After a relatively quiet NYE I jumped on the next bus outta town to the north. Again I had a very comfortable trip listening to music and watching the landscape turn to desert. The Atacama is the driest desert on Earth, receiving an average of just 1mm of rain per year with some parts having never recorded rainfall.
" Bloody drought¡ That´s what it is. I remember when I was a boy it used to rain all day, every day. And now¿ Nothin´ Yeah, we´ve been in this drought for 30 years mate¡ "
So I´m glad I decided not to stop in northern Chile, because I don´t really like the desert. On the bus trip I luckily got to watch ´What Happens In Vegas´ again. This time though, it wasn´t a pirated copy of a Russian overdub in hilariously off-the-mark voices subtitled in Spanish, like on the journey from Puerto Madryn to Rio Gallegos. As such the 32 hour marathon journey passed relatively quickly. Towards the end we passed through gigantic desert valleys - there is nothing like this in Australia. There is literally no vegetation on huge steep hills dropping to a wide swathe of sand and rock within a trickle of green in the middle. The road snaked precariously in and out of these spectacular valleys, and at times I needed to pray to Veng-juho to ensure our safe arrival.
Upon arrival in dirt-poor (but certainly not dust-poor) Arica I quickly transferred to my hostel and hit the beach. Arica is one of Chile´s best surf spots, and I soon saw why. Even on the popular beach in town beautiful curlers came in all afternoon and I washed away my cares body-boarding in the seaweed-choked water with thousands of other international and Chilean holiday-makers. It was fantastic, and I soon decided to stay some more time.
Back at the hostel I challenged and lost to the resident table-tennis champ Roberto, a lovely guy, who has been made famous in his own hostel by the hundreds of graffitied thank-you notes on the walls. Most of them make liberal use of the words ´gay´and ´fuck´, for some reason. Indeed, the included breakfast is advertised as having ´no fucking schedule´. The next day I made full use of the beach morning and afternoon and the following day prepared to cross in Peru for Lima. This was not exactly straight forward.
OK - taxi to the bus terminal, find a collective taxi going to Tacna, check the price, get told I have to buy a ´boarding ticket´, whatever, wait 20min while the driver takes our ID´s to check in before we leave, drive to the Chilean exit, wait in line then get grilled for not having the exit ticket that the caribinero at El Bolson didn´t give me, passport stamped, drive to the Peruvian side, wait again, passport stamped, bags checked and scanned, wait, drive to Tacna, pay the cabbie, organise my bus to Lima that day, take out money, pay, pass time in Tacna (including yummy crepes), check passport again, get my bag and person metal detected before getting on the bus¡¡, hand over my pen-knife (for security... "Security¡¡"), drive a bit out of Tacna into Peru to get out again, get bags searched and scanned again, drive a bit more, stop, cop gets on bus, takes all our IDs, checks and returns them, finish the rest of the journey rather uncomfortably through more insanely dry desert complete with insane people actually living and working there, get pen-knife back, get off, eat, catch cab to hostel in Lima and lose my credit card somewhere along the way.
" Bloody drought¡ That´s what it is. I remember when I was a boy it used to rain all day, every day. And now¿ Nothin´ Yeah, we´ve been in this drought for 30 years mate¡ "
So I´m glad I decided not to stop in northern Chile, because I don´t really like the desert. On the bus trip I luckily got to watch ´What Happens In Vegas´ again. This time though, it wasn´t a pirated copy of a Russian overdub in hilariously off-the-mark voices subtitled in Spanish, like on the journey from Puerto Madryn to Rio Gallegos. As such the 32 hour marathon journey passed relatively quickly. Towards the end we passed through gigantic desert valleys - there is nothing like this in Australia. There is literally no vegetation on huge steep hills dropping to a wide swathe of sand and rock within a trickle of green in the middle. The road snaked precariously in and out of these spectacular valleys, and at times I needed to pray to Veng-juho to ensure our safe arrival.
Upon arrival in dirt-poor (but certainly not dust-poor) Arica I quickly transferred to my hostel and hit the beach. Arica is one of Chile´s best surf spots, and I soon saw why. Even on the popular beach in town beautiful curlers came in all afternoon and I washed away my cares body-boarding in the seaweed-choked water with thousands of other international and Chilean holiday-makers. It was fantastic, and I soon decided to stay some more time.
Back at the hostel I challenged and lost to the resident table-tennis champ Roberto, a lovely guy, who has been made famous in his own hostel by the hundreds of graffitied thank-you notes on the walls. Most of them make liberal use of the words ´gay´and ´fuck´, for some reason. Indeed, the included breakfast is advertised as having ´no fucking schedule´. The next day I made full use of the beach morning and afternoon and the following day prepared to cross in Peru for Lima. This was not exactly straight forward.
OK - taxi to the bus terminal, find a collective taxi going to Tacna, check the price, get told I have to buy a ´boarding ticket´, whatever, wait 20min while the driver takes our ID´s to check in before we leave, drive to the Chilean exit, wait in line then get grilled for not having the exit ticket that the caribinero at El Bolson didn´t give me, passport stamped, drive to the Peruvian side, wait again, passport stamped, bags checked and scanned, wait, drive to Tacna, pay the cabbie, organise my bus to Lima that day, take out money, pay, pass time in Tacna (including yummy crepes), check passport again, get my bag and person metal detected before getting on the bus¡¡, hand over my pen-knife (for security... "Security¡¡"), drive a bit out of Tacna into Peru to get out again, get bags searched and scanned again, drive a bit more, stop, cop gets on bus, takes all our IDs, checks and returns them, finish the rest of the journey rather uncomfortably through more insanely dry desert complete with insane people actually living and working there, get pen-knife back, get off, eat, catch cab to hostel in Lima and lose my credit card somewhere along the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment