You know how you think you’ve learned your lesson but once put to the test you know you haven’t? The government agriculture office, Senasa, in Ilo has a reputation for being helpful, and he was, because he gave us Rusty’s export certificate yesterday without having us come back the next day. Normally Senasa makes you wait twenty four hours for pick up of the paperwork.
We arrived at 2pm with Rusty’s health certificate from the vet in Arequipa and we had to go back into town to the bank to pay $25 into Senasa’s account. Then the boss told me his assistant had to go to the hospital so it would take an hour to prepare our papers and to come back at 4:15 just before he closed at 4:30.
Ilo is an industrial city, a port serving the desert mines underneath the foggy Pacific marine inversion cloud cover, so it wasn’t a bright sparkly tourist town but that wasn’t we were there. First I walked Rusty then we organized our safe and sorted our documents for the Chilean border before I went back to face the agriculture guy.
He was a bit grumbly when I went back not least because I hadn’t used his favorite vet up the street who does the certificate exactly as he likes it. But he kept pecking away, checking my details and grinding toward the finish line. Then the internet slowed and he grumbled some more.
Silly us, we had planned to leave at 4:30 because that’s when he said it would be ready. By the time it was finally ready it was dusk so to avoid driving in the dark we had to reorganize our plans to find a nearby parking spot. We picked a beach ten miles south of town just off the coast road. It hadn’t been visited in two years and when we arrived we found a big sign announcing “Private Property.” It looked like a development may be coming one fine day, maybe. We probably could have driven onto the beach but we’re foreigners and passing a private property sign isn’t the way we travel. So we turned around and parked for the night a couple of hundred yards off the coast highway. Good enough.
Herewith some photos of the drive from Arequipa to Ilo, mountain desert driving and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Layne made me tea and lunch was an empanada on the go.
