"The direct line to Cusco" a.k.a. The Neverending Story

Huh!
A lot to write this time and I don't know where to begin. From the beginning, I guess :)

Our last report was from a net cafe in Arica, where we were in between a 10-hour bus and what was supposed to be a 15-hour bus. Right.
Anyway, we needed a bus line from Arica (Chile) to Cusco (Peru), and we knew it used to include a taxi ride across the border as no buses went directly (at least that was the situation a few years back).
We were happy to hear that there is now a direct line from Arica to Cusco, and that it should start at 3PM and arrive in Cusco at 6AM next morning. Yay for overnight rides, lowest loss of time. For 50 US$ this sounded good.

So, 2:30PM we're back at the agency and are introduced to our driver. Taxi driver, who will take us across the border (Arica is something like 20km from the border).
He will then take us to Tacna bus terminal (the nearest city in Peru), where we will hop on the bus to Cusco.
Ok, so the situation is the same as it used to be, it still all sounds good.

The Dragonball Z fan cab driver (the whole car was full of Dragonball Z stickers and figurines, and the driver wore a D-Z T-Shirt :)) did get us to Tacna in about an hour or a bit more, got us to the terminal, showed us the bus agency there and where the bus will be. All's well :)
We switch the clocks one hour back to Peruvian time and await the bus, which leaves for Cusco in 3 hours.

So now a bit about Peru.
The moment you cross the border the difference is obvious.
Argentina can in many ways be mistaken for any European country. Chile is very similar too, at least the town parts we saw (deserts are another thing, but that's not really due to cultural differences).
In Peru however, people are very different and instantly recognizable. Colorful explosions of clothes consisting of layers and layers of what can only be seen as blankets. Most women wear a ton of these blankets, plus a big bag which often has even more blankets, plus the little Peruvian hat (you'll see it on the photos :))

Now, the part of town neighbouring the bus terminal in Tacna (which is quite a big city, 300k people or so) looked like a slum, and since we were packing all our equipment and clothes we decided to grab something to eat at the terminal.
Prices instantly jump off from what we saw thus far. We ate a decent and tasty lunch (fried chicken, potatoes and rice) for 4 Sols (1 US$ = 3.25 Sols). For people back home, 1 Sol = 1.5 Kunas. Add to that a 2 Sol Sprite/Coke. Nice! Finally going to save some money (after spending some 250 US$ for 2 days in San Pedro!)

Anyway, we sat there and ate for 2+ hours, and saw no foreigners apart from ourselves. This was strange considering that this town is the main point towards Cusco (Machu Picchu) if you're coming northward from San Pedro (and I'd guess many tourists do, as both towns are big tourist destinations).
30 minutes before the bus departure time, we decide to go to the terminal, only to realize we need to buy a 1 Sol ticket to exit the building and enter the area with the buses. It's small money, but it's an annoyance when you carry all your stuff with you. After a day more in Peru, I can safely say most things you do here will be charged.
0.40 Sols to use a toilet, without soap or toilet paper.
0.50 Sols if you want like 4 pieces of toilet paper with that. Don-t hope for soap though.
1 Sol to take a photo of someone, and if you're seen with the camera and giving this one sol to one person suddenly everyone wants to have their photo taken. Gets quite annoying quite fast actually, but oh well :)
1.5 Sol an hour of internet (now that's good! :))

On with the trip (notice that so far only 3 hours have passed from what soon turned into a 25 hour nightmare).
Upon embarking the bus, we meet two quite cool Irish guys who speak a bit of Spanish (Yay! We're not the only two gringos on the bus!)

Now, I have to make a bit of a digression to explain the different types of buses here.
Since the distances are so long, the buses come in many types.
Kama (or Kama Premium) = you get a leather chair (usually only 3 people per row) which can be lowered to fully horizontal bed-position, you get food included in the price (e.g. we got breakfast and real lunch in our first argentinian bus) and they play some relatively new movies in English (with Spanish subs) during daytime. You can sleep well during nighttime in these buses.
Semi-kama = seats go down a lot, but not fully horizontal. There are 4 seats per row. Food usually included on distances longer than 8 hours (in Argentina and Chile). Decent, but can happen that seats don't really go down all that much.
There is also Kama-Ejecutivo but the differences between these types are blurry. All in all, they are all decent. So, when we got a semi-kama which goes "directly to Cusco", we were happy. There was no kama, but we could live with 15 hours of semi-kama.

Thus, the bus arrives.
Our seats are on the top floor (it's a double-decker, and the better seats are below), and all the windows are open. This is fishy (what smell was the driver trying to filter out?), but no choice now.
Oh, the company's name is San Martin, just in case anyone of you wants to know which company NOT to use. But let's get on with the why.
So, us and the Irish guys and like 8 or so Peruvians sit up there (plenty of empty seats left, doesn't look that bad... might get some sleep on the bus after all), and start the trip...
The moment we left Arica the story takes on a different turn. Well, the bus does anyway. It takes us off-road and into the desert. It's pitch black outside and as you might imagine the Peruvian desert is not the nicest of places to be at such times. Puzzled looks cross our faces and those of the Irish guys, but the Peruvians are just as surprised.
First thought - if this was a robbery or something, they would've picked a bus with more tourists...
Luckily, there's a Peruvian guy on the bus sitting right behind us who speaks English, and he goes down to the driver to ask what the hell is going on...
Explanation?
The bus has no license, so the driver is taking an alternate route to avoid a police checkpoint just outside of town(!?)
We all already agreed Peru is a dodgy country, but we didn't think it was this dodgy.
By the way, we were told the bus will be in Cusco by 6AM. The Irish guys were told it'll be there by 8:30AM. The Peruvian guy just laughed when he heard that and said: "Nooo, around 3PM". Great. And we have a bottle of water and some chocolates.

