Arica! (to paraphrase Archimedes)
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Arica,
Chile
Thursday, January 3, 2008
We wandered around Tacna bus station for a little while and came to the conclusion that we were probably in the wrong bus station. We asked one of the bus companies about getting a bus to Arica, and they confirmed that we were in the wrong place and needed to get a taxi to the other bus terminal. Tacna is a tiny place, but apparently requires two large bus stations.
We went outside and quickly found a taxi to take us to the international bus terminal and were whisked away. As we arrived at the bus terminal, the taxi was swamped by people trying to sell their services to take us over the border. It was like something out of a horror movie: your intrepid heroes huddled in the back of the car, whilst countless bodies hurl themselves at the car trying to get at the contents in order to suck their blood (or in this case, wallets) dry.
We agreed to take a taxi across the border with one of the vampire types, but first went to the bureau de change desks where we changed our remaining Soles into Pesos. The desks were a pleasantly simple affair: a table equipped with a calculator, a tray of money and a woman to operate them.
We paid for our crossing into Chile and were rushed out to the taxi which, since our arrival, had been "just about to leave". Fortunately, we have encountered this sort of thing before, so were not surprised at all to find that the taxi had two bored people sitting in it and the driver then went back into the bus station to drum up further business. Meanwhile, we waited around and filled in the paperwork necessary for the border crossing.
Eventually, the driver hurried across another person, we were all squished into his taxi and we were off. We drove for a while, then arrived at the Peruvian border, where our bags were unpacked (in case we were smuggling stuff out to sell in the generally more expensive Chile, thus making some sort of negative profit, we suppose) and then ineptly repacked. We returned to the car, drove for a few more minutes, arrived at the Chilean border and were stamped in to the country by a border guard who barely looked at our passports, let alone our bags.
Finally in Chile, we were driven down to Arica where we were deposited at the bus station. Bus stations were starting to feel very familiar by this stage.
We wandered around the various bus companies and were surprised and pleased not to have anybody shouting names of towns at us as had been the case in Peru. Instead it seemed to be assumed that if we wanted to go somewhere, we would ask, and that we were unlikely to impulse buy a ticket to somewhere just because someone had shouted the name of the town at us a few times.
We tried to sort out a bus ticked directly to Puerto Montt, but asking for this seemed universally to result in laughter from the ticketing staff, so we changed tactics and asked for buses to Santiago and connecting buses to Puerto Montt. After a while, we realised that we had crossed a time border, so it was actually an hour later than our watches said, which explained why a lot of the buses were full so apparently early.
We found a little room from which we could make phone calls, so we contacted the staff of the Navimag ferry, which was our intended form of transport from Puerto Montt and explained that as we were going to be in transit, we would not be able to check with them that our booking was confirmed the requisite 48 hours before travel. No problem, said the nice lady. Our booking was confirmed, we had a place on the boat.
We therefore decided that as there was no need for us to stop in Santiago to try and confirm bookings, we would take a Pullman bus, which connected in Santiago with another bus to Puerto Montt about an hour later. We went to the desk to book...just as the power in the bus station blinked out. It stayed off for about an hour, during which time we sat on our bags in front of the Pullman desk, so as not to miss out on tickets when the power came back on.
When the power finally came back on, we booked our tickets. Unfortunately, the power cut had sent the Pullman computer system funny, so the card processing application would not work. OK, we'd get out cash instead.
No.
The ATM had also gone off line.
Hmmm.
Fortunately, the ATM came back on after another 10 minutes or so.
Unfortunately it only had 20,000 pesos in it. That's about £20.
Our bus tickets cost quite a lot more than that. We were starting to wonder what we could possibly do to get out of Arica, but fortunately the other ATM had a bit more cash in it, so we were able to get out enough to buy tickets.
We stored our bags with Pullman and decided to go into town to kill time until our bus was due to leave that evening. We got a taxi into town and went to find something to eat, having not had any food since Puno, which by this time was a very long time ago.
Feeling fraught, we fancied something that tasted like it was no good for us. Burger and chips seemed to fill that role quite well and as the taxi got to town, we saw a McDonalds. We don't normally do the McDonalds thing, even whilst in the UK and this was the first time we have done such a thing since we left.
We had our burgers and chips, which tasted appropriately bad for us, and wandered in town for a while, killing time. We found an internet place so were able to print of our Navimag tickets. After a bit, we got bored and headed back to the bus station, popping into another internet place as we had forgotten to book ourselves somewhere to be once we got to Puerto Montt.
This all achieved, we sat in the bus station and people watched, read etc. before finally being able to check our bags and board the bus to Santiago.
