Explosions and Buses

We have now journeyed from Iquique Chile to Arequipa Peru, deciding that doing the trip in stages would preserve our sanity a little better we paused a night in Tacna. We departed Iquique early on a bus of the standard we had become accustomed to, but this would only get us to Arica. At the bus terminal we were deluged with offers from  taxi drivers to go to Tacna and beyond. The trust between Chile and Peru could be seen by looking around the town with its large military bases. 

We braved finding a colectivo (a shared Taxi) and made our way to Tacna, a contrast in technique occurred, the Chile officials had bare offices with a computer that they scanned the passports while Peru had a huge shiny building but the passports were entered manually and we suspect the metal detectors and xray machines were just for show (ellen walking though the metal detector with her backpack on containing scissors, cables, laptop - didn’t trigger a beep – although she was asked to put the bag through the xray machine, nor was our organic food noted on the xray machine.)

We spent the night in Tacna where we were awoken by something that sounded distinctly like a bomb going off.  A short while later the sirens that you associate with air raids started.  Followed by the sound of army marching songs.  “Has there been an invasion… Should we hide in the hotel?” but no much later in the day we found our that a gas plant exploded.  The departures terminal of Tacna we discovered where the people hoping to become auctioneers go.  The rapid loud, and astonishingly clear call of “Arequipa” by those trying to attract customers was incessant.  After a very uneventful (but much getting out of passports) bus trip we have arrived in Arequipa.

Here we did a most unusual thing for us.  Not feeling like traipsing around the second biggest city in Peru at 8pm with all our gear we went to the tourist information bureau and picked one of the three hotels they had on offer and got them to organise a taxi for us (the taxi paid on commission rather than by us).  This turned out to be an excellent move.  The hostel was one of the nicest hostels we’ve stayed in.  It was an old colonial house and our room had 14 foot ceilings covered in incredibly ornate moulding.  There were even some very nice touches, like the speakers for an MP3 player with the sign “Because music is important in life please attach your MP3 player or iPod.”  The only downside was that they had no free matrimonial rooms so we didn’t really want to stay there for more than one night.   So this morning we went for a walk and found another place to stay, not quite so nice but still a big step up from our Chilean accommodation, or that in Tacna.