From San Pedro, Chile, to Cusco, Peru

Friday 22 June 2007
Last Friday evening I took the 11 hour overnight bus journey from San Pedro de Atacama, Northern Chile, to the town of Arica , on the border of Peru. The bus is what they call semi cama which is not as luxurious as my two previous bus journies which were cama. The bus was very hot, a window was rattling next to my head and I was squashed next to a fat Chileno. Needless to say I didn't sleep too well.

I was also feeling anxious about the journey ahead as I couldn´t book in advance any onward transport in Peru . So after reaching Arica I looked for a "taxi collectivo" to take me across the border from Chile to Peru to a small town called Tacna where I could get an onward bus. The taxi collectivos are taxis which ply the same route but don´t go until they have 5 passengers. Me and a young English guy, called Neal, from Bristol were waitng for more passengers when a group of 5 kiwis came in. Of couse as they were 5 together they got to go straight away.We had to wait about half an hour longer for three S Americans to take the other seats.The taxi was a clapped out limousine, everything falling a part but the driver was very helpful with border formalities.

At the border we caught up with the kiwis and I got chatting to them while we were waiting. It turned out they are theatre group from Christchurch going to a drama festival in Lima. In Christchurch they regularly perform in a Friday night improvised comedy show called "Scared Scriptless" which I remember seeing advertised in the arts centre, where I spent quite a bit of during my first three nights in New Zealand. I remember I thought about going to see the comedy show but for some reason, which I can´t remember now, I didn´t.

Any way after a couple of hours (mainly queuing for the border formalites) we arrived in a town called Tacna, where I had to organise my next move which was to travel to a place called Puno, 12 hours north of here and the gateway to Lake Titicaca, which is a highly recommended must do thing. After a few minutes of being bombarded by taxi drivers and coach company reps and being told I was at the wrong bus station, I found a travel agent at the bus station to help sort out my next seven days. Within in an hour my coming week was sorted all the way to Cusco.

Stage one of the plan was an overnight bus journey to Puno. I had about 8 hours to wait before the bus left so I hired a taxi to take me for an hour´s tour of Tacna which included a visit to the Cathedral and a railway museum. After the hour I got dropped off at a restaurant and managed to kill another two hours. I then walked around the city centre and spent some another couple of hours on a steet side cafe drinking coffee and red bull to try and keep awake, while reading a book.

At about 4 pm I went back to the bus station and spent some time on the internet emailing before, at long last, I went by taxi, with an Israeli guy, to another station to catch the overnight bus. This wasn´t the luxury bus I had been hoping for although I was lucky that I didn´t have any one sitting next to me. It wasn´t too bad a bus but it was cold and no one was giving out the blankets. The service was used by a lot of local people who maybe aren´t used to travelling as there were people constantly being travel sick and a few babies crying. The bus stopped through the night at a number of towns which looked dusty and poor. Again I was glad when we arrived at the Puno bus station just after dawn. I took a taxi to my hotel which, at 6 am, appeared deserted but the taxi driver rang the bell a couple of times and the door was eventually answered by a small man who looked like he´d just got of bed and gave me my room key. It was cold and I was exhausted after the two overnight bus journies so went to bed. After an hour there was knock on my door and the local travel agent rep. had come to welcome me and ensure I was OK.

I went for a late breakfast overlooking a military ceremony happening in the main square in front of the Cathedral which culmnated in the raising of the flag. In the afternoon I went on a tour to some nearby pre-inca ruins called Sullustani . On the way we passed little stone cottages in walled compounds where women wearing tradional dress were making a living from keeping llamas and alpacas, and growing vegetables. The ruins were round stone towers, or chullpas approx. 10 metres high made from massive carved stones which fitted together perfectly and were used for burial purposes.

In the evening I had dinner overlooking the main town square with a German Physicist called Nikola whom I´d met on the tour, and who spoke good English.

