from Peru to Chile 23 - 26 Feb

On our last full day in Cusco it rained and rained. We visited the Inca museum which had some fantastic Inca pottery including some of the most enormous pots I've ever seen. There was a whole hoard of mummies in different situations(!), some in pots, some wrapped in woolen wraps, some in grass fibres. They were all under some sort of infra red lighting and looked quite spooky. We took one final look around the shops and then returned to the hotel to pack our bags and get ready to leave.

On Wednesday we left Cusco around 9pm to drive to Arequipa. On the way we stopped at Pikillacta, a Wari city (AD300 - 800) (the one we had failed to visit with Walter because of the strike). The Wari lived in much larger cities than the Inca (who limited theirs to around 1000 to prevent problems with the sewage!). The Wari city had about 3000 inhabitants and when the Inca arrived they called it the town of fleas (that is what Pikillacta means in Aymara (the language of the Inca). It was a city of white, all the buildings were made of red adobe bricks, but then inside and out (and on the floor) was a thick layer of white clay.... and more amazing than that they were all 3 stories high. Furthermore, the Wari had constructed an aqueduct over about 4 km to bring water from the surrounding mountains down to the city. At one point they had built a huge wall to enable the aqueduct to maintain its course; the Inca then adapted this wall, adding their typical amazing, perfectly fitting rocks, to make two doorways (one for the each of the two leaders that they always had (the military and the religious)) to allow their leaders to enter the region of Cusco at the same time.
It was a fine ending to our Incan adventure!
We drove on to Arequipa past delapidated Haciendas, the houses of the Spaniards who took over all the land and practically turned the locals into slaves on their own land. We saw some eagles and Cara Caras, and herds and herds of Llama and Alpaca.
On the journey the petrol guage was going up and up, instead of down. Celso opened up the tank, as we assumed that their must be some build up of gas, and then the needle just plummeted to empty. We knew that the tank was about half full so on we went. However the next 200km had no petrol stations and when we were about 35km away from Arequipa with fog and darkness coming down the car started to bunny hop and finally we came to a stop only about 100m from the top of the hill, (if we had made it over the top we could have rolled down the other side, but it was not to be). Celso had to hitch down to bring back some petrol as the fog got worse and worse, and by the time he returned we had to creep down the hill with no more than 5m visibility.
We managed to find our way back to the hotel we had stayed in before in Arequipa (more by luck than judgement!
Early on Thursday we started our journey south to the border. More and more and more desert, the road stretching for miles into the distance, completely straight and completely flat; then small stretches of winding through, up, over and down solidified sand dunes, 3 amazingly green valleys. Then, after lunch in the border town of Tacna and a small wild goose chase as we tried to find a Senat office where we were told we had to leave car papers before we left the country, but it turned out to be on the actual border, we finally made it to the border crossing.

What a farce; we had to fill out 4 copies of a form that they did not have; when we finally got the paper we had to sit and fill out the details 4 times and then queue to go to first the police then the immigration, then I had to visit another kiosk in the car to ensure that they knew that I had taken the car out of Peru, only to find that (although I had the paperwork saying that I had brought the car into the country that they had no record of it on their system!). With that fixed we were finally allowed to drive down to the Chilean side of the border where we had to get all the luggage out of the car, fill out several more forms and then carry the luggage to the immigration people, then to an Xray machine. Celso and Tristan then had to wait whilst I brought the car through a very superficial search and then fill out yet more forms to bring the car into the country.
Altogether it took about 2 hours to get through both sides and then we finally drove the last 20km or so into Arica and found a hotel with a car park for us to stay in.
We only realised much later that the time here is 2 hours ahead of Peru and we finally got out to eat at around 10pm local time. Celso was feeling a bit rough so he didn't eat and later in the night ended up going off to an emergency clinic as he was losing fluids from both ends and feeling really awful!
Today (Friday) we took it quite easy, Celso had returned at about 4am having been on a drip and having some medication. We went and picked up a prescription for him and took a short walk around the town. It was hot (around 30C), and after the cool of Cusco we didn't cope too well! We explored the church, a rather odd metal construction designed by Eiffel (before he built the tower in Paris), watched hummingbirds in the main square with a cool breeze blowing in off the sea, and then wandered through the streets full of market stalls. It all seems quite 'hippyish' here, loads of bangles and scarves, Hari Krishner followers in the streets, incense burning, buskers and long haired men with head bands! The streets are full of people, street cafes abound, quite cosmopolitan after Peru.
The food and drink is really cheap but everything elses price seems to be on a par with Britain. I haven't seen the price of petrol yet, that seemed to be the main cause of the price differences between Peru and Ecuador, in Peru the petrol was at least 3x the cost and this seemed to make everything else nearly 3x as expensive too.