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Archive for May, 2006

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Repeated wiping out on the dunes of Huacachina

Monday, May 29th, 2006

The next day I left with Adriana to head south.  We went to a town called Chincha, where I had heard has good Afro-Peruvian music available, and I thought it would be cool to check it out.  Well, we were disappointed to learn that the music is really only popular during certain times of the year, and this was not one of them.  We arrived during the beginning of Semana Santa, or Holy Week, the week before Easter, which is a major vacation time in all of Latin America.  There may have been some music going on later in the week, but we surely weren’t going to wait around for it.  The town had little to offer…we pretty much ate dinner, visited briefly an internet place run by a bunch of lunatic Koreans, and went to bed.  The next day, we headed off to Pisco, where we set up a tour for the next day to go to the Islas Ballestas, islands off the coast nicknamed the “Poor Man’s Galapagos”, which is right up my alley.

[read on]

Posted in Peru | No Comments »

A misplaced llama in Lima

Friday, May 26th, 2006

After getting our fix of soaring condors (actually, after the condors left and we had nothing else to look at), we headed back into our van and returned to Arequipa.  I, again, slept a good amount of the ride, but, man, we got up early.  Back in Arequipa, I had a few hours in town and then headed to the bus terminal.  Getting on the bus, they checked me with a metal detector and made me put my thumbprint on a seating chart.  Where’s this coming from?  Then, just before we left, a man came through with a video camera, filming me as he handed me a survey to fill out about the service on the bus.  This was the Presidential Service…I was definitely paying for this!  Music was playing over the intercom as we boarded, and they showed a safety video as we pulled out of the station, like on a plane.  They served coffee and a sandwich, nuts, and some sort of sweet thing.  The attendant set up English subtitles for the movie for the few of us white people (mind you, this was an American movie, dubbed over in Spanish, and now with English subtitles).  I’ve never been catered to like this on a bus; this is definitely not how I imagined buses in Peru.  The best part was that the bus was nearly empty, and I had a whole 2 seats to myself to stretch out on, under a nice blanket, which was provided…pure luxury. [read on]

Posted in Peru | 1 Comment »

Smack in the middle of Peruvian election fever

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006

There were busloads of people at the border, and we all stood in line patiently waiting our turn, until our line was told to move to another window, so our line snaked around into another line.  Man, talk about herding cattle.  Mine was a special case, since I was the only one with a passport, though it was uneventful.  I did have to wake the guy at customs up, though.  “Uh, hello?  Do you want me to put my back through the x-ray machine?”  At the bus station in Tacna, Peru, I got mobbed by people aksing me where I wanted to go.  To the bathroom…leave me alone.  I eventually talked to some kid from some agency and decided to go with the bus he was offering.  The yet-to-shave-his-little-moustache kid was 17 and hitting on me!  I later found out that the agency charged me twice as much for the bus ticket, and I let the kid hear about it.  (These things happen, and while they piss me off, sometimes I forget the breaks I get, like the hotel in Arica only charging me for one night rather than 2, and charging me less than my quoted rate…which of course means they were going to charge me more than the going rate, but, nevertheless, I did get a discount there.) [read on]

Posted in Peru | 1 Comment »

Can’t anyone get some hepatitis around here?

Monday, May 8th, 2006

I took the night bus to Arica, where I sat next to some dude who smelled like beer (but not excessively) and played his music loudly.  Sometimes he sang along with his music, which was amusing.  Luckily I was not annoyed.  I dumped my stuff at a hotel in Arica and headed out to check out the town.  As I walked onto the main pedestrian walkway, I was greeted by a huge Blockbuster, next to a huge McDonald’s, two places I hadn’t seen for a long, long time.  (After pondering this myself, it was confirmed by another traveler that there, indeed, no McDonald’s in Bolivia, an interesting fact, I think.  There used to be, but they left…don’t know why.) [read on]

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There’s something in the air…

Sunday, May 7th, 2006

We got into San Pedro de Atacama around lunchtime.  The French couple I was with was insistent on arguing with the tour agency about a lunch they were promised for that day.  I just stood outside, basking in the warm sun…oh it was so good to be warm again.  We were still at altitude (2000-some meters, 6000-some feet), but it was sunny and warm.  Just a few hours before I had been freezing…now I was gladly stripping off all my clothes.  After a long, fruitless argument, we left to find a hotel.  We were all freaking out about the prices, in shock coming from cheap Bolivia.  The best we could find was $12, which was about 3 times more than what I had consistently paid in Bolivia.  I grabbed a lunch (at a whopping $10, compared to $2-3 in Bolivia, sometimes less than $1) and headed on a tour to see the sunset in the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley).

[read on]

Posted in Chile | 1 Comment »