Neil and Jen Muad’Dib

We had too many options for proceeding after Salta. We decided to cut through Chile on our way to Peru instead of heading directly north to Bolivia. Rumours about closed border crossings and protestors with shovels helped to tip the scales.

The trip to the Chilean border was very interesting. We drove straight up the side of a giant mountain/sand dune onto what’s called the altiplano of the Andes, which is a high plane between the range’s eastern and western extent, sitting at about 3800m above sea level.

Our destination in Chile was the town of San Pedro de Atacama, which is a tourist haven renowned for its crazy inflated pricing. It is situated north of salt plains, at the foot of giant volcanoes to the east. We got off the bus and trundled down the main drag looking for a place to stay. The dusty strip was lined with restaurants and tour companies, all installed in what were previously something totally different and unsuited to conversion to their current function. This meant a lot of hasty renovations using the wrong materials by guys who didn’t know how to use tools.

We stayed in a café/hostel run by a hilariously absent-minded guy with a lisp and a saw. The room was cheap and gross, but strangely cosy. There were a brother and sister cat that kept us company. We woke up covered in paint that had fallen from the ceiling during the night - like fresh-fallen snow – very picturesque.

We spent that day on rental bikes exploring the pre-Incan/Incan ruins north of the city. It was extremely hot and dry. This was the first taste of many tales of heroic resistance on the part of native South Americans to Spanish invaders. We struck out further north into what is called the Devil’s Throat, a gorge carved in the soft rock by a river that stopped flowing a long time ago. This was exciting mountain biking, especially sections where the hole you were biking through appeared narrower than the bicycle. There were no major incidents. I did one wicked jump. Jen thought it was awesome.

After that we biked to DEATH VALLEY… AAAAAGHHH! It was fine. No death to speak of. We climbed up really large sand dunes and threw rocks over the edge. It was scenic and beautiful up there. Very lunar landscape all around.

We biked back and ate dinner in a restaurant with a hole cut in its roof and a fire pit in the middle. It wasn’t until the next night that we realized that every restaurant in town had this feature.

The next day we rented better bikes and went to the salt lagunas south of town, about 30km away. This was as close to the Bugs Bunny dying of thirst in the desert aesthetic that we came. Several times the sand under us was too soft to bike on, so we had to push our bikes. The lagunas were amazingly salty. It’s hard to describe being that buoyant; it was completely impossible not to float. Like, if you roll onto your front it’s uncomfortable because the stiffness of your spine makes keeping your head above water difficult!

I was reading Frank Herbert’s classic Dune during all of this travel through the desert, which added a very special dimension to the book. Somehow I missed reading this book when I was younger, and I thought it was fantastic! I think it’s the best sci-fi book I’ve ever read, in fact. One great idea described in the book is a stillsuit, which desert dwellers wear to recapture, filter, and store all of the wastewater of the human body. Stinky.

We were totally caked in salt even after much drying and wiping off, like the one or two ridiculously over-salted dry roasted peanuts at the bottom of every jar. Things like nostrils and inner ears were especially affected. Fortunately the hostel guy let us take a shower before getting on the overnight bus to Arica.

Arica is a beach/border town in the far north of Chile. We stayed at a nice hostel with good WiFi and drank Pisco Sours with a bunch of Swiss people, who threatened to come and stay with us in Canada. The highlight of Arica was the bird sanctuary north of town. We spent the afternoon hanging out with brown Pelicans there, and trying to decide what to do next.

The answer was Arequipa, Peru, but first we had to cross the Chile-Peru border. The easiest way to do this was to hire a person to drive you in their car, so we walked down to the designated pick-up place, and found a well-dressed 60-ish lady with blond hair and green eye shadow, and she escorted us to her 1983 Cadillac El Dorado where we waited for three others to fill the car. Once inside, the Cadillac revealed all of its secrets to us: Plastic wood-grained removable faceplate stereo, aftermarket turbo pressure gauge mounted to the left of the steering wheel, and 3-on-the-tree transmission. This lady didn’t mess around, and she whisked us through the border crossing with winks and smiles for all the guards.

We stayed in Arequipa for about two weeks. The city itself was pretty boring. A colonial town made of Silar, a white stone. The highlight of the city was the Santa Catalina Monastery, which is a fortress taking up about three city blocks, and still houses about 25 nuns. In its heyday from the 17th to 19th century, nuns would enter at the age of about 13 and would NEVER LEAVE THE BUILDING. So there was plenty to do in there, like, harpsichord… and praying… and thinking about harpsichord… and needlepoint. At first it’s tempting to think that a lot of great art and important thought must have come out of this type of place… until you realize that all the people inside must have had the mentality and world-awareness of highly religious 13-year-old girls - lots of good pony-and-rainbow art perhaps.

Anyway, the monastery itself was really interesting – a city within a city - and we had a great guide who loved earthquakes. Earthquakes frequently rock the city and destroy inferiorly built parts of the monastery. She told us great stories about particularly weird nuns that had lived there. One nun, fond of self-flagellation, actually died of tetanus (from the metal fixtures on her flagellum) in the kneeling position. She was widely celebrated for her devotion and asceticism, and was held up as a shining example of good behaviour to the other nuns. Another nun walked to the convent all the way from Bolivia, and spent the last 15 years of her life deaf and blind. She was also a great star and heroine to future nuns.

A note about public transit in Peru: It’s all done with Toyota vans! The Toyota Van was introduced to North America in 1984, and was replaced by the bloated and americanized Previa in 1991. But Japan never stopped making the original and shipping them all over the world. Many variations based on the original platform followed over the years. About half of all the vehicles on the road here are Toyota vans, which makes me very happy. The most common are 2WD Diesel HiAce vans which they use as public busses (combis). They’re pretty cool. But I’d get a 4WD Turbo-Diesel TownAce MoonSystem MasterAce.

We stayed in a great hostel in Arequipa called Los Torres de Ugarte, run by a family of very friendly and accommodating people. They had excellent wireless internet and a good breakfast, all for $20/day, so it was very easy to work, relax, and watch NBA basketball playoffs.

Just before we left we visited the country club and played some basketball, which required the purchase of a tastefully decorated Shaq ball. The embarrassment of owning the ball was mitigated by the fact that I actually am Shaq-like compared to your average b-ball player here. I spent hours waiting for a group of guys who would provide some good 2-on-2, but the tallest guy on the courts couldn’t have been more than 5’7”. We donated the ball to the son of one of the hostel workers, for which she was extremely grateful.

Next stop - Titicaca.