Stef and Matt

As we’ve mentioned before, we were on a schedule on our way through Peru. After a couple of days in Arequipa (and our GREAT Colca Canyon trek!), we decided to travel:

1. Tacna, Peru
   • Takes about 5-6 hours by bus
2. Arica, Chile (includes the border crossing)
   • Takes 1-2 hours by bus
   • Takes 1.5 hours by train
   • Takes 45 minutes by collectivo Taxi

So we made reservations at a hostel in Arica (via Skype, great for cross-border phone calls), bought our bus tickets to Tacna, and got ready to head out.
If you remember, our previous border crossing was pretty uneventful, even though it happened at 3a.m. on a bridge over a river. While we really enjoy easy, simple border crossings, I was beginning to worry that I would miss out on the full Latin America experience if all we had were easy border crossings. Thankfully for me , this one turned out to be pretty interesting.

Paro – Chilean border strikes!
Our morning trip to Tacna was pretty straightforward; the bus had lots of music, a movie, but unfortunately no food. We stopped in a bus terminal restaurant for an almuerzo. That worked out well, and we walked from the intra-provincial bus terminal to the international bus terminal. Along the way, we spoke with three or four people who all explained that the border crossing was really difficult, because there was a strike in Chile. It took a while to sort through the language and cultural obstacles, but after the third conversation I began to get the point:

• The Chilean customs workers were striking, but their office could not “close”.
• Instead, they took a 20 minute break between letting each visitor pass through the border
• This effectively changed everyone’s border crossing from a 20-minute affair to a 2-3 hour affair.

The paro, or strike, made it much more expensive to cross the border. Why? The delay caused the buses and taxis from Tacna to only travel to the border, then you needed a Chilean taxi/bus to get to Arica. Normally one taxi or bus goes from Tacna to Arica.
Everyone recommended the train, but the line was very long. So after investigating our options, we changed some money, and took a collectivo taxi to the border. It was the craziest taxi we had seen yet – a 1970’s Buick with an automatic transmission that had been converted to manual, and a radio that used a pen for the controls (Click to see the rest of the photos from our border crossing)

Check out the video of our taxi ride!

Border Surprise
When we arrived, there was no one waiting at the border. We arrived at Customs, and walked through the entire process in about 15 minutes, found a Chilean collectivo taxi, and went to Arica. It turns out that the Chilean customs officials were only striking between 8am and 5pm Chile time. We had arrived at 6pm Chile time (4pm Peruvian time), so we missed all of the strike activity.

Skip to the end!
When we arrived in Arica, we thought we were feeling ok, so we decided to push through to our real destination, San Pedro de Atacama. We bought bus tickets and got on a night bus headed to San Pedro…

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