Going South

After we left Arequipa, all the path until Santiago felt like a blur.

It was fast. It was a bit stressful. It was filled with bus stations, desert roads, bland food and small bus seats.

On a bus

The road out of Arequipa.

Ridiculous phone company is allowed to advertise on the side of a mountain.

We went through Tacna, then Iquique, then La Serena in three days, spending one night at each place.

Being a bit broke already, it didn't feel right to stay for longer (also, we didn't fall in love with any of the places where we stopped, so it wouldn't have been justified to stay).
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First we got to Tacna. It seems like a place for business people to go from Perú to Chile and vice-versa. There was an IPerú info point (which we visited in our desperate search for breakfast places), and even they didn't have much information on what to do in Tacna... possibly because there isn't much?

The main square in Tacna.

We love taking photos like tourists in not-touristy places.

Out of Tacna, nice sunset in the desert.

Iquique, on the other hand, was a treat for the senses... in a special way.

We arrived at night and the first thing we saw from he bus window was a man pushing an empty stroller and dressed with beach shorts and a long brown jacket. I jokingly said "Either the weather here is really moody, or that guy is crazy".

As we were getting off the bus an old lady across the road walked around yelling at herself.

While walking around the strangely eerie streets of the city centre, many people around looked and acted definitely crazy (the way they dressed, moved, talked and sang to themselves).

It seems like there's an open-door mental institution close to town; so there.

We found a cheap-ish room in a strange hotel (once again that "Hotel California feeling"), that was huge, noisy and horribly lit. We were on the 5th floor. I felt I was inside a Charles Bukowski story.

It was really late but we needed to get something to eat, so after dropping our bags we enjoyed some more crazy random night walkers around the touristy pedestrian street (sorry, no pictures).

The morning after we repacked and went for breakfast. Gone were the days  of being indignant about the low coffee quality in Chile, but this was a bit too much:

That's right: an empty cup with an INSTANT coffee
sachet, and hot water/milk on the side.

It was mild, it was tasteless, it reminded us of the reasons why we got grumpy in Chile. Do you want the cherry on top? The mugs say ESPRESSO and have a little coffee beans pattern.

Me, obliviously waiting for my café con leche.

We killed some time walking around...

Iquique touristy centre.

Chey looks at some real estate.

"A good coffee... enjoy it here!" wtf Chile.

Pretty tram is now decoration.

Cat chilling under the tram car. Cats make everyhing 200% better.

My vehicle of choice.

Afterwards, we spent a few hours sitting in a nicer café we found close to the bus terminal, ready to leave for La Serena on the first bus available.

That smile says: yay! Wifi and not-instant coffee!

La Serena was probably the nicest bit between Arequipa and Santiago, though faithful to our Chile experience thus far, it was extremely difficult to find good budget accomodation.

Every place we saw seemed to be run by a grumpy old lady smelling of moth balls and stew, and none of them seemed to like us wanting to see the rooms (probably because they were mostly dark, humid caves).

The mandatory touristy photo.

Finally we found a sort-of OK place (of course run by an old lady, but this one was sleepy rather than grumpy) and were able to charge our electronics, wash some clothes, rest and go out to see the sights.

We had a lovely stroll by the beach, where we tried to find beer (which somehow was extremely difficult).

La Serena sea side.

Lighthouse.

Strolling down the beach.

Sunset swings.

Sunset lighthouse,

About La Serena I also have to say: they have a place with great coffee (in Chile!!!!) and we found AMAZING veggie sushi for dinner, right next to our "hospedaje".

We only had Santiago left, or so we thought, before getting back to the Argentinian side and some rest from all the moving around. The adventure felt almost over.

Arequipa and the last (good) supper

I'm not even going to talk about our second encounter with Lima... ok, at least not much.

We had already done what we felt had to be done in the city, but we needed to get some more paperwork done... and that was pretty much it.

We still had a few great dinners with friends and a few great dinners with just the two of us. I did catch up with an old (and extremely crazy) friend, and that was gold. Singing out loud on the streets and all.

Not much to say about the second encounter with Lima, really.

We knew we had to head South and it had to be soon, so we did a bit of research and decided on our itinerary, which was going to be a bit of a race. 

First stop: Arequipa. But before that, I need to tell you about our bus ride.

