Day 8

Fresh of the bus from Cotahuasi, I bought a ticket for Tacna, the southernmost city of Peru, which never showed up. I looked through all the bus ramps, went back to the office where the staff whipped out my refund out of no where and shoved it in my hands, and switched companies. Busses are frequent, no booking in advance needed.

At 8:00am I was on my way, $6, six hours.

In Tacna exiting the national bus station to the left, I crossed the street to the station for international routes. I quickly spotted colectivo taxis for border crossing. Clearly confused, the drivers pointed me to a Chinese man who had insanely good Spanish.

It turned out their car needed one more, and he and his wife totally ended up taking care of me. Like they actually wouldn’t let me pay my fare share of the colectivo ($6).

The driver helps smooth the process of paperwork. For US citizens there is no visa payment. In a half hour, we were in Chile’s northernmost city, Arica.

Here there was a minor dispute between the driver and some passengers in our car. All I can say is that it is the driver’s duty to wait for however long it takes for everyone to cross the border and declare the particular items they are bringing, as some may demand more money, but most should not.

The couple helped me change pesos, buy a night bus to San Pedro de Atacama (11 hours, $16), took me to the Chilean-Peruvian household of their friends who fed us soup and sandwiches for dinner, and showed me the two highlights of Arica: Catedral de San Marcos and Morro de Arica.

Basically, as soon as they realized I was a “Chinita sola,” they treated me like their daughter. That’s when I realized every Chinese I’ve met on  my travels has exhanged contact info with me, but I cannot say the same for Americans I meet. My passport says America, my face says China.

Aside from the Spanish being much more slurred, the two hour time difference saved me lots of idle waiting in the bus station in Arica for my next leg to San Pedro. Everywhere, there were street performers collecting tips from cars stopped at red lights. This pattern continued for the rest of Chile.

Also, if you exit a car on the driver’s side into traffic, you get fined.