Travels

- Arrived at Tacna, Peru after a 7 hr bus ride. In the past, I fell asleep the moment I sat in a bus. But for some reason, during the entire trip, I found it hard to sleep on my bus rides whether it was during the day or night. I concluded that it was the mental alert I developed during the travel. Any other theories?

- There is a train from Tacna (Peru) to Arica (Chile) twice every day. I got to the tourist information center (at the bus station) and the guy told me a train is departing at 4:30 pm. Yes! Just in time to get the train tickets. Took a cab to this (relatively) shady area where the train station sits, and it is closed - closed for Sunday. Darn it! I knew it! Why didn´t the guy at the tourist information center know? Asked the cab driver to drop me off istead at the bus terminal for buses to San Pedro, Chile.

- As the bus started, a guy (working for the bus company) asked the passengers for their identification documents, which for me was the passport. MY PASSPORT! How could I give away my passport? Why would they want my passport? Without saying, I totally freaked out. Luckily I saw two gals who were on the same bus previously, and they told me this is the norm for buses crossing Chile border. Ok ... I felt a little better.

- We got off the bus at Peruvian border to ´check out´of Peru. At the check-out point, I was again the last one out. They found out in their internal system that the visa issued to me at the first place was only for 3 days (I guess they assumed I would be on my way to Bolivia by then), so I needed to pay $20 penalty for the overstay. Whatever. I would have paid $100 if necessary to rid of this hassle. When I finally got on the bus, everyone cheered. I felt so bad I held up everybody.

- After 30 minutes, we arrived at the Chilean border. Katrina (one of the 2 gals I met on the bus) knew that I don´t speak Spanish and was nice enough to accompany me after she is done with her identification check. With no exception, though no fault on my end, I was the last one out ... again. The immigration officer got on the phone and asked me to wait a moment to pick with his superior. ´A moment´ turned out to be 15 mins, and passengers of another bus (which arrived after us) were almost checked in. Finally, he came back and stamped my passport. Thank God I am finally admitted into Chile! I hate immigration!

- At Arica, Katrina, Kara and I took a cab together to downtown. Since we have slightly different budgets for accomodation, we decided to split our ways for hostel hunting, and meet up an hour later (at 7 pm) at a certain restaurant for dinner. After a lot of walking around and asking, I finally set my mind on a Residence Universal. It was not really a hostel, but rather a 2 story buildng with double-bed/triple-bed rooms fully equipped with TV, closet etc for rent to families (for temporarily stay, I guess). With the exception of the baby crying next door, everything is great ... and most of all, it is cheap, as in relatively. Done deal!

- Coming from Peru, everything in Chile looks 3x expensive. I am sure it must be more of an adjustment if one is arriving from Bolivia.

- Waited for Katrina and Kara outside the restaurant at 7 (The restaurant was close). They were not there. By then, I realized there was a miscommunication. We said we would meet one hour later, and per Chilean time, it should be 6 pm, not 7 pm. (At the time of arrival, we thought Chilean time is 2 hrs ahead of Peru, when in reality it is only 1 hr ahead). They must have waited at 6. Bummer.

- The ´downtown' area was pretty dead on Sunday night. Banks, money exchange centers, grocery stores, restaurants, internet cafes .. with the exception of few, were closed. Went to a pub to grab dinner and watch a soccer game before heading home. Final score: 1 - 0. Nice game, but no idea what the teams were.