DIED AND GONE TO GERMANY
It´s the weirdest thing! We´re still in Chile but no more adobe-brick buildings, dusty streets. Everything is made of wood, the hills are rolling and filled with trees and lakes around! And many speak German, including Andreas, our host, and Nils, his friend, who picked us up yesterday at the airport. Germans were encouraged to move here in the 1800's and given land to farm. And they stayed! It´s also cool like Germany was last August, even cooler as it turns to fall here. It´s also cloudy and we have yet to see the gorgeous glacier covered volcano at the edge of this lake that is the reason we came here! Andreas said we might not see it as it is supposed to rain and be cloudy and we leave tomorrow for Punta Arenas and our 4 day cruise through the Straits of Magellan!
Oh, well, back up! When last I left off, we were headed to Arequipa in Peru by bus from Puno. We arrived and taxied to Pirwe which had a huge room for us, nice shower with an outside patio upstairs for breakfast. The host, however, was pretty lazy and seemed to be always sleeping. We had to ask at 8 the next morning when breakfast was and he kind of threw it on the table. We had one day there until our night bus to Tacna. so we walked down to the truly most beautiful Plaza des Armas we´ve seen! The cathedral was on one side with big archways extending over the street on either side. It was filled with pigeons and people at all hours, flowers and trees as well. We walked around and found a tourist agency and bought tickets for the bus tour around the city. Of the 9 or so stops, we skipped over about 3 of them, one the poorly English speaking young girl said they were filming a movie in the museum. Another was a horse ride stop that both Betty and I skipped and stayed on the bus. One was a reconstructed hacienda from a rich family and we were going to skip it (we had to pay extra) but then decided to walk through. They do weddings there and it was lovely and gave you an idea of how the Spanish lived when they took over!
Otherwise it was a pretty uneventful drive through dusty city streets for several hours. There were a couple of stops at high points to take photos and buy stuff and once in awhile we got a glimpse of the volcanoes surrounding the city. We headed back to our hostel to pick up our things and get a taxi ride to the bus station. I had gotten cold on the bus and didn´t have my jacket with me and couldn´t remember where I´d put it. I asked the guy at the desk if I could look in the room and he pulled out a bag with both Betty´s and my jackets!! If I hadn´t asked, I´m sure he would have just let us go off without them!! The jerk! They had been hung in our closet, big mistake!!!!
I forgot, at the travel agency we had bought our sleeper bus tickets to Tacna and she was to deliver them at 8 pm at the hostel, which she did. But the company we wanted was full, so she switched bus companies, which we hoped was okay. Our taxi dropped us at the bus station, crowded, people yelling out something we couldn´t understand, I think advertising buses. We tried to find our bus company sign and told to just wait!! No one spoke English. We figured out this time how to pay our tax and get it put on our ticket, that you need to do when leaving a station. Last time they had checked our luggage and taken it to the bus. This time she said just go through the gate, finally, and we found someone riding the same bus who showed us where to go!! Very stressful!! We got on and instead of the upper berths like we expected we were downstairs. But the seats were very wide and comfortable and I actually slept a few hours I think. The movie kept running loudly (Spiderman in Spanish!) and we had to cover our eyes but otherwise it was okay! The lights came on and I thought we had arrived about 3:30 am but it turned out to be some kind of province border stop, and we had another hour to go. We stumbled out and into the station at 4:30 a.m. and sat until daylight. We had met a couple who said to just walk across the street to the international bus station and find a collectivo, car or bus to cross the border to Arica, Chile. Lots of taxis and guys were hovering outside so we wait until daylight and then did just that. We again paid a fee and walked through the gate to where cars and buses were waiting. We rode with this guy in a big car and 3 other riders the 40 or so km. to the border, got out and walked inside to have everything stamped and checked, and then got back in the car to the Chile border house, did the same thing and then on to Arica, through the Atacama desert with big empty sand dunes on both sides! Weird country! It reminded me of when Doug and the monks and I had stayed in Tijuana and crossed the border with his friend! We felt like drug runners, jumping out of the car, mingling with the crowd of students and workers crossing the border, and then jumping back in the car!!
But for all my worries about this part of the trip, it went just like the books and people had said!
At the bus station Betty found someone to call Sunny Days hostel and Russ the friendly New Zealander told us to just walk there so we did. He was outside to greet us and it was a lovely spacious home and friendly information! He fed us breakfast and then we laid down for a rest to catch up! In the afternoon we walked down toward the beach, which was quite ugly and industrial looking so we went back later. We walked into town and there wasn´t much to see. I think it´s some kind of mining going on in the town as there was an odor sort of sulphuric smelling. There was a pedestrian street with some shops and we stopped for a snack/lunch. But we headed back, did go to the beach so Betty could put her feet in the water but it was a non-eventful town!
More later! Breakfast is on!
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