popping into Bolivia to do a little visa renewing.  Unfortunately the tours were closed for the holiday.  I couldn't bring myself to go to Tacna yet again so we stayed in Arica and tried to make the best of it by exploring some different areas, vising the Fondas and day drinking on the beach (pictured below).

This weekend we returned to Arica with the same intentions but once again plans fell through.  We ended up crossing back into Tacna, Peru for a few hours and then going to Arica for the night.  We decided to forfeit the other half of our flight and took a bus down this morning.  Overall it was pretty disappointing considering the money we spent on the both trips and the fact that we still haven't seen Lake Chungara or anything else in Lauca.  We're thinking about hitting it on our way down from Machu Picchu at the end of October (which by the way is this month...can you believe it?!) if we can swing it.  

On the home-front not much has changed.  I'm still really liking my job although I'm getting considerably fewer hours which is a little worrisome financially.  Our lease is up on the 13th of this month and after that our living plans are still a little up in the air.  We're planning to store our luggage at a friend's house while we're on our trip and move into a new apartment on November 1st.  We have a place in mind but we still have to check it out and figure out the details with our friend who is the owner.  Meanwhile, I'm going a little stir-crazy in Iquique and have recently been thinking about moving back to Santiago.  As I've mentioned before though (and as Jeff loves to remind me) I change my mind and thus my plans a lot so don't hold me two it.  For now, I'm here in Iquique and trying to focus on the short-term plans: get the apartment cleaned up and moved out, find a new place to live and have the most amazing trip/birthday ever. Beyond that, vamos a ver.  Happy October everybody!