Anyway, more on that "alternate route"...
Imagine a sand dusty 'road', with stones lying all over it, that our driver was avoiding by driving like 10 km/h for the first part of the hour. Then he started going uphill on that road, with cliffs on the side fo the road. Doubledecker. Peruvian mountain. Stones on the road. A no-license bus. I see much sleep coming in this night.
Two or so hours later we stop at some village and pick up a horde of new Peruvians. There's now more people than there are seats on the bus, and our "semi-kama" turns into a choke-full bus of people standing, sitting all around, or lying on the floor.
Oh and about those bus windows - we the passengers closed as many as we could, but most wouldn't really hold well.
Need I mention it gets really cold in the night when you're in the desert at high altitudes? There was actually ice forming on the insides of our windows. Oh and no heating in the bus, but that's to be expected by now. Forgive the lack of pictures, but this was not an atmosphere I'd like to take my camera out. This was more of a "try to stay awake and see what kind of crap this driver will pull next" kind of thing.
One Peruvian old woman who was sitting next to me was kind of holding on to my leg for most of the trip. But nothing mattered anymore but to stay warm.
In a few more hours we arrived at some sort of a checkpoint (on an actual road wohoo!!), where they checked our bus from above and below, and the Peruvian guy told me not to worry as this was not the Police(!?)
Looked like a border crossing to me, but beat me if I know what one would be doing in the middle of the country.
After some security guys checked our bus (but not the luggage, so I can only guess they were looking for people), the most expectable thing happened - they took our spare tire and wheel, and let the bus go on (yeah, this trip is becoming full of "WTH?" moments). At least now we know this is not a hijack nor a robbery, and all the people are in the same sauce we are. Just need to keep the warmth through the night (now I understand why Peruvian ladies have all those blankets!)
Next I don't know how much any of us slept. We all just woke up (or haven't slept at all) - lucky to still have our passports, money, and cameras - to see one of the most beautiful sunrises ever at Lake Titicaca (near Puno, Peru), even more so because the sun was such a welcome sight for the stiff frozen joints.

Just recalled another funny detail. When one of our Irish friends asked the driver if we had food on this ride, the answer was "No, but you have a toilet" :P
Turned out the toilet was a hole in the floor of the bus, and we couldn't really use it anyway as it would include stepping on several sleeping people to get there.
That's San Martins bus lines for you... if you want an unforgettable experience, feel free to use them ;)

At Puno, there was like an hour and a half to kill before proceeding to Cusco. Turns out someone figured out our bus was "illegal" and we had to swap buses. We even got to sit below in the real semi-kama for the rest of the trip (last 6-7 hours) as a "reward" or something like that. I don't know and didn't really care at the time. Sun was up, we had our stuff, and we were in a legal bus. It was still smelly, cracking, and my window couldn't be opened, but it was looking like a promising future.
Then the driver decided to play us a DVD movie. In spanish. And without the picture (TVs didn't really work :P)
So for the next two hours we were driving through beautiful Peruvian landscapes listening to people shooting, crying and yelling in Spanish... real loud. I think it was a western of some sort, but it was kind of hard to tell lol

Another 6 hours later (3-4PM of the next day), we finally arrive at Cusco and are instantly being swarmed with hostel offers.
Good for us there were so many, as it made the price-dropping go without us having to lift a finger :)
The winner is some lady who speaks English and has hot water 24/7 (unlike most other hostels she says) and her hostel is recommended by Footprint and Lonely Planet guidebooks. She said "please check" like a dozen of times. No need, who would fake stuff like that on their nicely printed hostel flier. As noted by our Irish friend: "the people here are cheeky, but they're not *that* cheeky". Turns out they are. The hostel was not recommended in any of the guidebooks, but we were already there and it looked ok. And for 20 Sols (6 US$) per person per night (breakfast included) it seemed like a really good deal.
But they didn't have hot water!!! Until the guy working here brought new gas and warmed it and we could finally take a shower.
However, the showering is an art in its own. If you open warm water only, it's steaming hot. The moment you open the cold one, it gets colder to the point of icy cold. So you just have to balance the cold one every few seconds and you'll be fine :P
Oh and on my first shower attempt, the water ran out completely *sigh*
Anyway, things are a bit more normalized now and we got a chance to see a bit more of Cusco.
I will write more about Cusco tomorrow in a separate post, as this one is becoming too long as is. For the end here, I'll try to put up some images of the day time of "the direct line to Cusco". This is all taken with a compact camera so the quality might not be best, but it's what could be done at the time. We also have some videos of Arica, Tacna and Peruvian landscapes as well, but those are too huge to put them up here. Will have to do something about that once we're back home.

The hill above Arica:

School's out in Arica:

Entering the taxi to Tacna:

Tacna, where no construction is complete(?):

I must say the town center is supposedly beautiful, but unfortunately we didn't get to see it.
Bus station in Puno (yeah, we saw many buses and bus stations in the last 2-3 days lol):

Sunrise at Lake Titicaca (a bit late to capture the beauty, but still we loved it):


And, for the end, two typical Peruvian landscapes (taken from the bus):



Hopefully there will be many more of these (and not taken through the bus window) when we finish with the Inka Trail 4-day hike to Machu Picchu, which starts on Tuesday. Until then, we chill in Cusco and see the sights here.
Possibly I'll write about Cusco tomorrow, and then no comp until the weekend.

Adios!