Arequipa to Tacna, Peru

Monday, 18 February 2008

Our plan is to travel down south into Chile to get to San Pedro de Atacama, from where we will do a tour to the Salar de Uyuni salt flats in south western Bolivia. We don't plan on spending much time in Chile itself and have a few long bus journeys ahead of us. The first one should be relatively straightforward though: a 6 hour journey from Arequipa to Tacna, the last major town in Peru before the border with Chile. All goes to plan until about an hour and a half into the journey when the bus stops abruptly on a road in the middle of nowhere. There is plenty of chatter amongst the Peruvian passengers so clearly something is up. We hop out to have a look, expecting an accident scene or other reason for the traffic jam. Instead, we are confronted by the strange sight ahead of us of about a mile of roadway covered with small rocks and stones. There is enough there to make it impassable (see footage here). There are about 50 people on the roadside carrying more stones and rocks to the blockade. This is some sort of protest but we are not sure what it is about and how long it is going to last. The Peruvian passengers and the Cruz del Sur bus driver are pretty philosophical about it all - apparently this sort of thing is fairly commonplace in Peru - and seem to be happy enough to wait it out. One guy though (we find out later that he is from Poland) heads off a few hundred metres into the sands beside the bus and strips down to his dazzingly white y-fronts. He is no bronzed Adonis so cuts a very strange figure during this whole episode. Maybe it's his way of coping or maybe he decides to make the best of a bad situation and catch a few rays before he heads back to Polska. Anyway, we christen him "Naked Guy" and he provides plenty of comic relief. At intervals, it seems as if the vacillating bus driver has decided to do something and the wife of Naked Guy roars over to him to put his clothes back on and return to the bus. As soon as the bus driver's new-found decisiveness dissipates, Naked Guy returns to his spendid stripped isolation back in the sands. Two, three hours pass and the local policia have not made an appearance. Even the relaxed Peruvians start to get a bit upset. The bus driver becomes the centre of a maelstrom of finger pointing and shouting. Some of the buses behind us seem to have turned around to go back to Arequipa. Others still discharge their passengers onto the road in the midday heat and leave them on the uncertain and potentially perilous walk through the blockade towards a village in the distance and maybe a connecting bus. There is talk that this protest is part of a co-ordinated national strike. The grievances are price increases (bus tickets and water) and the plan by the government to allow private operators take over some of Peru's tourist sites. Eventually a 3-strong police team arrive (3-strong might be overstating it - there is one guy who seems to know what he is about, the other two guys who waddle behind him look like they are on a two-man mission to support the nascent Peruvian doughnut industry). Obviously and understandably the local police are in no mood to aggravate the protestors, probably their neighbours, by trying to get the bus through the blockade. Instead they offer to escort us on a diversion around the village. Some of the passengers nearly lynch the driver on hearing this suggestion as they made this suggestion to him a long while ago. We get to the other side of the village without being ambushed and the police wave us off, having received some pre-packed meals from the bus steward in exchange for helping us through the minefield. We breathe a sigh of relief and hope that the rest of the journey will be clear. No such luck, as another half hour down the road there is a 200-person strong road-block. Apparently these people are a bit more militant and steadfast than the previous crowd and the police at the village before the roadblock suggest that we wait it out until nightfall as the protestors have no food or shelter and will most likely want to go home at some stage. A masterful strategy indeed. There is no appetite to confront the protestors. The tiny village we stop at enjoys the boom times as passengers from three buses are stuck here and need to be fed and watered. We wait for hours on the roadside. The hearsay and speculation amongst the group gets worse as the light dims. Some passengers take their luggage off the bus and try to get a taxi that might be able to get through the protest. A small group of gringos, ourselves and a Danish couple, Rune and Anna, and our interpretor, Matt, from Canada try to figure out what is going on. Night falls and our bus driver, after another brow-beating from the passengers-representative group headed by a giant Peruvian guy in no mood for dilly-dallying, decides to bite the bullet and head towards the bridge where the blockade is. There we meet riot police who tell us we can't cross the bridge. Apparently the protestors have lined the top of the hills at the other side of the bridge and may throw rocks on any vehicles that try to get through. A tourist bus would be a juicy target. Things are a bit scarier now. Matt has heard about these protests before and says that the protestors can be pretty determined, blocking roads for days. Eventually, the 15-strong team of riot police hop into their vans, put on the sirens and head across the bridge to try to negotiate safe passage for us across the bridge. It's a ghostly scene. Shadows come across the bridge at intervals - people who have walked for miles to get to our side. They confirm though that no cars or buses are being left through. Things begin to look even more desperate as the siren lights are switched off at the other side of the bridge. We prepare ourselves for a few days of sleeping on a bus on the side of the road. But the darkest hour is just before the dawn and the police return triumphant, telling us that an arrangement has been reached. Within minutes, a jubilant convoy of buses, trucks and cars heads off into the darkness across the bridge. There are a nervous few minutes as we drive through the valley on the other side. We stay well away from the windows just in case somebody gets an itchy-finger and rolls a boulder our way. Thankfully we get through unscathed and arrive in Tacna at midnight - we have been on the road for 17 hours and are exhausted. If this sort of thing is going to happen alot in Peru over the next few weeks, maybe Chile mighn't be a bad place to be. We stay near the bus station in Tacna in Don Romano's, a decent hostel with a friendly owner.