Hola!

I am preparing to go to Peru tomorrow. I am looking forward to it, as people have told me the craziness factor will be upped. Chile is too normal. I feel more at home in crazy places seeing as I´m crazy myself :) I need to get a collectivio taxi to Tacna across the border, then get a bus to Arequipa, stay there for a night and then get a bus to Cusco. I need to get to Cusco asap because I am doing my Inca trek on what I recently discovered is the 4th of June. I´ve had the 6th of June in my head for the past couple of months, and when I double checked my booking last night I discovered it was, in fact, two days earlier than I thought. Good job I checked! Luckily though I had planned on getting there well in advance to acclimatise. As Machu Picchu is very very high in the sky it´s really common for people to get altitude sickness. And lets face it; this is me, if there´s an opporunity to develop an illness, I will take that opportunity and run with it. So hence staying in Arequipa, which is already elevated, and then Cusco, which I think is 3000 metres (or feet, or something) above sea level, so I can get used to that altitude before I start climbing a hill.

So what have I been doing in normal Chile? Not a lot to be honest, but I´m having a nice time. I think I have recovered from jet lag as well now which is very good. I had my 22 hour bus ride, which isn´t as bad as it sounds. I have got very used to long journeys now. I´m not sure how useful a skill that will be living in England, as I think it takes about 10 hours to drive from one end to the other, but never mind. The people in Chile are very friendly. Every bus journey I´ve been on (a grand total of two), my fellow passengers have tried to strike up conversation, even when my half of the conversation consists of "no entiende" and nodding and smiling. I´ve actually picked up a bit more Spanish doing this. I can now say "mountain" and "moon" which will no doubt come in very useful. I did meet one guy who spoke English, but he was quite boring, very vain and talked a lot (about himself), so I would have preferred it if he spoke Spanish so be honest. Luckily he was only on the bus for 30 minutes so I was able to sleep afterwards. The scenery on the bus, after a disappointingly foggy start, was pretty spectacular once the sun broke through. Chile is so skinny, pretty much at any given moment you can see the ocean and the Andes at the same time. It was very pretty. The mountains are very deserty though, which I wasn´t quite expecting. We also had the best sunset I´ve ever seen, the sky turned all manner of colours and it lasted for ages. You see a lot of sunsets whilst travelling, I don´t remember noticing all that many back home. I´ve also waited for the sunset on a number of occasions, which I don´t think I´ve ever done before. Maybe it´s because I have so much free time now! I kept myself occupied on the bus when not looking out of the window by hanging out my laundry (my neighbour helped as though it was the most normal thing in the world), eating the free snacks (I have discovered Chilean bourbon biscuits are dairy-free, something I am very happy about), and watching Ugly Betty in Spanish with Spanish subtitles in a bid to teach myself, with the help of my children´s dictionary. It´s a slow process.

And I´m now in Arica (not Africa, Colin - although I did think that myself the first time I saw it). Arica is pretty much a place you stop at to cross into Peru, but unlike most border towns, it´s quite a nice place in itself. There´s a beach (like everywhere in Chile), a port, a decent sized town, and a big hill with Jesus on top of it. I climbed the hill today to try and train my legs. Although it was 100 metres and I´ll be walking up a 4000 metre high hill next week. They also have a church which was designed by Mr Eiffel of Eiffel tower fame. It´s quite pretty but I couldn´t really see the resemblance. I´ve also spent a lot of time hanging out on the beach and staring at the ocean. I think I´m finally getting to be happy in solitude, so long as I don´t come back a hermit. There was also some cool bubble phenomenon, which looked like someone had dumped washing powder in the sea. I thought it was some strange marine life, until I got closer and realised it was washing powder.

I haven´t written anything about the men in South America yet have I? Most of them are quite normal, I´ve had a few wolf whistles and ¨hola"s, but nothing compared to Aisa. I had an interesting experience today though. There was a man playing a guitar and singing, I´m not sure if he was a busker or a musician in a bar, but he was middle aged, fat, sweaty and had long greasy hair, so he wasn´t a sexy musician. I ended up having to walk past him three times, and on the third occasion he followed me, cornered me and started jabbering in Spanish and gesticulaing with his guitar. I responded by keeping up a litany of "no entiende, no hablo Espanol", which provoked him to declare "Te amo! I love you!". By this time I had dodged him and luckily he just seemed to want to get this off his chest rather than following it up with a date, so I escaped. Still, it´s always nice to be told someone loves you I guess.

So until Peru. I have been warned that I´ll probably be robbed whilst I´m there, which should be exciting, but something I´ll try to avoid.