Cusco to Arica - the long goodbye

After waving a sad goodbye to Beth, who was off to Lima and a long wait before getting her flight back to snowy London, we headed back into town to book our bus ticket to the Chilean border. Problems with availability meant that we could only get a bus as far as Arequipa, which was still 6 or 7 hours from the border. Still we booked it, thinking that buses in Peru are as common as packs of dogs and we were sure we wouldn't have a problem.



So with the rest of the day to kill we wandered back to the Plaza de Armas past crowds of people in heading to what seems to have been a championship match for Cusco's football team. A crowd of noisy people were parading a giant effigy of a star player (I forget his name) and throwing bangers. It was a lot like Lewes bonfire really, apart from the sunshine. We went to an Paddy's pub, an Irish bar in town for something to eat and ended up half-watching the game with a crowd of young Americans, all enthusiastic Cusco supporters, wearing shirts and bandanas.



We picked up our bags and got to the bus station, followed by yet another stray dog and after an overnight journey, we arrived in Arequipa. A strange man was hanging around our bags but we managed to shake him off and after stocking up on provisions for the journey we were heading for Tacna, on the Peru -Chile border. After a long, dull journey without much window, and shockingly, no film (!) we arrived at Tacna train station and filled our our forms before catching the twice daily Tacna-Arica train, in what was the part of the journey most worthy of a Michael Palin episode (and which was in fact an episode I think).



The train was an hour and a half journey across the desert between Peru and Chile in a one carriage train filled with people who had obviously come to Peru to stock up on toilet paper.




We arrived in Arica, on the Chilean coast, with a port full of rusted-up vessels and palm trees and eventually found our hostel where a man with terribly bad language helped us to our room...