Ready for Some Good Luck!

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Hi Everybody!
Our bad luck didn´t end with Walt´s wallet being stolen. To put it mildly, this trip just hasn´t gone well. The cruise ship kept our passports during the two weeks that we were on the boat. They did not get Walt´s passport or immigration papers stamped. This caused us a real hassle when we tried to leave Chile. We are partly to blame for our problems because we didn´t spend enough time planning the trip. The South American guidebook that we were using stated that U.S. citizens didn´t have to have a Visa for Paraguay or Bolivia. When we got to the airport on Thursday, we couldn´t board the plane for Paraguay because we didn´t have a Visa. We rushed to the Consulate´s office in downtown Santiago and purchased Visas. for $50 US each. By then, we had missed our plane and couldn´t get another one for a couple of days. The airline wanted to charge each of us $650 more dollars for a new ticket to Asuncion, Paraguay. We thought we might could salvage our trip to Bolivia by buying a ticket there. Then, we would be able to use our ticket back to LIma. That is when we discovered that Bolivia had started requiring U.S. citizens to have a Visa starting last month.
If you want to travel in South America, I would suggest that you go with a tour group unless you are fluent in Spanish. It has been difficult to find people who speak English. This was even true at the international airports. It is much more difficult to negotiate prices when you don´t know the language.
Walt met an American couple at our hotel in Santiago. The lady´s gold necklace was ripped off of her neck. When the locket fell to the ground, the thief stomped it and ran. The Chileans told us that they had to worry about being robbed daily. They have to always have a death grip on their packages and purses.
We ended up taking 2 bus rides that totaled almost 50 hours from Santiago to Arica, Chile and then on to Lima, Peru. We were lucky that we had reserved seats in a pullman section with about 8 passengers. We were served meals on the bus that were ok. The highways were in good condition. We didn´t see many cars except in the larger towns.
We rode through the Atacama Desert for much of the trip. It is deader looking than Death Valley. In many parts, there was no sign of plant or animal life. The land looked brown, sandy, and had small rocks. We could often see views of the Pacific Ocean with strong waves. We did not see swimmers or sunbathers until we got close to Lima. We saw few signs of prosperity and many signs of poverty. We did ride through a couple of small green valleys that usually had a very small river. They were growing crops in those areas.
We are glad to be back in Lima. We are going to try to enjoy the rest of our trip and forget about all the money that we have thrown away.
Take care,
Everette

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