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Published: July 21st 2009
29th April 2009 After another 12 hour journey, with no food we arrived in Tacna, hungry and with no where to stay. Once we found somewhere a rest was in order so we slept, waking up only for food and drink. Going out for dinner that night we realised that we hadn't missed much, Tacna is definately a border town and nothing else. The Italian food we had was nice though.
30th April 2009 Today it was time for a new country. So we crossed the border in a novel way via train, these are very rare in South America and as such it wasn't exactly the orient express. Even so it was a great way to cross and a lot less hassle than getting a taxi (the only other option)! As an extra special treat we got to see another stunning sunset to greet us into Chilie. Arriving in Arica, we wandered the streets looking to find a taxi. Somehow, and for the first time in South America, they were no where to be found. This was odd as everywhere else we couldn't avoid being honked at by taxi drivers touting for business. Sick of lugging around
our backpacks in vain, we walked into a posh looking hotel (in hope they spoke English) and asked them to phone one for us. With no complaints they did just that, how nice of them, and we were soon on our way to the hostel. The guy who owned the hostel was a little crazy to say the least but upon arrival he handed us a much needed beer on the house. Whilst we drunk this he explained what to do and see in Chilie with a liberal dash of the F-word thrown in (Gorden Ramsey would be very proud!)
1st May 2009 After an interesting nights sleep (Ask Alex about his Itchy face when we get back) we headed to the bus station to get tickets to our next stop San Pedro de Attacama. This done we headed into to Arica to see the sites and sounds. First up we climbed a hill leading to a cliff face with great views over the bay. On our way up we came accross a pack of stray dogs, not an unusual site in Chilie. One dog however took a particular liking to Elaine (who is petrified of dogs) and
decided to follow us all the way to the top. What made it even worse is that the damn thing stunk like death, and had what looked like spit on its back. Every time we escaped it caught back up with us to continue walking alongside Elaine. Even when we sat on a bench it sat next to us. Our only escape came when a taxi pulled up (finally!) and we dashed over, jumped in leaving the dog looking bemused as to what we were doing leaving it all alone. After all the dog madness we decided that the best thing to do was to head to the beach. We spent the rest of the day jumping the waves before catching our overnight bus to San Pedro.
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Sue & Neil Holt
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Sunset
What a wonderful sunset - would love to be somewhere like that now- better than all this flaming miserable weather we're getting here where you don't see the sunset. We haven't seen a sunset like that since we were in Portugal in June!