Dave and Liz's Excellent Adventures: Last stop in Peru and into Chile

Arequipa, Perú
After a few days in Puno we set off for Arequipa. The area around Arequipa is famous for having two canyons that are nearly twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. Before you get too excited understand that the canyons are deep but not nearly as steep as the Grand Canyon. Apparently they are impressive nonetheless. Liz and I were hoping to visit one of the canyons via a rafting trip. We soon found out after asking around that while their was some one day trips in the rivers around the canyon, the only rafting through the canyon was a 5-day expedition that required you to have at least 5 people and cost a grip of money. Our other option for visiting the canyon was a 2 to 3 day trek. At the bottom of the canyon you can stay in little hostals around the villages that ar there. While that sounded incredible we were still recovering from our long trek in Cusco and didn´t want to push Liz´s achilles. We still have lots of incredible hiking and trekking to do on this trip!

So, after seeing the main sites of Arequipa which include a huge monastary, the central plaza and surrounding buildings and colonial architecture all over the city we decided to push on into Chile.

Border Crossing

The bus ride from Arequipa to Tacna was about 7 hr ride. By now when we think of bus rides, 7 hours seems like nothing. In Tacna, the last city in Peru, we headed across the street from our bus terminal and entered into another terminal to catch a collectivo (a shared cab among strangers). We had heard that the bording crossing into Chile was going to be hectic and read of some scams that had become a problem in recent months. With our guard up we hired a collectivo that we shared with a Chilean woman and her daughter and another random guy. Apparently toilet paper is cheaper in Perú than in Chile becuase both the mother/daughter team and random guy had commercial sized packages of the stuff. Between our humungous bags and their toilet paper, we had the car packed to the brim. The trip to the border and across came and went with no issues. Liz had a pleasant conversation with the mother daughter team and random guy and I were happy to sit in silence.

Arica, Chile

Arica is the first city in Chile across the border and as far as close to the border towns go, it was pretty nice. Even just across the border, Chile is much different than Peru. The infastructure is noticably better, people give you a little more space, and everything costs twice as much. In Arica we went to the beach one day, enjoyed an amazing seafood lunch, and organized our transportation to Santiago. We chose the 3 hr flight over the 30 hour bus ride through the desert.

Santiago, Chile

In Santiago we enjoyed a couple of days of city sight seeing. We even did a self-guided walking tour of the city following a predetermined route in our guidebook and reading about the different sites that we passed. One cool part of our walking tour was seeing the old men in Santiago enjoying some intense games of chess in the central plaza. We tried to adjust to the Chilean schedule of staying up super late and starting a bit later in the morning as well. We went out on the town one night and were in awe of the perserverance of Chileans, wondering how they make it to their jobs in the morning considering how late they stay out on a Tuesday.

Chilean Mounted Police

Stately looking Chilean dude sitting in the Plaza de Armas

Ritoque, Chile

After a couple of days in the city we were ready to get out and enjoy some of the beautiful surroundings of Santiago. We decided on the beautiful and secluded beach town of Ritoque where there was a cool little hostel. We instantly made friends there as the German girl running the place was super friendly and her raft guide friends from Slovenia were also very welcoming. We joined them for a BBQ the first night there. Ali from Slovenia was the master griller and he prepared a couple of huge slabs of meat a cut them into bit sized pieces and passed the tray around the circle until it was time to re load with more meat. It was awesome!

We got off the bus and were starving so we went to the first food stand we could find. Chileans love their "completos"...a HUGE hotdog with avocado, tomato, ketchup, mustard, and of course, TONS of mayo.