From Iquique to Arequipa
Trip Start
May 20, 2008
1
5
6
Trip End
Jun 10, 2008
Chili was not very exciting, much more European, no funny women with colourful clothes and bolar hats like there are everywhere in Peru and Bolivia. The nice part was the paragliding. I loved it, and to start off when we ran off the mountain and were whooshed up by the air currents, I felt like an eagle soaring into the blue yonder than when we hit the thermals I started feeling more like the proverbial parrot (the sick one) but after a while that wore off and apart from feeling a bit iffy when we went over the sea (not a chance of getting the harness off if we fell into the water) I enjoyed it, especially the very soft landing on the beach. We spent the following day 5 hours at the border for the customs, trying to import the bikes back into Peru, the bureaucracy is incredible, then we had to put the bikes into a compound 40 km further on which took another 3 hours and we ended up having to ride the last 150 km in the dark. About 15 km before Moquegua we hit another protest and there were bolders strewn all over the road and we had to try to dodge them in the dark, quite an eventful day, and I appreciate the EU and the lack of border controls in Europe much more after this experience. The following day we headed back to Arequipa via the coast where we spent a half hour looking at the big rollers of the Pacific Ocean crashing on the beach.
