Chile and my first time travelling experience

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  Santiago, Chile
Saturday, January 17, 2009

After a long and irksome flight, I arrived in Santiago from Auckland earlier than when I had left Auckland.  This did confuse me a bit.  To bring you to the same level of confusion I left Auckland at 5.30pm on 15 Jan and arrived in Santiago at 12.30pm on 15 Jan.  On route I had finally got round to reading some of the guide book and made the decision to get the hell out of Chile.  I had originally booked my ticket with the consideration that I may go to Patagonia but having spent the last couple of weeks in beautiful New Zealand I felt a need not for beautiful things but for old things.  I needed my big spacey round eyes to return to normal and felt that, for the moment, I may have seen enough lakes and incredible countryside.  No, what I needed now was something old and mysterious.  Something to make me narrow my eyes in deepest contemplation... I wanted Peru and Macchu Picchu and couldn't wait to get there, by whichever means necessary.

So, after my glorious flight (14 hours I think) I got straight off the plane and onto a bus for a 30 hour plus journey north to Arica which is on the border with Peru.  Now the buses in Chile are not bad to be honest.  The seats recline partially and they either feed you or stop off every few hours for petrol and sustenance.  The bus was crammed and I was the only foreigner on the bus, so I felt pretty special.  They also show films and entertainment during the journey so had the pleasure of really old Chilean movies on this trip, interspersed with strange Candid Camera style shows usually involving beautiful young women who suddenly find themselves unclothed in the presence of random men in the street.  The stuff of legends.

I'm going to spare you the details of the journey as I don't think it was terribly interesting but I will mention that I have never seen my feet swell like that before.  I hadn't realised that this was something that came hand in hand (foot with foot) with long bus journeys but I would learn to expect it.  Those of you who know me very well, perhaps too well, will know that I have thin boney feet that could probably do with a bit of meat on them.  After these journeys my feet would look rather more fulsome and apart from the loss of my ankles I thought they looked quite fetching.  This smug feeling soon faded when I realised just how long it would take for them to return to normal.  This revelation was swiftly followed by the realisation that although I was consuming as much as I would normally I was spending my time in a state of stasis, slowly bloating on the bus. Not so good after all.  But very cheap, the 30 hour bus journey cost me about £30 and would have been about £180 (I reckon) as a flight.

So, 30 short hours later I arrived in Arica which is northern Chile on the border with Peru.  I had decided to stay at a hostel over night and then do the, very simple apparently, trip over the border in the morning.  I had read that a taxi driver would happily arrange all paperwork for you and drive you across the border to Tacna for the princely sum of $2.  Bargain.

After a good nights sleep (the first since i left NZ two/three days earlier) I had a conversation with Russ the English owner of the hostel I was staying in ("Sunny Days").  Russ was very helpful and told me exactly what I needed to do.  I had to go to the bus station.  I had to go near the ticket office.  I had to ignore all the "Collectivos" or taxi drivers who were shouting "Tacna, Tacna" at me until I had located one with more than one ticket in his hand.  If the taxi driver had a multitude of tickets this meant that he was nearly full and would therefore depart fairly promptly.  Rather than having to wait an hour until he'd got his quota of passengers for the trip.  So, this I did, then I spotted a woman who had what seemed like a whole fistful of tickets.  My luck was in I thought so I went over to her asked the price and was quoted $1. Brilliant, I thought, cheap too!  I was then led around a corner to an aging locals bus stuffed to the rafters with Chileans and Peruvians.  Now, as my mistake dawned on me and my luggage loaded and passport taken for processing I did wonder whether this was a good time to bale out of the situation but, thought what the hell, let's go with it.  Hence I ended up crossing the border with the local guys, rather slower and in a little worse condition that my speeding along foreigner comrades.  Not for me the comfort and speed of a collectivo, I was stuck on an old bus with very little Spanish to get me through and no English spoken by anyone on the bus.  Needless to say things did not go entirely smoothly but thanks to an extremely patient bus conductor (and bus load of locals) I finally made it into Tacna in one piece, and with my luggage, which the officials at the border had taken quite a fancy to.  Now all I had to do was get up to Cuzco where I would base myself for a few days and go see Macchu Picchu.  I could feel another bus trip coming on.

xxxx

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These seem to be quite the thing in Chile	Chile - on bus!	Chile, from bus	Chile, Andes in background, still on bus
Tired now, still on bus	Bedtime, on bus	urgh, woken up, still on bus	Feeling a bit better now, still on bus

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