..onward to Peru!

We arrived in arica about 6am, we were going to have to hang around for 5 hours to checkin anywhere so we said feck it we'll make the trip to Peru, this involved getting a collectivo, which is a car that brings 5 people across the border..so he we hopped with 3 randomers from our bus, 1 German, 1 Peruvian and a lad from Tenerife..it is the easiest way to make it across the border and it costs around 4euros each and takes around 2 hours from Arica to Tacna, Peru where we'll have to jump on yet another bus to Arequipa which should take around 7 hours, but we may have to wait 5 hours for it to arrive!

The collectivo was a lead foot, but not in a bad way sure he was flooring it but the roads were decent, shame they stuff the seatbelts in the boot in these countries even though there fitted to the car! First stop was Chilean immigration and that was a breeze, queue up and the passports stamped in and out in about 20 minutes. Next stop about 3 km's down the road was the Peruvian border, it involved us taking our bags from the car to get X-rayed but it was relatively straight forward and again in and out in 20 minutes, from here we had to go 30kms with our collectivo to Tacna bus station, luckily enough when we arrived the bus to Arequipa was leaving in the next 40 minutes...which is where I'm currently writing these blog entries..Well I do have another 7 hours to kill!

It is certainly different to Argentina & Chile, we had a rake of people on the bus selling food and even one girl sang a song before selling chocolate bars for about 25cents each! They weren't half bad either. There were numerous checkpoints and customs boarded the bus twice and searched it! After nearly 20 out of the last 24 hours on buses and taxi's we arrived in Arequipa..Tina jotted down some accomodation yesterday, so we got a taxi there, the two of us and a German woman from the bus hopped into a little yellow Fiat Cinquento..only one bag could fit in the boot, we were driving in his taxi for a good 20 minutes for the grand total of EUR1.40! We got to the guesthouse and knackered at this stage, the room is nice, the kitchen wasn't! We managed to get him down on the price of the room after a bit of haggling, so we got an en-suite room and a DECENT breakfast (not bread) for around 14euro a night! Happy days..

We had a bit of a chill out and decided to grab a take-away pizza as we were too knackered to go out anywhere....Argentina to Chile to Peru over the last 72 hours: 28 hours of which were on buses & taxi's...We'll certainly sleep tonight

A foot note, when I arrived I went to use the ATM to withdraw some Peruvian money with my Bank of Ireland Mastercard, I don't know what the fuck Bank of Ireland are playing at but my card wouldn't work even though the machine said it took mastercard and visa, what a shower of incompetent wasters, is it any wonder they cost Ireland billions of euro, luckily I still have my Australian account still open and was able to withdraw money on that, I don't like using it as the fees are very high but it's a good backup...I'm guessing they've frozen my card for the third time even though I explicity told them I was travelling in South America until May, all I can say is you wouldn't want to be relying soley on the Irish Banks or you'll end up having a seriously shitty holiday!