San Pedro & Arequipa

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I started my first week of backpacking in Peru, after forcing myself to leave the luxury of staying with friends in Arica. After a 7 hour (very short by Latin American standards) bus journey through yet more deserts I arrived in Arequipa, a large town in the Andean foothills. I was initiated into backpacker lifestyle and soon realised how easy it was to meet people. Although the majority of people are in their late 20s (everyone my age is in Thailand), it was easy to get on with people. Unfortunately, the hostel operated tours which left at 3am, at which point each morning half of the dorm would evacuate and wake me up. So far I have met backpackers from at least 20 different countries and its great to get so many different perspectives on the world.



After Arequipa I returned to Tacna. This in itself is an odd experience as during the journey various merchants get onto the bus and try to sell you mangos, clothes, wooden bowls or crayfish. There is plenty of time for people watching and it was interesting to see the generation gap between the old Peruvian women dressed in traditional brightly coloured keperinas (ponchos) and bowler hats (yes, traditional bowler hats…) and their children dressed in jeans and t-shirts with English slogans. I was also seated next to the toilets, and had to suffer the unpleasant aroma for the duration of the trip. Whilst here I visited the town’s only attraction: petrogliphs. These are very old drawings on rocks, and were interesting, but I’m not sure they were worth the enormous difficultly getting there. I squeezed onto a local bus for an hour and then walked 3 miles through the desert to the spot. Having no real idea where I as going, I started to get worried as the vultures were circling above me….



My next destination was San Pedro de Atacama on the Chile-Argentina border and in the middle of the world’s driest desert. This was intended to be an overnight stop, but a lack of buses extended this to a week. The route was so popular at this time of year that the company originally told me two weeks, but luckily I managed to find a cancellation. There were lots of tours operating into the surrounding area, but little to do in the town itself. Unfortunately the tours were also very expensive so I limited myself to just two: sandboarding and stargazing (the Atacama desert is one of the best places in the world to see stars). Apart from these trips, I spent the rest of the week playing Uno to bide the time!

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