Next day, Monday, I had a free agenda so I had a wander around the town and went to a couple of small museums. I then took a local bus out to a hotel on the lakeside where a ship, MS Yavari, built in 1862 was moored and under restoration. The ship, about 20 metres long, was built by an English company in parts small enough to be carried to Puno by mule from the nearest available railway staion, which at the time was Tacna. It took six years to transport the parts over the mountains and another year or two to put the ship together. In totalit took 10 years from commission to launch.Originally the boat was to have large guns for defence purposes,but these never left the coast and the boat was used primarilyfor cargo.The original engine was stem, but as there was little coal available they used llama dung, but this, being less dense than coa, greatly reduced the cargo capacity. In the early 1900´s the steamengine was replaced by a Swedish Bollinder diesel engine. A few years ago an English woman bought the boat as scrap and set up a charitable trust to retore the ship. It has been partly restored and relaunched with the long term intention of converting to a passenger ship for tourist trips on the lake.

On the ship I met an Irish couple, Graham and Sharon, and we spent a enjoyable hour chatting and drinking coffee sitting in the sun on deck chairs in the hotel grounds.

After sharing a taxi back to town I went for lunch in an open air cafe and on the next table were two Liverpudlian women, Sue and Diana, who had come to Peru to complete a fund raising trek on behalf of a breast cancer charity. Hearing their accents I started a conversation and we agreed to meet up for dinner later. At dinner we had a good laugh over our travel experiences. Both Sue and Diana have obviously 'made good' and moved out of Liverool to live on the Wirral and in Lymm respectively. This led to my recollection of going to Natural Childbirth Trust ante-natal classes in Lymm many years ago but I could not compete with Sue and Diana for funny childbirth stories as between them they have 9 children.

Next day I got up early a two day trip on the islands on Lake Titicaca. There were about 25 people on the boat of all all sorts of nationalites. After an hour the first stop was the floating islands of the Uros. The Uros´ have lived on Lake Titicaca since pre-colomial times. They build their islands by cutting the roots of the reeds into blocks, stitching these together with string and then placing several layers of the reeds over the top. About 1,500 people live on these islands situated in a sheltered area of the lake. The island we first visited was about 100m x 100m with a family approx 40 people living on it in huts made also of the reeds. After a explanation of their history and life style we sailed on a reed boat to another island which was much larger. They have schools and medical centre around the island and limited electricity from solar power.

We the sailed on the tour boat for a further two hours to the island of Amatani.This is anatrual island with a peak over 4,100 metres above sea level but as Lake Titcaca is already 3,800m above sea level the hike to the top to see the sunset wasn´t too bad despite the lack of oxygen.
On arriving at the island we were allocated to host familes for our overnight stay- I shared a room with Tyson from Chicago and Julian from Oldham (les tres amigos) in the our host´s, Olga, house about half way up to the top of the mountian. The house was two storey built into the hillside and constructed of mud stran and stones. Our bedroom was on the second floor accessed via very rickety stair case. The outside toilet was a very basic affair of a concrete WC pan and a bucket of water to flush with.

After a vegetarian dinner we were issued with ponchos and woolly hats and taken to the village hall for a party. The local women and the women in the tour group were all dressed in brightly coloured multi- layer skirts, white blouse waist bands and black shawls. The Uros women started the dancing to music of the typical Peruvian band. The dancing was exhausting due to the altitude and the never ending lenght of the songs the band played.

Next morning, Wednesday, after a breakfast of bread and jam, some eggy pancakes and coca tea we sailed onto another island called Taquile. This felt more developed than Amantani and the walk soon led us to a village centre where there was a bright modern municipal building and many restaurants. It was a beatuiful day and the views across the lake were stunning. After some lunch and a walk over to the other side of the island we rejoined our tour boat for a three hour sail back to Puno. That evening I met up with Tyson, Julian and a couple from Washington DC, Brian and Tracey, for pizza dinner followed by a moderate drinking session.

Yesterday, Thusday, I took an early morning tourist bus from Puno to Cusco. The trip took 9 hours but included about 6 tourist stops for, lunch, archaealogical sites and a market. I arrived in Cusco just after 5pm where my travel agent´s rep. met me off the bus and delivered me to my hotel where I am now staying for the next two nights, before I move to another hotel booked through another agency with which I booked several months ago, to do the Inca Trail in a week´s time.