38 Days

Buses. I hate buses. I've never been a huge fan of them, but this trip has really sealed the deal. At some point, I'll have to figure out exactly how much time we've spent on buses. I suspect it will be around two weeks.

Since I told you about how much fun we had in Salta, we've had less fun. We took a bus back across the border, a trip that was made anything better than marginal only by the fact that we were sitting next to two attractive girls who were very European, if you know what I mean. We arrived in San Pedro de Atacama, which is an amazingly horrible little outpost of civilization in the middle of the Atacama Desert in Chile, which is the driest in the world. While San Pedro used to be a critically important trading post for thousands of years, the last 20 years have seen it become a perverted tourist-money-sucking rotted-out shell of its former self, with two-bit shmoes standing outside of terrible restaurants and tour agencies hawking overpriced menus in your face. I really didn't like it. We took two excursions while we were there. To be completely honest, I feel like the whole thing was a big waste of money.

The first excursion was to Valle de la Luna and Valle de la Muerte (Moon and Death Valleys, respectively). Go see Dylan's post for pictures. It was fine. We saw a nice sunset, and we walked down an enormous sand dune by taking our shoes off and letting each step take us up to our knees in soft brown sand.

The second excursion was allegedly to the Atacama Desert's famous altiplano lakes, which are situated thousands of meters above sea level. While we did in fact go to the lakes, the entire lake visit part of the trip was only one hour of the ten hour excursion, for which we each paid the handy price of CLP$31,500, or US$60. We went to a forgettable town called Túcuman - twice - and also saw some flamingos at a different lake in the middle of the Atacama's enormous salt flat. This last part was really cool, I admit. The excursion basically needed to be six hours shorter and 40 dollars cheaper and only inclusive of the lakes.

All told, I felt dirty and abused coming out of San Pedro, and I am putting it on my list of places to not return to.

Then we took another bus, this time from San Pedro overnight to Arica, Chile. We were only in Arica in order to get to Tacna, Peru - the Tijuana to Arica's San Diego - which we needed to get to in order to get to our real destination, Arequipa, Peru. We got to Arica at six in the morning. Only the Pullman Bus office was open for business at that hour, so we booked (against Dylan's better judgment) tickets straight to Arequipa via Tacna. And by tickets I mean we handed them money and got nothing in return, except for customs forms that I had to fill out twice because they gave me a red pen to do it in the first time, then told me afterwards that I wasn't allowed to use a red pen. Blue-inked customs forms in hand, a large gentleman who I will call Big Juan escorted us out of the terminal, down the street, into a dark parking lot, and finally to our waiting chariot. Apparently, no buses make the Arica-Tacna border crossing, so it is necessary to take a taxi. By "taxi", I mean this man was using his personal car as a taxi. This thing was an old school boat-sized Chevrolet that had been dumped in Peru after someone in the US decided it was worthless. The speedometer did not work at all, which was fine since it was in miles per hour anyway. The car did not require a key - turning the ignition by hand was sufficient. The odometer had been frozen at 212,000+ miles for God-knows-how-long and every possible engine warning light was on. While the dashboard obviously indicated that the car was an automatic, the man was using a clutch to drive, pushing the automatic gearshift in random directions to make the car move. The driver's side door did not have a handle, and the passenger side door may or may not have been held together by duct tape. To make things even more comfortable, this piece of sh*tmobile was taking a full load that morning, with three Brits in the back and Dylan and I in front along with Big Juan. I was in the middle of the front seat, meaning I traveled the vast majority of the 60+ km journey with my knees at eye level and the left side of my face within Big Juan's breathing range.

We finally got to Tacna, which is like saying that we finally got to Camden, NJ. What a shithole. We boarded a bus that left at 9:30am, which is more than I can say for the friendly Brits we were with in the Chevy, who were apparently given the old bait-and-switch and had to wait all day until their buses left in the afternoon. We were assigned the two seats in the very front of the top level of the bus, meaning that we kind of felt like we were in a virtual reality simulator, looking out of windows in front of us and to either side. This seemed great, until I realized that we were driving through uninterrupted, cloudless, 90-degree desert. Dylan insisted on keeping the shades open so that he could see all the sand. Meanwhile, I slowly roasted in a pool of my own perspiration as the sun shone directly on me while Dylan slept like a babe in the shade.

We got to Arequipa at 5pm and made our way to our hostel. At some point, between the altitude changes, lack of normal food, utter fatigue, heat sickness, potential food poisoning from the "meat" empanada that someone sold us on the bus, and just general unhealthiness, I contracted an acute stomach pain accompanied by a brief bout of the shakes that prevented me from eating a full dinner and necessitated an uncomfortable 3-hour nap from 6-9pm.

Finally healthy, off buses, and back in a normal city today, I've had a nice time in Arequipa. The architecture is notable especially for its use of sillar, which is a ubiquitous white stone that has been used for construction here for hundreds of years. We explored the delightfully vibrant colors of the Convent of St. Catherine, which is one of the most important religious buildings in all of South America. Dylan will be posting pictures of this at some point soon - stay tuned. On a Rough Guide recommendation, we ventured off the beaten path via taxi to a restaurant a few kilometers outside of the city center. Solid recommendation. In a shady patio, accompanied by live music and pisco sours and surrounded by locals, we enjoyed some pretty tasty seafood, although Dylan would probably say that his meal required more effort than it justified. As soon as I finish typing, we're going to see Arequipa's beautiful cathedral all lit up at night. I'm glad to be in Peru, though I will definitely miss Argentina and Chile, San Pedro and vicious-dog-infested Maipú excluded.

We leave tomorrow night for Cusco. On a bus.