Not yer National Express!
We booked the Cruz del Sur bus from Arequipa to Tacna. This meant an early start but we could have a snooze on the bus. Our Fiat Uno taxi to the main bus station was an interesting ride as I shared the back seat with all our luggage, pieces of the back window kept falling out and the driver was running on empty for most of the journey (we freewheeled into a petrol station on the way there!)!
The bus stations in Peru seem very organised and obsessed with paperwork. We checked in with our tickets and had our passports checked. Our luggage was labelled up as at an airport! We paid for tax. Then our tickets and passports were checked again as we went through to the “departure lounge”. The tickets were checked as we left the departure lounge (by Magnum PI) and again before we set foot on the bus! These four checks took place all within 10 yards of each other, just in case someone should sneak on the bus, you understand!
It wasn’t far out of Arequipa before we were driving through desert. There was lush green in the valley, bare red desert and the snow capped mountains and volcanoes up above.
Our hostess-with-the-mostest brought out beakers of Inca Cola. This popular fizzy drink looks like a radioactive urine infection and tastes like a very sugary dandelion and burdock. Then we were brought an “aircraft meal” consisting of cheese butty, coconut cake and a brown sweet resembling a small turd. Eug said the sweet tasted OK though.
We really were in desert land now, apart from the very odd cactus. There was the odd hut in the middle of nowhere. Lines of stones laid along the side of the road. At one point, we spotted a guy walking in the sand – it was impossible to tell where he had come from or where he was going. And you could see the heat. Thank goodness we had air-con on the bus!
A film was shown on the TV’s. Can’t remember what it was called – some basic American comedy. Then the highlight of the trip – BINGO! Our hostess brought out the cards and called out the Spanish numbers in-between telling jokes that our bad breakthrough Spanish meant we didn’t understand!
The guy in front of us, a Canadian called Ron, won. He had to go up to the front of the bus and say how he felt about it. Think he was a bit embarrassed.
Then it was time for the next film – Sniper 3, with extra helpings of F-words for the kids on the bus and lots of gun scenes and bloodshed. Hang on a minute, press the pause button! We’ve reached a check-point. Everyone had to get off the bus with hand luggage and walk through a small station that had a bag scanner. This was to make sure that no-one was bringing fruit or vegetables into this area, where their produce was free from disease and competition! It was at this point that we felt the heat. In the middle of the desert, it was stifling! We were glad to get back on the bus and wait for the the air-con to kick in again.
The landscape was one of the strangest we’d seen. Plain, dry and with no definition of space or direction in the most. But then a small settlement would appear with perhaps a handful of lush fields and cows and pigs. Or an industry or the army camps would appear, in a lifeless surround. The army sites were quite amusing as they were entirely walled with the odd “look-out” point. These look-out points were manned – by plastic dummies in camouflage get-up with wooden guns. Most bizarre.
We could see Tacna from afar as a sprawling crater in the desert. Five hours of entertainment while passing through some of the most baron land we had ever seen. Now we just had to find our way out of here in this overwhelming heat!
Tags: Peruvian tales
mihai