Last night we got a bed bus to Tacna from Puno. It was supposed to be one of these luxury double decker buses with beds etc. was it bollocks, the seats that we paid extra for reclined to about 45 degrees so admittedly it was a little more comfortable than the seats upstairs, but it wasn`t what we were expecting. They showed a film The Last King of Scotland in Spanish so I nodded off Claire it turns out watched it all as she couldn't sleep. Then suddenly it got hot, really hot and Claire woke me saying if we don't get some air we will die of carbon monoxide poisoning like the refugees in containers. For some reason i couldn't get properly back to sleep but at least the air con came on the other side of the bus to cool us down some. A relaxing nights sleep on the bus was not going to happen.
At 700am in the morning Tacna came over a bit of a dump so we wandered around the centre before checking into the hotel. We chose the best one in town for a few days R&R and its actually pretty shabby, but beggars cant be choosers.
As La Paz and the Bolivian salt flats are off the menu we decided to go to Chile instead. Therefore we spent an hour booking flights etc in a travel agents, but changed our minds again as there are still strikes and demonstrations happening in Peru and the 28th is the 150th anniversary of independence, so we could not guarantee we could take the train do the border crossing and catch a plane, urgency and time keeping has not yet caught on in Peru. So now we are going to go to Iquitos and the amazon rain forest.
But to get our Chile stamp we caught the train this afternoon to Arica in Chile so we trundled of to the train station and oh my god what a shambles, the guy selling the tickets also dealt with the passport control and once they sold all the tickets they locked the station doors while they sorted everyone out, all that was missing was the creates of chickens. The train itself was like something from a museum only older. It was a single car DMU with sliding wood windows ( at last these closed unlike in Thailand ). Sat along side it in the station there was a number of real steam locomotives just parked up, although they didn't look like they had moved in some time.
When we finally got moving the train went out the station and down the road where we brushing by pedestrians and being undercut by taxi drivers. We slowly made our way through the towns streets where you could see the massive sand dunes on the edge of town and behind them in the distance was snow capped mountains, it makes for quite a bizarre image. We then trundled our way through the desert (and when I mean desert I really mean desert it was a full blown thing with sand dunes and sand blowing across the track behind us) into Chile and the city of Arica.
We then got the bus back to Tacna, or we thought we were getting the bus only we go a bit duped and ended up sharing a taxi the 40 odd miles back. Both of us were a little bit pissed at this as going on public transport is always an experience to remember.
At 700am in the morning Tacna came over a bit of a dump so we wandered around the centre before checking into the hotel. We chose the best one in town for a few days R&R and its actually pretty shabby, but beggars cant be choosers.
As La Paz and the Bolivian salt flats are off the menu we decided to go to Chile instead. Therefore we spent an hour booking flights etc in a travel agents, but changed our minds again as there are still strikes and demonstrations happening in Peru and the 28th is the 150th anniversary of independence, so we could not guarantee we could take the train do the border crossing and catch a plane, urgency and time keeping has not yet caught on in Peru. So now we are going to go to Iquitos and the amazon rain forest.
But to get our Chile stamp we caught the train this afternoon to Arica in Chile so we trundled of to the train station and oh my god what a shambles, the guy selling the tickets also dealt with the passport control and once they sold all the tickets they locked the station doors while they sorted everyone out, all that was missing was the creates of chickens. The train itself was like something from a museum only older. It was a single car DMU with sliding wood windows ( at last these closed unlike in Thailand ). Sat along side it in the station there was a number of real steam locomotives just parked up, although they didn't look like they had moved in some time.
When we finally got moving the train went out the station and down the road where we brushing by pedestrians and being undercut by taxi drivers. We slowly made our way through the towns streets where you could see the massive sand dunes on the edge of town and behind them in the distance was snow capped mountains, it makes for quite a bizarre image. We then trundled our way through the desert (and when I mean desert I really mean desert it was a full blown thing with sand dunes and sand blowing across the track behind us) into Chile and the city of Arica.
We then got the bus back to Tacna, or we thought we were getting the bus only we go a bit duped and ended up sharing a taxi the 40 odd miles back. Both of us were a little bit pissed at this as going on public transport is always an experience to remember.
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