We were lucky enough to pay the price for "semicama" seats ("semi-bed", which loosely translated means good luck trying to sleep while being this uncomfortable, Chey), but get sent to the "cama" ("bed", which means more space and seats that recline a good deal more) section, on the lower part of the bus.

We were completely stoked that we could stretch our legs and had a lot of room to put our bulky bags of snacks and our daypacks.

So as soon as we were seated and the bus started, we began to feast on Doritos and Skittles to celebrate. The whole "cama" section was empty except for us, and the high lasted until a couple of hours later, when it got dark and we realized that no-one was going to switch off the SUPERLOUD DVD that kept replaying non-stop, and neither were they going to switch off the fluorescent lights. 

It felt like they were trying to brainwash us, Clockwork-Orange-style.

I desperately tried to make contact with the driver, but there was no way. They are in the front where passengers have absolutely no way of getting to them, and they fully ignore your desperate knocks on the thick, black glasspane that separates them from the rest of us, passenger peasants.

Frustrated and tired, the upgrade happiness fully gone, I tried to fall asleep. 

Finally they switched everything off and there was peace (but they also had a light collision with other vehicle which kept us from moving for a few hours... I guess you can't have it all).

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We arrived in Arequipa and my first impression was: this city is ridiculously bright.

For some reason I can't fully comprehend, Arequipa (which has a lovely city centre, by the way) shines in the sun like no city ever did*. Every whitewashed building, every colonial bit, seems to reflect the unforgiving sun, giving the whole place an otherworldly feel.

Bright Arequipa is bright.

 A taxi took us to the city centre where, faithful to our random tradition, we started looking for a place to stay.

We ended up at this cozy family house/ hospedaje that was super popular on tripadvisor.

On arrival, an overexcited man opened the entrance door for us and showed us the place, which was simple but nice and cheap. He also showed us the terrace, where he told us "someone told me I have a marihuana plant in the balcony... I wouldn't know! Can you tell me if this is a marihuana plant?"
while pointing at an OBVIOUS (and pretty big) marihuana plant on an innocent flower pot, growing next to the flowers.

We said we were pretty sure it actually was a marihuana plant, so he just ripped it out and threw it in the garbage.

After dropping the bags in our new room, we went out and took a heap of photos of the city, which is very pretty.

A pigeon-friendly St Francis outside a church.

Very Peruvian details.

City centre+ more church.

Most chill protest ever: people asking for cycle paths
"for peace and life".

Sneaky nun pic.

Amazing facade and cute little old lady.

I wish I could remember what was Chey pointing at (he looks so happy!)

Antique store. If we were millionaires, y'all would've got
Peruvian antiques as souvenirs.

The golden light of the sunset.

The couple of days spent in Arequipa were evenly divided like this: walking and looking at beautiful Peruvian crafts/ Eating/ walking a bit more, more crafts/ coffee/ walking and taking photos of the beautiful sunset, or sitting at the terrace and taking photos of the beautiful sunset/ eating.

Lovely colonial building turned into falafel shop.

The sunset from "our" terrace.

Me, probably blogging, wrapped on Chey's comfy sweater
(one of the many perks of having a travel mate)

More of the sunset.

Sunset close-up and skyline.

After sunset.

 The last night we decided that being our last night in Perú, and with the INEVITABLE approach of Chile (not our favourite cuisine, to say the least) we deserved a nice dinner. So we took ourselves to Chicha.

If you remember the Flavours of Cuzco post, then you'll
remember how much we love anything Gaston Acurio.

Chicha is one of his many restaurants. And it's awesome.

We even had our meals modified to suit our non-meat thing.

The morning after what felt like some kind of last supper we collected all of our things, and got ready for what we thought was going to be the last bit of the adventure: going South through Chile as quickly as possible.

*I realize that maybe another city might have shone like Arequipa in the sun, but since I never saw such thing I'll stick to my words

Our last dance with Huaraz

Chey and I had been having this awesome fantasies about getting higher up North, and making plans in our heads that involved boats and jungle... but it was in our last few days in Huaraz that we decided that the money situation was no longer sustainable, and that we had to slowly start heading South, back to my hometown where we had a place to stay for free.

Huaraz had been so nice to us, with the great hiking and the sauna-birthday, and the delicious clay-oven pizza and spicy curries, that we really wanted to give it a proper goodbye before heading back to Lima.

We went to the tourist info place and asked them what was there to do that wasn't more of the same things we had already done, and didn't require expensive equipment (that we didn't have) or many days (that we didn't have either).

