Puerto Chicama

After our little border control issue in Chile, we decided our best option was to leave our car, boards and a bag in Arica (thanks to striking up a deal with our buddy Franklin at End of the Trail Hostel), then continue by bus to Northern Peru.

The two places we really wanted to see in Northern Peru were quite a drive and would have meant a lot of backtracking by car anyway, so it might not have been a bad thing to have a break from driving for a couple of weeks and go by bus.

Our first stop was Puerto Chicama, famed for being the longest left hand wave in the world, and it didn't disappoint.

It's a very basic town with few amenities, but the locals are super friendly and welcoming and it's got a really nice chilled vibe. Since unfortunately we couldn't bring our boards we ended up renting, hence the photo of me looking like I've gone back in time to the eighties!

The waves weren't massive but that suited us fine as they were just super fun. Both of us got the longest waves of our lives without a doubt. No crowds, happy days. Would DEFINITELY come back to Puerto Chicama.

Dramas and Llamas

We seem to have hit a little hiccup in our plans over the past couple of days. On Saturday we wanted to cross the border from Chile to Peru and continue North along the coast. However our good friends "the Chilean Border Control" had other ideas and would not let us take the car through the border.

It would seem the mountains of paperwork you need in Chile in order to buy a car take a while to process, 30 days to be precise. Until those 30 days have passed and we can go to the Registro Civil to obtain our official registration document, we can't leave Chile with the temporary registration we have now.

So we thought we'd drive to the Bolivian border the next day to have a cheeky go there as it's a much smaller post. After driving (on the wrong side of the road) past a queue of lorries 2kms long waiting to cross the border, all the while dodging oncoming trucks, unfortunately the Chilean Border Control were having none of it and turned us around again.

Looking on the bright side though, it was an amazing drive up to the Bolivian border through the mountains, we saw lots of pretty breathtaking scenery and a lot of llamas. On the way back to Arica we stopped off at an Eco village run by harekrishnas for lunch which was pretty cool. Also, dealing with lots of Chilean officials and government authorities is definitely doing my spanish some good!

So now we've got about 10 days in Chile to kill before we can obtain our official padron (registration document). Think we're gonna head back down South a little bit and head inland to San Pedro, then fingers crossed to Bolivia from there in 10 days time, but might also try and get secure parking for the car for a couple of weeks and head to Northern Peru by bus. We'll make our minds up tomorrow.

El Desierto

We've been driving through the desert for just over a week now and the landscape has changed pretty dramatically since being in central Chile.

The Atacama desert is one of the driest places on earth. There are occasionally light showers on the coast, but inland it never rains. The owner of one hostel we stayed in told us that most of the older generation (60-70yr olds) in the town had never seen rain!

The landscape is ever changing from huge sand dunes, to salt plains, to high mountains, to barren flat lands. It really looks like you've landed on Mars coming here.

The big cities are always on the coast and seem quite prosperous due to high concentration of mining here. Hence prices here are not cheap.

Ancient geoglyphs scatter the hillsides throughout the Atacama. Pretty interesting that no one really knows who made them and what their purpose is and because there is no rain to wash them away they simply remain.

Colours of Valparaiso

Valparaiso's a pretty colorful city in more ways than one. It's a big port town so parts have a very industrial feel, it has high unemployment and apparently a high crime rate. Yet, it's considered the cultural capital of Chile. Spend a few hours walking around here and you'll see why. There's LOADS of really incredible (and some not so incredible) street art scattered everywhere you look. Pretty photogenic place.