Arequipa Again After 9 Months Away

You heard about the guy from Chicago who got made Pope? He was from northern Peru actually, at least that’s what what they say around here. He spent decades ministering to the poorest Peruvians in the northern part of the country and I was told yesterday he was known for riding the Andes on horseback to reach the remotest communities. You don’t have to go remote to see poverty in Peru, it lines the PanAmerican Highway.

But I’ll tell you we had a brilliant day yesterday driving a few hours to Arequipa in our 276 horsepower van. The weather was perfect, sunny and around 80 degrees, no wind, a smooth road mostly and lots of pleasant friendly people.

Last night after we ate a delicious Indian dinner delivered to our campground in Arequipa I sat back full of lamb, biriyani and naan and had a brain fart as you do. “Where did we start the day?” I asked Layne as one day tends to blend into the next in this weird nomad life, and she reminded me we had camped for the night in the Peruvian wilderness. So we had.

The vast emptiness of the Atacama Desert stretching into Peru. The Pacific coast to southern Ecuador is desert, something I never knew but I do now. I’ve driven it and so have you. 

This isn’t Chile with paved pull outs, hot showers at truck stops and ambulances stationed along the highway. Peru is poor. A few weeks ago 13 miners were murdered in the north of the country, the Pope’s old stomping ground. It was some sort of dispute over turf and they were kidnapped and shot by a gangster who has now been caught and is awaiting extradition from Colombia.  The Prime Minister was forced to resign to salve public outrage and the unpopular President already under fire for rising crime rates has appointed a new prime minister to solve the crime problem. No one expects that to change much in Peru. 

None of that matters here in the south two thousand miles away where Team Lost was riding into town with an empty fridge after the customs inspection at the border. Clearly we had groceries to buy but we also had tires to rotate. Luckily there was an oasis on our route with all necessary facilities. 

Get yourself a flowing river and suddenly the desert turns into the green and pleasant land you haven’t seen in what feels like forever. 

And here we are dodging slow moving three wheelers again, characteristic of Peru, this one hauling a water tank. 

The light was terrible but in the haze you can see cows standing around in a banquet of grass. 

And always the back drop of the desert.  

I like to keep the tank full and we stopped to add eight gallons of regular at $4 a gallon, much better than the $5:30 in Chile but around here the gas stations are only partially paved, the least they can get away with. You’ve got to wonder what kind of oil company won’t give its customers a few extra feet of dust suppressing cement. 

And we are back in the land of the  US gallon. Everything else is sold by the liter but this mysterious measurement relic from an ancient past still holds sway in gas stations. 3.78 liters though I doubt many customers can do the conversion.  I’ve asked and they look puzzled. You just buy gas by the “galone.” What it is they don’t know. It could just as easily be called a furlong, or a bushel or an ounce.  

The city of Moquegua (“mo-kay-waah”) spreads out up the valley and at the furthest end  there is a fully equipped tire shop ready to rotate our tires for five bucks and they used a torque wrench to tighten our lug nuts, which is the only proper way.  Good work. 

Meanwhile Leandros the taxi driver was having his cab’s wheels aligned ably assisted by five year old Samuel his youngest of four children. He could not compute how Layne and I were happy being child free. He did appreciate Rusty though.  

It was a very pleasant interlude chatting cheerfully with an alert happy Peruvian. Hmm, this isn’t how I recall Peruvians at all. Grumpy dour lot in Arequipa. 

The vast spacious parking lot was half empty on a Saturday afternoon so I parked on the edge of the lot and while Layne went to the supermarket I walked Rusty. Banks, a Home Depot clone, ice cream parlor, hair dresser, the usual mix of stores.  And warnings about taking care of your bicycle if parked here.  

And wouldn’t you know it someone parked right next to us. But I out smarted them by putting our side door on the end of the row so madam would have easy access to her shopping cart as she selected items for me to hand up to her. Personal space is an unknown concept in Latin America. 

All the world is the same fundamentally, supermarkets are everywhere, lots of colors and bright lights and lines of people. The check out crew were full of smiles too asking about where we were from and acting goofy. Layne and I were puzzled wondering if everyone in Peru gets free laughing gas nowadays. Last year I couldn’t get a smile even if I tried to beat it out of passers by. Lovely this, but weird.  

They have the best junk food and snacks at the check out. Layne is immune but she did get a few extra ramen packets. I wanted the chocolate sandwich cookies. 

With four hours till dark we bought empanadas and ate on the road working our way back to the PanAmerican. Arequipa was more than a hundred miles away and the road winds through canyons to get there. We now have local knowledge. 

