South: Tacna to Arica

Day 3:

On a map, the distance between Lima and Tacna, on the Peruvian border with Chile, is not that great.  So why does it take nearly 24 hours on a bus?  The road is 75% windy.  I was barely able to sleep last night from the rocking back and forth and the loud groans and whines of our bus's gears and brakes.  For the first time, I questioned the wisdom of riding in a top heavy double decker bus speeding around curves at 90 kph.

I wake up at 5:30 to an unimaginable landscape.  The sun is rising and the land is dry and rocky.  The outcrops of rock reveal thick white lines of salt.  Besides access to seaports and nitrates, I cannot imagine why Bolivia, Peru, and Chile fought over this land in the War of the Pacific (1879-1884).

5:40 a.m.: We roll to a gas station.  The pump is right outside my window.  How many gallons will it take to fill the tank?  I'll guess 100.  Let's see... the attendant manually stopped at 70 gallons.  I don't think it was completely filled up.

Movies I watched this morning included Horton Hears A Who! and The Ghost Rider.  Many of the movies shown have cursing and sexual innuendo.  I wonder how those two old nuns on the bus feel about them.

These police checkpoints slowed us down further.  Everyone had to get off and have their luggage hand searched.  This is near the town of Pisco.

Can seven people fit in a 6-passenger Dodge Dynasty?
Back in college, six friends and I (that makes seven of us) decided to take a Hawaiian vacation.  We figured that by splitting expenses seven ways, we could afford it.  Our travel agent (remember them?) booked us a Dodge Dynasty as a rental car.  Being the only car person in the group, I objected.  There is no way the seven of us will fit in that car.  Thankfully, we got a minivan instead.

Fast forward to today.  I arrive at Tacna at 10:30 a.m., ahead of schedule.  I have to take a taxi across the border to Arica, Chile.  It's a two hour ordeal even though the two towns are only 56 km apart due to the wait at the border.  I pay a cabbie with a Dodge Dynasty $4 USD for the ride.  Since I am the first customer, I have to wait for the car to fill up with more customers.  Counting the baby and the cabbie, there were seven of us.  We all fit.

All of the unmarked cross-border taxis are older American sedans-- Taurus, Crown Victoria, etc.  Mine runs, barely.  It takes a mile for us to reach 30 mph.  It's hot inside and I'm the monkey in the middle between the driver and a polite laborer-type.  Every time we pass a roadside traffic fatality shrine, my driver crosses himself.

To make matters worse, once we crossed the border into Chile, we lost two hours due to the time change.

Arica! 
(BTW, if you are following the Dakar Rally right now, you'll notice that the rally will travel through Arica.)

The first thing you notice upon arriving in Arica is the huge 139 meter hill called El Morro.  This was the site of a battle between Chile and Peru in 1880.  On top of El Morro is a military museum.  I had to check it out.

Well, I made really great, surprisingly great, progress climbing the hill.  I felt like a billy goat.  But I have two fears-- snakes and heights.  Mission Control, we have a problem.

See that very last stretch of the path, where it turns left and up?  Well, when I got there, I became paralyzed with fear.  I imagined myself losing traction, sliding back, and rolling 119 meters down to the bottom.  So I had to hike half way down the hill and take a longer, less steep route.  What a wimp.

The top of El Morro

Jingo all the way.

Arica port.  All those little dots on the roofs are birds.

Pinochet took control of Chile in a coup nine months before opening this museum.  The museum's speakers pumped out patriotic and marching music on a loop.

This was the region before the War of the Pacific:

And thanks to the Chilean army and navy, this is what the region looks like now:

Eiffel's church
Down the hill, I can see my next stop, Eiffel's church.  It was designed by Mr. Eiffel in 1870 (pre-Tower).  The entire structure is made of cast iron, except for the wooden door.  All of the pieces were made in France and assembled in what was then Peru.

The little Citroen
While exploring the town, I saw a 2CV in a covered parking lot.  I politely asked the attendant if I could take some pictures of "that white car".  "Oh, the Citroen-ita!  Of course."

 
Doggies at Doggis
It's only 5 p.m. but I'm famished.  So I go get a hot dog at Doggis, a large Chilean chain.  I am struck by the number of vacationing Chilean and Bolivian mothers taking their slightly pudgy children there and the massive labor inefficiencies behind the counter.  Incredibly, there was only one cash register open.  There were literally over a dozen teenaged employees helping the lone cashier.  Two would fill one cup with soda.  Another would add ice.  Three would find a straw.  The two who are supposed to find the lid are on break.  They literally had no room to move; they were packed like sardines.

The children waiting in line and eating were so excited and full of joy.  At what point in a person's life, or, at what stage in a country's economic development, does going to a fast food outlet become a depressing, shameful act?

Here is what I ended up with.

Rather than different sized French fry containers, a large order simply consists of two small containers.  By the way, after eating the huge dog, I only had about two fries.  The dog was topped with tomatoes, avocados, and zingy mustard/mayo.  The hot dog tasted like a thick tube of cheap Oscar Mayer Bologna.  It had the same, pink eraser-like, consistency.  I liked it.