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Published: February 15th 2006
The beach at Iquique
A good change from busesPART 1: Mission Impossible.
You mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get from Santiago, Chile, to anywhere in Peru.
Sounds easy, and it should have been, if only we could have had some luck with the buses! All the Chileans were so busy going on holiday they forgot about the needs of the poor Gringos.
The upshot of this is an amazing skill in sitting, looking at desert. To give you an idea of how vast the nothingness is it took us 1 837km from Santiago to find somewhere else we wanted to stop for a few days. It also took two nights and some very horrible accomodation in hugely uninspiring cities. See- it's not all fun. We're not even going to write about it.
Iquique wasn´t quite Peru, but with a hostal by the beach with hammocks and surfing, it would definitely do for a few days. We discovered that surfing isn't as easy as we remembered, but both managed to pretend we could still stand up. Jim's board was reminiscent of Hazel though.
Another day, another bus, another town, Arica. A mere 2062 kilometers from Santiago and we had crossed the
Atacama desert. Finally Peru was in sight. A quick trip across the border in a ridiculous American muscle car and we had completed the mission!
PART 2: The hunt for Paddington begins.
However, we are not in deepest darkest Peru yet so no such luck. Any hopes of leaving the desert were thwarted as it continues for much of Peru's south coast. There was the odd respite as the bus would dip into lush, green river valleys, but the plains continue up on the other side.
Our first stop was Arequipa; the "White City", so called due to its construction from white volcanic rock. Highlights around the city include Volcan Misti (we didn't see it due to it being misty) and the world's deepest canyons: Cotahuasi (24 hours on a bus - no thanks) and Colca (good for condors - already seen lots). We also seem to have an aversion to guided tours.
Since we couldn't be superheroes we decided to be cultural instead. We have discovered the one civilisation in the world where it is better to be poor - the Incas. They would deform their heads to look more intelligent and sacrifice the noble
children to the mountain gods; we saw Sarita, a 16 year old girl who was sacrificed (murdered?) 500 years ago and is almost perfectly preserved. She lives in a state-of-the-art, temperature controlled vestibule (otherwise known as a "freezer").
Since religion is impossible to escape we decided to fit in a tour of a nunnery and see the impressive looking cathedral. All very lovely, but with lots of gold and religious dolls varnished with sheeps' bladders - it seemed OTT at times, especially when you consider how poor the country is.
Back into the desert we headed, our destination: an oasis. Huacachina really is just that, with a smattering of hostals and restaurants, surrounded by towering sand dunes. They also have sand buggies and sand boards. What a sandy town! We found ourselves strapped into the back of a powered climbing frame on wheels, racing across the desert accompanied by a V8 soundtrack and Mel's whimpering as the driver accelerated down seemingly near vertical dunes. Sandboarding was fun, but quite different to snowboarding. It's slower unless you head straight down, but the dunes were so steep that was quite scary. The view as the sun set was amazing; the
light changing through purple, yellow, orange and red.
Well bye for now, the hammocks are calling..
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Sarah NOB
non-member comment
Oh I love reading your blog!
Your photos are great too. Jim, you look like the badgers attacked you in the night.