There are long straight stretches and we were doing 60 on some of them.  Driving after dark is not safe like in Chile, as livestock pedestrians unlighted bicycles and potholes all lie in wait to snag you in this country.  

A diesel powered Peugeot Jumper, a clone on the exterior of our Promaster. 

This is some business headquarters, a mine or a distribution center or something, but crudely out of actual brick.

Even the attendant at the tollbooth had a smile and a cheery greeting totally unsolicited when we passed through. 

15.70 soles for two axles is $4:25. The toll booths pop up randomly along the highway. I think we went through two yesterday.  

Truck stops are where you find them, much less organized than Chile. 

Where there is water there is agriculture. And it’s lovely to see. 

The specks are blown garbage. 

Peruvian drivers are notorious for incompetence or irrational exuberance depending on your point of view. I anticipate crashes all the time and  hang back to give myself room to stop. So far so good but you can sense the impatience of these two below: 

Toilets and showers on offer under the mileage chart. We have hot showers waiting in Arequipa happily. 

¡Ahora! Save! Buy a Nissan from Peru Motor.  

Summer vacations in your cabin. Contrast and compare with the hovels we’ve been driving by. 

Oh and the notorious roadside trash. Most visitors to Peru don’t get to see this filth. 

To keep the tourists happy they have functioning trash collection in the Sacred Valley and major tourist sites but out here in the rest of Peru seen by overlanders and locals of course,  trash is just part of the scenery. 

Where there are humans there is garbage and near any community you’ll see this: 

Alongside public service billboards suggesting we keep our water clean …to help development…

…or to protect the ones we love. 

Through the tunnel we could see our destination. 

It’s odd being in a familiar place thus knowing where we are going. 

After nine months away in Patagonia we are back.  

And we bought some roadside pork rinds to celebrate. He seemed glad to see us, a random roadside vendor. Peru is happier than I remember.  

Enough pork rinds for you? 

To roadside shop you just put on your four way flashers and stop. Stressful road manners for a gringo but it works.  

We are planning excursions but we will be here for a few weeks waiting for my new passport.  

Rusty won’t mind at all. 

Sean from Colorado and Isadora from Florianopolis are leaving but we got to chat and they are a lovely couple. Their Sprinter van is old but their love is new and they are off to surf the north coast of Peru for a while before returning to Brazil. We hope we will see them again.  

Time to plug into shorepower, take a hot shower and order Indian food to be delivered. Next week Machu Picchu. 

We Got Peru’ed

We spent a second night in the small parking lot alongside the approach road to the Arica airport just a couple of miles from the border with Peru. As campsites go it’s rather trashed, there is more traffic than I’d like as the airport and adjoining industrial park are quite busy but our van is heavily insulated and the area is much quieter than the busy port city of Arica. It worked for us especially as the plan was to drive straight to the border. 

Rusty likes to eat but once a day in the evening, kibbles and added meats, hot dogs chicken or whatever we have to share, though after he gets up he usually interrupts his morning exploration by sitting at the door and staring. That’s my cue to offer him some breakfast cookies, he doesn’t want kibbles and he daintily accepts a mere handful of cookies, then he’s set for the day. Yesterday he wanted breakfast in bed so before I moved his bed back to its daytime position on top of ours he sat up and watched the sunrise. Apparently he wasn’t in the mood for much of a walk so I let him be. Then when I put his bed up for the day he jumped up and took a nap. It’s a dog’s life. 

All evening long we’d heard mysterious musical pings coming from somewhere inside the van. Layne denied it was her phone but I’m a man so I knew better: obviously she’d just set it to ping with a new tone when she got a message and she’d forgotten. What else could it be? People are always leaving her WhatsApp notes so her phone is pinging constantly but not usually with that weird tone. Well, weren’t we surprised to find a big black Motorola cellphone sitting on our equally black dashboard in the morning. That had us puzzled: who the hell broke into the van during the night and how did they lock the doors after they forgot to steal anything and also left behind their phone? Then I remembered the guy who’d refused to give me his name but I had given a lift to the day before, when he was suffering the heat walking back to his rental van. 

Now I knew his name; his phone gave it away. He was Gerhard and his friends had been texting him in German sending him memes and other frivolities overnight. I’ll bet he was frantic for his phone as I would be had I lost mine. What to do? We did the only thing we could do, we tossed it out the window and drove for the border. 

