PERU

Last week I had the incredible opportunity to spend a week in Peru. I got permission to miss a few days of school and due to lack of interest and my impulsive decision, I made the trip alone.

I left Wednesday afternoon, and the 18 hour bus ride up to Arica (the northernmost city in Chile) was actually quite enjoyable due to the fact that I had 2 whole seats all to myself and slept very well.

I arrived in Arica and went to buy my bus ticket to cross the border into Tacna, Peru, and got my first shock. The ticket agents told me that because I didn’t have the right ID (I hadn’t yet picked up my Chilean id card) I could not go to Peru. It was like an awful flashback of July 25th in Philly when the lady at the Delta counter told me for almost 2 hours that I could not go to Chile. This time I was pretty sure they were wrong, but I had to ride with them to the International Police station to verify that, in fact, I could cross the border without a problem with my documentation. On the bus to Tacna I met a fellow gringo – he was an older gentleman originally from Massachusetts who, due to circumstances and some bad luck, is now working exporting used clothing from Peru and Chile to other parts of the world.

I got to Tacna and ended up on a VERY sketchy bus to ride the 6 hours up to Arequipa. There were about 8 women on my bus with ghastly amounts of used clothing, electronics and other things which they were smuggling up to Arequipa. One of them actually sat next to me and I had some newspaper-wrapped objects, that I’m still believing were books, hidden between my seat and the wall. Due to all the illegal paraphanalia on the bus we were stopped at the inspection station for almost 2 hours and I didn’t arrive in Arequipa until about 7pm that night.

I went to my hostel and then decided to explore the city a bit, eat dinner, etc. I was planning on doing a trek to the Colca Canyon (the 2nd deepest canyon in the world) on Sat/Sun., but when I passed by a tour agency that was still open my plans changed. They had a 2 day/1 night tour leaving the next morning, so I signed up. Now, when I say the next morning I mean that they arrived at my hostel at 12:15 am to pick me up…only 2 short hours after I had finally gone to bed.

We had a 5 hour bus ride to the canyon, and arrived at 6am to eat breakfast and prepare for the trek. Our group was very awesome. There were 2 Peruvian guides who were both in their early 20s, and 4 of us. My group included Milan, a 19 year-old Dutch guitar player, Eveline, a 23 year-old German girl who’s studying sociology, and Ohad, a 22 year-old Israeli guy who just got out of his 3 years in the Israeli Army. The group was a lot of fun, and we started hiking around 7am on Friday. The first day included about 4 hours of hiking down all the way into the canyon, stopping for lunch, and finishing with a 3 hour hike to the oasis. It was GORGEOUS. I’ve always been a greater advocate for the beauty of mountains, but I agree with what Donald Miller said in “Through Painted Deserts”, where he said that canyons are just as beautiful as mountains, but are less obviously so because they don’t rise above the rest of the land. The Colca Canyon is absolutely beautiful, and around every corner of the trail there’s a different view, a different magnificence to breathe in.

After hiking all day we arrived around 4pm at the Oasis. The Oasis is located at the bottom of the canyon, and has different types of accommodations. Having only paid $40 for our entire 2 day trip, we were in the lowest level, but this was still pretty awesome. We got to take a dip in the beautiful swimming pool, ate a hot dinner, I taught my friends how to play poker and Blackjack, and we went to bed early at 8:30.

The next morning we awoke at 4am to start the hike at 4:30. one of our guides woke up with stomach pain and couldn’t continue, and Evelyn’s feet were hurting too much to make the trek, so the two of them had to ride up the hill on mulas (mules). About 20 minutes into the hike Milan got really dizzy and also had to get a mula, so just 3 of the 6 of us (Diego, Ohad, and I) finished the 3.5 hour hike (uphill the entire time). It was pretty difficult at times but when we did the final climb out of the canyon it felt great.

We got to watch a family of condors fly through the canyon and stopped in a small village for lunch on our way back to Arequipa, and though my body was in a lot of pain for the next 3 days it was one of the best things I’ve done in South America.

I spent the next day and a half exploring the city of Arequipa. It’s beautiful, and while it has a good amount of tourism it’s not quite so bad as Cusco farther to the north, and most of the tourism is actually people from other parts of Peru. One of the best (and worst upon my return to Chile) things about Peru was that it was SO cheap. I had dinner one night and got: a big bowl of cream of tomato soup, a large slice of lasagna, chocolate crepes, and a glass of wine for only $5. My roundtrip bus ticket (which was about 14 hrs on the bus) was only $15 to and from Arequipa. I almost didn’t want to leave. I did a bus tour in Arequipa and then got invited out to dinner with 2 of the ladies on my tour which was very fun – one of them was actually a Fulbright Scholar last year and did a year as a research assistant at Harvard. That night I also witnessed a fantastic, yet slighty scary fireworks show right in front of one of the catholic churches. It was beautiful and lasted about 25 minutes, but it was literally happening 5’ in front of the church, and at one point one of the wooden rings that launches the fireworks fell from the air and landed about 7 feet from where I was sitting.

On Monday I headed back to Tacna and crossed the border to Arica, where I was pretty excited to get to spend a full day there. For those who don’t know, my friends and I were originally supposed to be placed in Arica as teachers there, but at the last minute the government closed the program there and moved us to different cities further south. And I went to Arica hoping I could hate it, and be confidently glad that we’re not living there. Unfortunately, it was beautiful. I got to watch the sunset on the most beautiful beach I’ve seen yet in Chile. I explored the nightlife and got to experience the several blocks of pedestrian-only streets with shopping, dining, and tons of people. The next morning I explored the historical center of the city, climbed the famous hill that overlooks the city, and took it all in. It was slightly run-down, and there was no defined center of the city, so in some ways I was thankful to be returning to my smaller Copiapo.

The 18 hour bus ride back down to Copiapo was good until about 30 Chilean marines got on the bus in Iquique, and I no longer had a lot of space to myself. And we arrived back here at 6:30am…just in time for me to run home, change my clothes, and get to school in time for my first class at 8.

It was a great trip, and apart from a few slightly sketchy stories that I will not include in the blog, I had an absolutely amazing time.