Trip to Chile

We spent a lot of time on buses: 10 hours overnight to Arequipa, 5 hours to Tacna (just before the border with Chile) and then the same back again! We had been looking forward to seeing more of Peru but all we saw on the journeys was desert and more desert!

Wednesday

Before going down to Tacna and Chile we spent a day and a night in Arequipa. Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru and is situated below a huge volcano. These pictures show the flat where we stayed and the shop on the corner with the volcano behind.

Arequipa has Burger King and big supermarkets. We felt like real country-bumpkins having not seen such things for 5 months!

We visited the ‘Colegio Internationale’, a school started by our mission over 80 years ago. At that time the evangelical church was just beginning there and there was a good deal of opposition. A child of one of the church members was poisoned at her school and nearly died so the missionaries set up a school so that the church children would be safe. It started with 28 pupils and now has over 1200 aged from 4 to 16! It still has a strong Christian ethos. For instance, it has staff in charge of prayer ministry and ‘devotions’. The standards are very high. They recently won an extremely large trophy as winners of the national championship for school bands.

We also visited the special needs section of the school, started more recently. Our friend, Paul, does a lot of teaching here, and another friend from Latin Link is the occupational therapist. A short-term team from the UK had recently been to start building a sensory garden.

Thursday

To get to the Peruvian Consulate in Chile we had to take a bus to Tacna for 5 hours, then get a taxi over the border (about an hour and a half including checks at the border and filling in lots of forms), and then get a local taxi to the consulate.

The Peru-Chile border.

We left at 7am and arrived at the consulate at 4pm (Chile is an hour ahead), only an hour before the office closed. We assumed we’d have to return the next day but miraculously they processed the visas in 40 minutes! Sammy made friends with children of two Brazilian missionaries while Benjamin filled an empty bottle with stones!

We stayed overnight in Chile in a simple but friendly hostel. There we met a guy researching for a Chilean TV documentary about the use of computers in remote village schools.

Friday

In the morning we went to the beach – the highlight for Sammy! 17 hours to the beach is rather long compared to the 5 minutes we were used to in Eastbourne! We then went back to Tacna for the afternoon and visited a railway museum – another treat for the boys. We took the evening bus back Arequipa so that the boys could sleep. We arrived back at the flat at about 11.30pm.

Saturday

We spent the weekend in Arequipa. We visited the main plaza where Sammy had a huge ice-cream at a roof-top café. Then we visited the convent of Santa Catolina – we’d not heard of it before but evidently it is one of the main places to visit in Arequipa. Part of it still functions as a convent but the rest is open to the public. We saw my friend Ninoska and her new baby later in the afternoon – she has been there for a couple of months to have the baby and will be back in Cusco in September.

Sunday

Sunday we spent with Paul, going to his church and having lunch with him afterwards.

Paul’s flat is at the bottom of this block. Benjamin enjoying lunch.

Sammy also enjoyed running about in the little park near our flat (in the middle of which is a real aeroplane), and playing with his new helicopter.

We caught the overnight bus home, arriving in Cusco at 5.30am. Sammy then went off to school at 8 (it was the first day of the new term) and Roland to language class!

Now ‘all’ we have to do is go to Lima within a month to pick up the boy’s residents cards.