Screw that. You know (I hope) we didn’t do that. We drove to the hotel where I had dropped him off while Layne looked for an honorary consul listed in Arica in case he might have contacted the German authorities. We found no listing for any German consular contacts in the city but would you believe it he wasn’t at the hotel any more either, and we had driven the beach to get to the hotel as yesterday he had mentioned plans to spend the night on the waterfront. The last I saw of the man who refused to give me his name when we shook goodbye: 

I was standing in line at the reception in the hotel Diego de Almagro when the phone started playing very loud music. Everyone stared as I struggled to suppress this Motorola product but I, an Apple user, was having no luck. “Pardon me,” I said forced into the uncomfortable role of social disrupter, “but I found this phone and I don’t know how to use it,” which was when the receptionist got a hopeful look. “Is it a Motorola?” she said, and when I explained the circumstances she said her former guest had left his contact number just in case and she’d call him immediately. All’s well that ends well and we all agreed, receptionist other guest and I, losing our phones is a major 21st century crisis. Finally we got on the road to the border.

It’s slightly weird in a South American way as when you arrive at this border post the only sign you see is the word “Livianos” which means “light vehicles” in Spanish, ie: Private vehicles not commercial trucks which use a different lane for a different hell. The sign directed us into Peru and it was only after we crossed the line in the road that a sign explained it is an “integrated border post” one where both countries operate out of one building. It was odd because going south we had to stop in Peru first to export Rusty so we had forgotten we did everything else at the Chilean side going into Chile. 

It was actually quite well organized with a few quirks starting with not telling you where to go to pick up the starting document that each office stamps to prove you’ve been checked through. But everyone’s very helpful. Basically you go to window one, Chile immigration where you exit; window 2 Peru immigration where you enter (and your wife starts nagging you to remember to clear the Chilean vehicle import permit); window 3 Chilean customs who indeed cancel GANNET2’s temporary import permit so when we return next year our history will show we did not overstay, window 4 Peru customs who then temporarily import GANNET2 for 90 days. Then I almost forgot to do Rusty’s papers with Peruvian  agriculture called SENASA. The nice lady there typed his import permit so slowly I thought I was going to pass out but I kept channeling Khoi, the zen master who counsels patience. Lunch with Canadian Promaster owner Khoi in Arica yesterday:

It took two hours and maybe a little more but it’s actually not hard. Most of the time you stand around waiting for the officers to do what they need to do and on this occasion there were floods of weekend buses going to Peru and we were swarmed by waves of passengers getting their papers stamped for a weekend of riotous living in Up North. 

We also met the Swiss couple we’d seen from a distance in Iquique but they refused to make eye contact so I ignored them. Layne got all peppermint patty chatty with them but all she got was glares so you know they are assholes. Or just not in the mood. They are probably riotous campers  when they feel comfortable but we did not mesh with them obviously. We’ll probably end up in the same iOverlander campground in Arequipa and that will be a barrel of laughs. 

Tacna is known for its olive groves, for some reason they grow like gang busters here in this awful desert and the road from the border to the city is lined with olive trees and ghastly squalid shacks for mile upon mile. Peru is poor lest there be any misunderstandings  about that.

Tacna is a border town and that line in the sand marks the end of orderly calm Chilean traffic with a sudden transition to darting motorcycles, lumbering three wheelers, honking horns and uncertain lane changes. I aged visibly and in short order after miles of Chilean roadway serenity. 

First order of business was to fill the tank. In Chile regular is about $5:30 a gallon and is sold in liters. In Peru it’s about $4:00 and like Colombia and Ecuador they sell it by the US gallon. Why? I have no idea. The local currency, the Sol (Sun, named I suppose for the Incas favorite god) was four to the dollar in September but now it’s only about 3,80 as our currency has weakened.

All the lost property and border kerfuffles had set us back a bit so it was time for lunch. Actually it was a bit early because Chile moves its clocks and Peru doesn’t so for the winter Peru is an hour earlier than Chile. It gets dark here at 5:30 pm which seems idiotic but I know that’s why we use daylight saving time and all my neighbors think switching the time twice a year is stupid. I march to the beat of my own drum and always have: I like daylight saving time so there. Lunch: 

Recommended to us by Mark the mechanic in Iquique and also in iOverlander (an old entry which we updated) we ate at La Glorieta. Layne on this occasion wanted meat so we shared a $16 mixed grill with lamb, pork and chicken. It was half the price of Chile with lots of opportunities for leftovers. 

Someone likes saving money, plus I think Layne likes the color, the quality of the food and the vibrant street life of Peru.

Peru is admired for its cuisine and the sauces were hot and fresh, the red one was like a peppered salsa while the green one was a cooler rather more bland mix of green herbs. 

