I went to the bus terminal in Tacna, Peru and found a man who was looking for the last passenger. I took a car with four other passengers (a mom and her little daughter and 2 guys in the front seat). Crossing the border with Chile was quick, organized and efficient. I noticed few interesting while crossing the borders, first, they inspect very carefully to make sure that passengers don’t bring fruits or vegetables. Chile is one of the major exporters of fruits and vegetables to many countries in Latin America as well to other countries around, so they really protect their industries. The other thing, is that they ask all the cars go into drive thru that’s filled with some chemicals to decontaminate the tires. They also ask every traveler to wipe his/her feet on the wet mat for decontamination in case the visitor has been into a farm in order not to spread any diseases. May be it took 10 or 15 minutes to get through the border and about an hour we were in Arica the next city after the border in northern Chile.
Chile is considered one of the very few developed countries in South America. You can see a big difference crossing over from Peru. Of course when I say relatively developed, it’s compared to other countries in the region, and not to be compared with developed countries in Europe or North America. There are many Europeans who came here after the world war especially from Germany. Many people here look different than what people look in neighboring countries such as Peru and Bolivia.
After walking around the little town I took a bus to go Iquique, it’s another city that’s around 6 hours bus ride from Arica, we arrived around 9PM and I started to look for hostel. I was surprised to see that it wasn’t easy especially that it’s a small city, after about an hour I was able to find a little hostel, that’s owned by a Bolivian woman. She told me that because of an international culture festival, there were many people visiting the town. A lot of Bolivian come to work in Chile because the economy is better than in Bolivia. Iquique is also a small city, a port, and it has a free trade zone, it was easy to walk around and see everything. I took a bus in the afternoon to go to another city called Calama. Once we left the city we were stopped to make sure that custom duties are paid on any items that were bought in Iquique. The poor girl in front of me couldn’t remember the secret code for her luggage. The custom inspector and I tried to help her and finally we ended forcing the release because the secret number wouldn’t work. Half way through the trip, I started to ask myself why I decided to go to Calama and I couldn’t remember why, or what information I read about it. I looked up again the information I have and there’s nothing interesting about this city and it’s in the middle of the desert.
Finally, I arrived in Calama at around 10PM and when I asked about the next town that might be touristy, I was told it will take another bus ride of about 2 hours. I decided it’s better to just sleep in Calama for the night and just go south to somewhere that will have a different landscape. It took me about 2 hours to find an accommodation but it was nice, clean with modern TV and cable. Next day when I asked if they could recommend some places to see they told me, there’s nothing interesting here. So I headed to the bus terminal and while walking a woman stopped to talk to me, she told me that she’s been to Ecuador too, she said she’s a gypsy and she wanted to wish me good luck for my trip but of course she wanted me to pay her to get the good fortune. I told her thanks and started to walk away she insisted and finally she gave up.
Along the way on the bus while going further south, I started to see a different scenery, it looks like a Mediterranean country than Latin America, lots of apple trees and vineyards. Finally we arrived in Valparaiso, a beautiful city but it was late Sunday and the stores were closing, so I went for a short walk and picked something to eat before heading back to a hostel that I found next to the bus terminal.
