Our next destination after San Pedro was Iquique, a costal town in northern Chile. Our purpose was to see the Celebración de la Virgen del Carmen, a yearly festival in nearby La Tirana that Carrie was hell-bent on visiting. So it is that we arrived in Iquique at around 5:30 in the morning with no clue as to where to find a hostel. Unlike San Pedro, Iquique is a huge city, and rather intimidating at the sketchy bus station at this hour in the morning. We were prepared to wait until the sun came out before venturing out in search of accommodations, but a sweet woman who'd been on the bus with us offered to give us a ride when her brother came to pick her up. As her brother was a local, he knew of some hostels that would be available at the time.
This turned out to be a rather lucky break as, due to the festival, there were almost no vacancies in the city and we would have probably wandered for hours before finding an available room. We thanked him and his sister profusely as they dropped us off at an available hostel and made our way inside. The woman who was working at the time told us the prices and, after we payed for the duration of our stay, showed us to a room, where we unpacked and then lay down to take a nap until daytime. At around 9:30 in the morning, however, we had a knock on the door - the maid was not aware that we had just arrived and was told to knock on the doors of people who were expected to leave that day so that they would not miss the 10 am check-out time. Nice. After we cleared up this misunderstanding, she asked us to switch rooms, as there was a new double available, and we'd been using a triple because it was the only vacant room at the time. So, we moved our stuff to the next room, napped for a bit more, and then left to explore the city. On our way out, the woman at the door (different from the night before) asked us about payment. We told her we had already paid and asked if she needed to see the receipt. No no, she replied, that was fine. And so we left.
We spent an hour or so at a nearby internet cafe - Carrie talking with Hugo over MSN, and me checking email and uploading photos. Afterwards, we had a delicious meal at a tiny restaurant near the ocean, run by a very sweet woman and her daughter, who told us a bit about the festival in La Tirana. According to them, the best time to be there was the night the 16th (that evening) at midnight, as that was when all the fireworks went off. We'd previously intended to go the next day, so this changed our plans a bit, but it was very helpful to talk with them. They also warned us against thieves at the festival and in Iquique during the week of the festival. They suggested that we carefully guard our money and cameras on our persons at all times and that we always say that we are from Valparaíso (and not neighboring Viña del Mar, where Carrie lived, because it was considered to be a rich community). After our delicious lunch, we went to the coast to sit and write for a while until it chilled and got a bit windy, at which point we moved our writing to a cafe a couple of blocks away.
As we sat talking and drinking tea, two guys from a nearby table moved and asked if they could sit with us. We agreed, and they asked us where we were from. With the advice of the restaurant owner in mind, we replied that we were students in Valparaíso, and received a rather unexpected answer from them: "No, WE'RE from Valparaíso, where are you from?" We laughed at being so automatically caught (as if a blonde and a very pale brunette could pass as latinas...) and acquiesced that we were just studying abroad, but were from the U.S.. These two Chileans, though originally from Valparaíso, were doing a year-long project in Iquique as part of their Engineering program in Valpo. We talked for a while about Valparaíso and travel in general, and then went our separate ways. (The two invited us to go dancing that night but, seeing as we had only hiking boots on our feet and intentions to be in La Tirana that night, we declined).
Upon returning to the hostel, we were once accosted, by a third woman, regarding payment. Rather annoyed, we responded that we'd already paid and then had to argue with her for a while, as she insisted that we were short one night, referring to the morning we arrived. We explained that we'd arrived early that same morning, not the night before and after a bit more arguing, she left us alone.
Rather untrusting of the hostel at this point, we locked our bags under our beds before leaving for La Tirana, bundled up with our cameras and keys inside the waistbands of our pants (not an attractive look for women, as it turns out). And we were off to La Tirana (see that entry for more detail).
When we returned, we were again harassed about money before allowed to go back to our room. Then next morning, we were awoken again at 9:30, though we weren't scheduled to leave until the next morning. Carrie went back to sleep, but I stayed up to write. As we had no electrical outlets in our room, I went to a chair in the hallway to write and plugged my camera battery charger into an outlet a few feet above my head as I sat and wrote postcards. A few hours later, when I got up to leave, my camera battery was gone. Confused and flustered, I looked around for a while before returning to our room. Carrie was still in bed, so I fished around in my bag for a map of Iquique, intent on going to the tech-mall nearby to buy a new camera battery. Carrie heard me rustling around and asked what had happened. I explained the scenario and she asked if I had left it at all. I replied that I had not, and that no guests had passed that morning (though the maid had walked by). Carrie went into bad-cop mode (normally my job, but I was rather shaken by having lost an item from 2 feet above my head), got dressed, and marched downstairs to talk to the woman in charge.
A few minutes later, she came back with my camera battery. Apparently the woman had taken it to "guardar" (hold on to/protect) it, as she claimed no one had been near the battery. Now, I don't know how she managed to take it without my noticing, or how she possibly managed to not see me, but at least I got my camera battery back (not worth much at all, but as it was my only one, rather important to my ability to take photos).
After this little adventure, we spent the day relaxing, walking around the town, visiting the market, and using the internet cafe. Naturally, upon returning, we had to deal with another woman regarding money (this is the 5th supervisor we've had an argument with, at this point). This time I took the angry position of explaining, slowly and firmly, the (very simple) mathematics involved in the situation and showing the receipt of payment that matched that math perfectly. Annoyed, this woman let us go, and we left the next morning without allowing for more argument. Onward to Peru.
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