Goodbyes (and hello-s)

Lots of changes and happenings the last few days that have made my head spin. I spent a truly great weekend in Arequipa with my friends from Cusco who came to visit me: Roy, Juan Carlos (Juanca) and la Osa (this means ‘the bear’, which does not mean that she is big nor hairy – her real name is Ana but no one calls her that). I have just known them for about three weeks, but is special to notice how close I feel to them. We had so much fun together, even though we didn’t really do great things (large part of the time was spent on looking for a place to live for la Osa because she studies in Arequipa) – these three are the worst to accompany a tourist, in Cusco I missed quite some tourist attractions as well. I was very happy to spend to last days with them – we ate about a month worth of KFC, then watched an awful movie (do not ever spend money on a movie called ‘Muerte en la Montaña! In English I think it’s ‘Frozen’. It is stupid and not nice to watch after having eaten. It involves seeing bones sticking out of legs and wolves devouring people). The guys had their rum – without that it can’t be complete. We looked for more houses. I met my first Dutch people in the wild! Real boeren from Eindhoven.

Sunday night my friends went back to Cusco and I went the opposite way – to Tacna (south end of Peru). It was not fun to say bye, this time for real. As I said, I got quite close to them and it doesn’t matter how many times you have had to say bye to people, it stays shitty.

The bus to Tacna scared me – when we just started driving this guy came buy and filmed all of the passengers. And then they told us about all of their safety measures etc. That, combined with horror stories of buses crashing and people dying in that area didn’t really give me a comforting feeling. Mondaymorning, 4 am, I arrived in Tacna, feeling tired, lost, alone and unhappy. It is not all great and happiness always, though it might sound that way… My original plan was to stay in Tacna for the day and then in the afternoon cross the border to Arica, Chile – but at that moment I heard 3 others speaking about going to Arica right away so I decided to join them. A young Chilean couple and a Brazilian guy (Hugo) – with the four of us (and a Peruvian man) we took a combi taxi to cross the border. The driver helps you through all the formalities of leaving Peru and entering Chile, which luckily went without any problems. Around 9.30 in the morning we arrived in Arica and I went with Hugo to a hostel, where the amazing welcome made me happier instantly – the hostel is like a home and there were a bunch of people sitting around a big breakfast table with everything you could wish for, fruit, cereals, nice bread, yogurt, cheese… Arica is a very nice city, right at the beach, finally some real heat and no rain, etc. The last two days I have walked around a lot, with Hugo, with two Canadian girls who sadly enough all have already left. My plan is two stay here for two more nights and then go on to La Serena, a 22 hour long bus ride south, and then Santiago.