She Left as She Came; in the Rain and with Too Much Luggage

Sunset south of Iquique (taken from the window of my bus)

After innumerable warnings about the quantity of rain in the south (supposedly regardless of season), I experienced exactly two days of it.  First there was the beautiful misty morning that greeted me upon my arrival to Puerto Varas.  Then, after almost a month of uncharacteristically high temperatures, the south of Chile granted me one more beautiful day of rain in Temuco before I set off on a 25-hour bus ride northward through the driest desert on earth. 

My decision to leave Pucón was a combination of push and pull factors.  For now, I´ll keep it classy and leave the details of those push factors off of the internet.  In all honestly, I really would have loved to spend more time in the south but, to put it nicely, the stars just weren't alined this time.  I will say that met some genuinely amazing people during my trip and I have no doubt that I'll be back to visit them before my time in Chile is up.  However, for the time-being, my place is in the North.

It seems strange to call a place home when, a year ago, I barely knew it existed.  However, upon my return to Iquique, there was no denying it; I was home.  I've done my fair share of running around since I left Iquique in late December and, after six weeks of being away (and 95 hours on a bus), it feels sweet to be back.  For all the things I love about traveling and being in new and exciting places, there's something undeniably comfortable about familiar places and faces.  After running into several friends on the street this evening and popping in to visit a few more, my decision to return to Iquique was reaffirmed.  It feels good to be with my peeps.  Some reassuring news from work also helped sweeten the deal.

For now, it looks like my near future will involve a little waiting and thus require a bit of patience but I've become pretty accustomed to that.  Unfortunately February is vacation season in Chile which means everything runs just slightly worse than usual.  Luckily, I have surf, sun and good people to keep me distracted while things get organized.  The picture is a little foggy but it looks like my career in mining will be taking off after-all. I, as usual, will keep ya posted.