Stopover in Arica (North Chile)

 After quite a while, we update our blog again, so what has happened?

Climbing the Chachani causes hunger, so we decided to spend our last evening in Arequipa in the ZigZag, a restaurant that serves meat on hot stone :-) very tasty and big (but it can get bigger as we'll see in the next blog).
Next morning, we left direction south. After passing some mountains, we drove through the desert to Tacna, a town close to the chilenian border, in the middle of nowhere, where you are not alowed to import fuits / nuts / etc. In Tacna we grabbed a small collectivo (a car with 5 1/2 seats) and passed the border to Chile (no furits alowed, they scan the backpacks!) and arrived in Chile, in Arica where we stayed in a hostel run by a Kiwi (Ross).

Through the desert to Tacna

One thing we noticed the evening we arrived is, that in Arica many people are fat... look at the picture and you know why ;-)

Big Burger

We spent the next day planning a trip to Parinacota, a small village at the border to Bolivia, in the lauca national park. Our initial plan was to stay 2-3 nights up there, in 4300m altitude to go hiking and enjoy the scenery. But it came a little different. We also visited the beach of Arica but after less than 2 hours, we left because of the strong winds and we packed for next morning.

Lauca National parc

The bus ride from Arica to the national park is beautiful but a bit bumpy due to the construction sites on the road and we arrived after lunch at chucuio, 4 km away from Parinacota. We followed the path through a lanscape of lagunillas, green patches in the deserted and rocky area, to Parinacota. Once there, we found a lady (the one on the picture) that runs a "hostal/Restaurant" up there and she gave us the keys and showed the room and the showers.

Parinacota with the church

We spent the afternoon sitting in the sun and watching Parinacota (not very busy, we met 3 people and apparently about 15 families live there still.) Since it's getting freezing cold up there (below 0 ) we moved into the "hostal/restaurant" and expected the lady to turn up again... but she didn't... Since it was getting colder and colder in the room (no heating) we put on gloves, hats, thermic trousers and everything what we had and since we were hungry, we opened the kitchen.... 
there we found leftovers (it looked like lama racks) and other old pans with kinds of food, a deep freezer with different kind of meat which we didn't inspect closer, a steal-saw which seemed to be used to cut meat, semi-decayed food and, luckily, tea-bags, pasta and chicken soup (instant). So we started to cook our dinner (which was actually not too bad but freezing cold). Furthermore, it was now dark and we wondered, why a window was broken in room 6 in the "hostal" and there was absolutely NO lights and nobody outside (dead silence, perfect setting for a horror movie)... well, one light was outside... when we went to bed (4 blankets and our sleeping bags) we noticed that the only light in the village was directly outside of our window :-) great nigth!
Next morning, we decided to shorten our stay and we would walk back throught a scenic landscape to the main road to catch on of the busses from La Paz with direction Arica. Luckily, we were able to have a "first class place" nex to the driver so we could see all overtaking manoeuvres... well, finally we were happy to be back in Arica on Sunday afternoon.

Our next task was to find food in the evening, but this was not very successful since ALL restaurants were closed except for: ... Mc Donalds :-(

Next day, we headed to visit Arica and the Rock close to the city centre (which hosts also a small museum) and we relaxed in the pedestrian area in town (we had a great lunch in a small shopping centre) and we had a tiny coffee after the lunch as well ;-)

In the evening, we went to the market to buy some supplies to prepare our own food (550g beef filet, 4 big potateos, onion and peppers) and a bottle of red wine :-) great stuff.
next morning, we left Arica with direction La Paz, but this is in the next blog...