I left for Arica at 3 pm on the 20th after going to the most pointless school orientation of my life... the adviser gave no advice and pretty much told me that I could find everything online. Hey thanks! I'm so glad I postponed my Peru trip just to attend that orientation!
I got into Arica at about 10 pm the next day. For the most part, I was traveling with Jessica, who is a part of my program, and Edgar, who I go to UCSC with... he is doing a month-long program in Santiago, so I invited him at the last minute to join us on our trip. We got into Arica to this little hostel run by a "bilingual" couple (the husband would only speak English to us, even though we were perfectly capable of talking to him in Spanish, and I had no idea what he was saying half of the time), where I took the coldest shower of my LIFE before going to sleep.
We woke up super early the next day to cross the border into Peru. Luckily, American citizens get a free 60-day tourist visa into Peru, so it wasn't the money I was worried about... it was the actual crossing part that was super sketchy. First, you have to find a taxi that will take you over the border... and then, you have to wait for the taxi to fill. We ended up taking a super sketchy Buick with these two Colombian guys, who seemed really cool, until they weren't allowed over the border... haha. Our transportation over the border:
Luckily, this way of transportation over the border is also very cheap, and the driver walks you through everything you need to know about filling out paperwork and whatnot. By the time we got into Tacna (Peru!), it was about 9 am, and we wanted to get to Arequipa as quickly as possible. I found a cheap bus company, and after we quickly exchanged our Chilean pesos into Peruvian soles, we packed into our first "real" Peruvian bus ride (of many). I had just gone with the first bus company that I saw, and I had no idea that there were both bad and good options for contracting buses in Peru... we got a pretty sketchy one, to say the least. For one, we stopped about 7 times so that the National Police could come on the bus and "check". Apparently, they were looking for any brand-name items that were "smuggled" into the country, because at one stop, they were looking through the overhead compartments and found a pile of Banana Republic sweaters. After asking who they belonged to several times and receiving no answer, they immediately just took the sweaters and left... and then we were on our way. Also, at the very beginning of our ride, there was this lady walking around with all of these name-brand shoes and asking everyone on the bus if we would try them on. She was literally begging and whining at us... I almost said yes once (I don't know why), and then she was REALLY on my case about wearing her stupid shoes. At one checkpoint she was escorted off the bus by the police... I'm not sure what her deal was, but I was NOT ready to get kicked out of Peru just yet, so there was no way I was putting on those shoes. When we finally got to Arequipa, our original plan was to stay there for a while before heading to Cusco, but after about an hour we realized that there was nothing really to do in Arequipa, so we might as well head to Cusco. We took an overnight bus to Cusco, which was both a bad and a good thing... we opted for the "nice" bus that time, so I was actually able to sleep (well, kind of) without the fear that my things were going to be taken, but we didn't arrive in Cusco until 7 am the next morning. By the time we arrived, we were SO happy that we were in some kind of destination, so we immediately went and checked into a hostel (after accidentally waking up our Dutch roommate several times at 7 am, who was NOT very happy to see us), and then embarked to start our exploring of Cusco.
Cusco is absolutely beautiful, and was especially beautiful that day because it had rained the night before, so most of the smog had cleared up for us. We walked around, saw the Plaza de Armas and churches, saw some Inca ruins in the middle of the city, went to the Qorikancha museum, and eventually made our way up to a giant Jesus statue on the hill above the Plaza de Armas. Also, Peru's Independence was July 28th, so there were celebrations happening all over the city! It was awesome to witness it!
Eating at the market with Jessica and Edgar (I think doing this too many times was what eventually gave me food poisoning... no bueno):
Plaza de Armas:
Qorikancha museum:
Ruins next to the Jesus statue:
View from the Jesus statue--you could see ALL of Cusco! It was beautiful!
There are children all over Peru that just come up and ask you for money and food... this girl (and lots of other women and children) just decided to dress up... we paid about 1 sol (~35 cents) for this picture!
La Plaza de Armas, again:
We were literally going and going for about 12 hours that day, until we stopped to eat for a while. In Peru, Ecuador, and I think in Colombia too, there is a delicacy there called "cuy": I will show you the pictures before I describe this very interesting dish:
In case you can't tell from the pictures, "cuy" is fried guinea pig. It was SO NASTY. I figured, hey, I don't know when I'll ever be in Peru again... I have to try it. It literally looked like someone had taken a guinea pig and dropped it in frying oil... there were still organs, brains, teeth, fingernails... it was pretty gross. It tasted like a combination between chicken and fish (there really is no other way to describe it), and it was super stringy. I couldn't eat more than a bite of it at a time because it also had a terrible aftertaste. But, I'm glad that I tried it, although I will never try it again... haha.
After our cuy experience, we were SO tired and went back to the hostel to sleep. The next morning we got up super early and embarked on our journey to the Sacred Valley! More to come later!
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