Layne wanted frozen lemonade which gives me an ice cream headache but as always Peruvian food has flair and this was served with a dusting of cinnamon and it was good. 

The main event served over hot coals. We saved some for us and some for Rusty. He gave the fat his eager seal of approval.  

Then we drove into town to get money from the low fee ATM at Banco de La Nacion.  It helps that this is our second visit to Peru as we remember at least some of the tricks of travel in this country. However as we drove around Tacna looking for the bank let me tell you why we got Peru’ed.  And that term comes from our three months last year when every time something inexplicable went wrong I took to calling it “getting Peru’ed.” I’m trying to have a better attitude about this country this time around but they don’t make it easy. 

At the border we arrived loaded with food stuffs only available at Layne’s favorite market, Jumbo and some from Lider (Walmart) her second favorite also in Chile. Peru does not have a reputation for strict vegetable controls and no one cared when we entered from Ecuador. But this border was a different story. Boy howdy. We got taken by surprise hence we got …Peru’ed. 

Indeed we got  dragged over the coals and flogged with barbed wire. The young customs inspector was very sweet and apologetic but she systematically demolished our fruit basket then she ravaged the fridge taking sausages, salami, cooked ham, carrots, onions, Rusty’s hot dogs (she missed one in an opened packet and she also missed the cooked chicken so Rusty ate well). She let us keep our crackers but she took Rusty’s cookies and we’d just filled the jar (we have plenty more stashed as they are his favorites) but didn’t notice his food in its bag nor did she know about the three kilo bag of his favorite food (6.5 pounds) stashed in the back. Layne was not allowed aboard during the inspection (!) so I the driver was alone trying not to show no irritation as our chef’s nostalgia food was wiped out. Why? I suspect she was a trainee and being observed by the man with the clipboard in the doorway. I think her calm apologetic thoroughness impressed him, I hope it did because it sure as hell impressed me and I trust she passed the test. Our bad luck. Oh well. 

That letter of the law moment  was not great for us but there was more to come. I parked in downtown Tacna while Layne was at the ATM doing battle with our First State Bank of the Florida Keys cards ( the ones with the manatee) but  I was double parked like the locals. I hate doing it but I was behind several other cars with flashers on so I wasn’t alone causing the slight bottleneck by blocking the right lane.  

Below you can see the cones that mark the entrance to the bank kept clear for pedestrians. The cards were slow on our first use in a new country and we had to deal with security messages texted to our phones but eventually we got a paltry $200 in Soles and Layne was mad they wouldn’t yield more. While she was sorting the cash and grumbling in the back a woman motorcycle cop with a horrendous scowl pulled alongside and wagged a large gloved finger at me.  

I got moving rapido, and such was her power the cars behind yielded and let me into the flow of traffic without a single honk. 

This is suddenly not Chile as you can tell by the huge colonial church dominating the square, a city feature common in many South American countries but not Chile or Argentina. We left Tacna and snatched a photo of the oasis as the PanAmerican Highway climbed the hills north of town. 

Our route: 

And it wasn’t over as iOverlander warned us of a customs (“Sunat”) checkpoint ahead …sure enough. It’s not uncommon for these a few miles inside the border. Often countries allow citizens to cross borders with more relaxed rules to allow shopping and family visits but if you depart for the interior they want to make sure you are properly documented. Hence the checkpoint a half hour from Tacna.

They were cheerful and easy and took my registration and import permit into the office while we sat in the van and Rusty wondered why he couldn’t get out. We were on our way in five minutes.

After that we passed a separate police checkpoint and the cop naturally flagged us down. He only asked for our  proof of insurance and I showed him my phone with a picture of the receipt. Car insurance these days you buy online on your phone before you cross into a country. So if you don’t appreciate the internet you clearly aren’t a traveler! Then the cop started harassing us. Actually he didn’t at all; instead he asked where we were going and I said to Cusco to Machu Picchu (Layne got me on a $350 tour next Wednesday so it had better be good). And he said he was from Cusco and started raving about how beautiful it is up there  and pointed out how the rainy season is over so it won’t be cloudy and misty and I’ll be able to see everything. He waved goodbye with a huge smile. Every official we’ve met has been like that despite stereotypes. But we always make sure to have the right papers and be in order.  

Back into the desert we went and of course evening was closing in.  We stopped to exercise and release some travel  tension and I said why not just stay here. We hadn’t gone far but we were off the highway and there was no one around. 

So we stopped for the night. Guess who was ready for dinner? We had beans and spinach but he got what the customs inspector had missed. 

Rusty is too smart to get Peru’ed.