Day 42 Tacna, Peru - Bus, Chile (27 August)

After a comfortable night in a festive Tacna (celebrating 80 years of reunification with Peru) we had a hot & cold shower and a nice little breakfast (for once included in the price!) and made our way to the bus terminal. Very smooth process finding a share taxi to take us over the border. Driver very helpful with formalities on both sides of the Peru/ Chile border. We shared the taxi with 3 Peruvian girls, 2 of whom had some problems at the Chilean border with the (to us mysterious) content of their large bags. We had no problems at all. The immigration official was amused with the in-out stamps we had showing our progress through South America, and checked to make sure we were continuing on to Argentina. After a bit of a wait for our fellow passengers we continued on to Arica in Chile, 20 km from the border.

This region (both sides of the border) is strange and quite unique in our experience. It is basically a desert, but very temprate. They call it an area of eternal spring. It is pleasantly cool at night and during the day. Less than 20 degress at midday. We think it is due to the mix of desert and cold sea current. What is pretty impressive is the way the people here manage to grow just about anything in the desert. Right amongst the dunes, wherever they manage to irrigate, there are little fields of maize, potatoes, peanuts, fruit, cows.... (¿who knew so much of Peru was desert?)

The taxi dropped us at the bus station, where we managed to find a bus departing to Santiago early this afternoon, arriving tomorrow late afternoon( 30 hours). PTL this means we are not behind schedule, as we feared we might be.

We had lunch in the bus terminal with coffee with milk. Coffee is not that easy to find in this part of the world, and combined with milk even less so. So we´re sorted out and ready for the long haul south to Santiage (2060km).