Adios Arica

The surf was great fun at El Gringo, not as life-threatening as it looked the day before, and only an Argentinian guy and me out for an hour or so, I caught plenty of waves and got a couple of nice tubes, so I was happy to leave my Chilean surfing experience at that, but I’ll definitely try and come back to Chile, and particularly Iquique, for some more surf.

We have now left Arica, and Chile, to get across the border you jump in a special international taxi, normally an old school beast of a car with a massive boot and bench seats so they can squeeze in 5 passengers at a time.

You get mobbed before you even get out of the normal taxi from the hostel at the international taxi area, they all haggle amongst each other so you just look non-commital for a few minutes and the price halves from 4,000 to 2,000 Pesos (about £2.50) each, then choose the least dodgy looking taxi guy who carries your bag off to his car.

We got some honest looking bloke who had a Ford Taurus, we were leaving on a Sunday so we had the option to wait for our guy to bag 3 more tourists (could take a long time with the competition and lack of Sunday travellers) or pay 10,000 Pesos ourselves and get going straight away with a bit more room in the car.

Having only about 15,000 Pesos left, and not needing them anymore, we went for it and got on the road, the drivers go as fast as they dare to the first customs point, undertaking and drastic slow-downs for speed bumps were all part of the seatbelt-less joyride to the first stop.

On the Chilean side we just jump out and accompany our driver to the passport stamp booth and give them some slips of paper which we filled in when we arrived, miraculously Charlie had kept them safe and we were through in a couple of minutes, just before a bus-load of people arrived and had to queue to get through.

Next stop is the Peruvian immigration bit, passports, stamps, scan your bags, wait for 10 minutes whilst the car gets a once over, then back in for the 30km trip to Tacna, welcome to Peru.

Tacna looks like a typical border town, we only saw two of the bus stations.  We had been told some horror stories about Peruvian buses, and were told to go for a “Cruz del Sur” bus if possible, so we did, but they didn’t have any tickets for Cusco, it was full, the only option was Arequipa.

Another Bus Station later and we had secured the last two seats, unbeknownst to us, in the luxury Primero floor of the bus to Cusco, I am currently using the on-bus wi-fi to post this entry, and have enjoyed a nice chicken sandwich, sausage roll and bun for tea.

Only another 10 hours of bus journey left before arriving in Cusco, from where we are going to launch our assualt on Machu Picchu, hopefully it’ll go smoothly.

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That was last night, I am now continuing the post in our hostel in Cusco, will post a picture of the view in a while, we’re going to walk up to a higher point to get some pic’s later.

We’ve got our tickets for Machu Picchu, which we’ll be going to see it on Thursday, getting the 05:30 train from nearby Ollantaytambo to hopefully get up there with the first wave of hikers, and maybe get into the limited entry village the other side of the main one.

Some photo updates will probably follow when I have some time tonight.