When traveling Perú I seriously, SERIOUSLY recommend you to combine word of mouth, your traveling guide of choice (in our case it's the Rough guide) and Tripadvisor references with IPerú, the official tourist info spots. They have offices in pretty much every city, and do a great job. And they don't mind silly questions or seeing your damn face all the time. Every. Single. Day.

After a long conversation with one of the info place guys, we decided to go on a last hike to a lagoon up a mountain right outside Huaraz.

So we grabbed apple cakes and a lot of water, and headed outside town (just a 15 or 20 minute drive, so we took a taxi because the buses were too full and not stopping).

We got off the taxi at a bridge, and as soon as we crossed it we got up to a natural lookout where we could see the wonderful rural landscape.

Later we saw a guy bathing in the river (with soap).

From the lookout we had views like this one.

And this one. Like a modern day The Shire.

 I was still pretty weary of the altitude sun (that had given me heatstroke after the 9 hour hike to the Secret valley of awesome), so I wrapped my head with my everythingie* in the hippiest fashion and we started the walk up.

The road wasn't like the one of two days ago, but instead it went consistently up though a village of scattered clay houses and farming terraces.

Many of the houses look like there's no-one living there, but in most
of them, there are people still.

Chey, looking very gringo next to the crops.

Beautiful golden fields.

 We walked by pigs, hens, donkeys, sheep and beautiful wheat fields that whispered in the wind.

Happy chickens walking around, oblivious to their dark fate.

As were this cute piggies.

Sheep family.

We also crossed paths with so many dogs.

Most times the dogs you meet while traveling (just like the people) are friendly and only want to meet you. But sometimes, out of nowhere, you'll get crazy feral dogs that come at you as if they had just escaped from the dephts of hell.

And that was the case of a dog gang we encountered halfway through our hike.

We grabbed rocks from the road and stood our ground, showing them we had no fear (which was a blatant lie).

After a lot of staring and measuring each other we won, and the dogs let us through.


The one thing I couldn't stop thinking about as we went up and kept seeing this adobe constructions next to the farming fields, was how different life seemed to be in those villages.

People live without most of the things we believe essential (wifi), and their lives are basically made of work and family. The houses, mostly, have no superfluous details. Most of them don't even have windows. It seems so minimal, so far from everything we know to be normal.

Again, it was like traveling back to a simpler time.

Ominous decoration: a message for trespassing owls.

wtf

Another cute piglet.

A bull with a tiara.

Harvesting the crops.

How pretty is this?

Pretty sure it's wheat.

Next to the fields (notice how I'm not wearing the turban for the photo)

More lovely landscapes.

More lovely landscape and an even lovelier Australian boy.

A donkey that was too fluffy for its own good.

 On the way up we met only three gringos walking together (we let them go ahead of us, expecting to arrive to the lagoon when they were leaving, because by then we were used to lonely natural places all for ourselves).

We also saw a couple of locals going downhill with their donkeys. Otherwise it was all peaceful solitude.

Hard working people and hard working donkeys.

The fluff.

After a few hours of walking (it was much lighter than our previous Huaraz hike), we arrived to the hill summit.

The lagoon was beautiful and full of wild ducks, the grass was green and soft, and there was a little lonely house by the water, where some kids were playing football (soccer, for our lovely gringo readers).

Kids being the lovely stereotype of latino kids.

The lagoon.

Chey walks by the lagoon.
The weather was ridiculously nice.

We went to the edge of a cliff to look at the view, which was honestly stunning.

I've never seen mountains like those.

One happy gal.

Chey looks like he's about to fly.

Then we had a little picnic, and lingered there for a while, enjoying the sun and the wind, and a sense of accomplishment, and maybe a little bit of a sense of being close to the end.

It was a perfect place for picnic.

Wild duck.

 This was our last little adventure before starting to head back South (which we knew was going to be an adventure on its own). It was just perfect.

When we returned to town we had clay oven pizza and craft beer, which made the day even more perfect.

*Random fact: Everythingie is the name I give to a sarong I bought in Bali, which I use for pretty much everything (as you do with sarongs): from yoga mat to blanket, dress, skirt, turban, picnic blanket, shower courtain, scarf, shawl, furoshiki-ish wrapper for stuff, sheet, bus pillow, and probably other things I can't remember now.