Michael Batson

The road from Chile to Arequipa, Peru’s second city, takes you along a famous highway and through the dusty provincial centre of Tacna.

San Pedro de Tacna, the southern most city in the Republic of Peru, is connected to Chile by road and by rail. The rail line was built in 1855 and is one of the oldest in South America.

The road is part of the famous Pan-American Highway, which stretches from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to near the Straits of Magellan and Cape Horn in Argentina. Save for the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia, it runs continuously for almost 48,000 kilometres.

Rumour has it the Darien was never crossed because the United States was fearful of opening up land transport to its borders for too many Latinos.

The people of Tacna, Tacenos, take their patriotism seriously, naming street after street and monuments galore after the country’s fallen heroes, almost as some form of collective restoration of pride since their defeat in the War of the Pacific. The war was brutal costing thousands of lives. Peru was routed as were neighbours Bolivia. The price of defeat was heavy. The penalty was loss of land to Chile. The land gained by Chile was rich in minerals nitrates, useful ironically enough, for munitions but especially copper. Bitter resentment persists. Love thy neighbour.

At the central bus station I sat with my feet on my bag, eyeing the clock. The locals were watching me watching them. I wanted to go to the toilet but didn’t want to take all my bags with me. But to answer the call of nature, that is precisely what I’d have to do, or risk losing all my belongings.

To prepare for travel to Peru I’d lined the inside of my backpack with chicken wire, to foil the razor gangs. My money was carefully hidden and when about my petty cash separated between different pockets, so if one pocket got picked, I wouldn’t lose the lot. My watch I’d hidden under a sweat band.

Later, I was to learn other tricks from those who’d gone before and come back, and from those who’d gone before and been caught out.

The bus to Arequipa had done time in the US, lots of time. So much time it had been condemned and sent to the wreckers, only it never got there. Somewhere along the way it got intercepted, hijacked. Someone with connections, a lack of scruples and eye for cash had extended its life, and shipped it off to serve the public of Latin America.

Given they couldn’t have driven it all the way it must have come by ship. US Customs are seemingly happy to pass the documentation for transport for goods, probably as they’re largely more interested in what’s shipped in from Latin America than what goes out, roadworthy or not.

Bus journeys in Peru can be a white knuckle ride. Overtaking on blind corners is a given. So is refusal to be overtaken by another bus. On a strait stretch of highway before Arequipa another bus screamed up alongside. The drivers eyed each other across the lanes, so when the other bus sped up to pass, we did too, matching the manoeuvre, each trying to outdo the other.

I was seated on the elevated rear seats and afforded a grandstand view of this duel, and of the on-coming traffic. A part of me found this episode exhilarating.

Rather than let the other pass, our driver seemed determined this slight on his performance wouldn’t go unpunished. The engines screamed at their top revs.The engine was under the aisle near my seat, I couldn’t hear myself think. There was an overpowering smell of hot oil.

In a vehicle well beyond its use-by date and doubtless poorly maintained, this was not encouraging. In the end, trucks hauling farm produce and cement coming the opposite way forced the other driver to retreat and lick his wounds.

The coast from Santiago as far as Ecuador is desert. Between Tacna and Arequipa the road crosses high ranges and hugs the coastline. The road is narrow barely satisfying the description of “highway”. Sheer cliffs fall away to the Pacific Ocean.

The window seat affords a spectacular view, though this is not always comforting when you know you’re on the wrong side of the road. The bus veers worryingly seaward and there’s an awful smell of burning rubber, the tyres at the extent of their endurance.

Anything could be coming round the next corner and your driver is hell-bent on getting there first even if it means risking your life to do it. By sheer luck nothing approaches and wipes us out or causes either vehicle to choose the inside lane or out, life or death?

Arequipa bus station was bedlam. It’s noisy, an assortment of strangely multicoloured vehicles all spewing diesel and blowing their horns. Street vendors, ticket touts, drivers, conductors, passengers, officials and thieves, the lost and the found with the going and the gone.

The country was in the grip of a cholera epidemic and tourists were thin on the ground. This is both good and bad. Fewer tourists meant prices were reduced, bad for local vendors in an impoverished land dependent on foreign exchange. Bad for those tourists that do come for fewer foreigners means less pickings for all both legal and illegal.

Backpackers in Peru become front packers. They take to wearing their packs the other way round. This is designed to stop having their bags slashed with razors and the contents stolen while they're still carrying them.

Or, if you’re like me and still carry your bag in the conventional manner, you adopt other preventative tactics.When stopped at traffic lights waiting to cross intersections stand and sway from the side-to-side. This motion makes it harder for those trying to get into your bag from getting into your bag. This was to prove useful during the trip.

The centre of Arequipa is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is noted for the numbers fine colonial buildings built from pearly white volcanic rock, giving the city the nickname La Cuidad Blanco, “The White City”.

Arequipa sits high in the Andes and was founded by the Spanish around 1540 on the banks of the River Chilli by an emissary of Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of the Inca Empire. Dominating the city’s skyline is El Misti, one of a series of 80 volcanoes, almost 6000 metres high, an impressive and intimidating sight. El Misti is known locally as the tourist mountain as so many come to look at it, or, in some cases, climb it. This feat can be achieved relatively easily in two-three days.

The city is built on an earthquake-prone lava field. In 2001, an earthquake measuring 8.4 on the Richter Scale killed over one hundred people, one of three big quakes to strike the city in the last 50 years. In fact great quakes have marked milestones in Arequipa’s famous architecture comprising almost 500 colonial-era buildings incorporating Baroque, Rococo and Neo-classical.

The buildings around the main square are especially spectacular, including the Town Hall and the Arequipa Cathedral. Eiffel left his mark here too with the Bolivar Bridge and the Fenix Theatre.

The ladies of the hotel desk staff wanted to go clubbing and asked to take them. Never having been out in Peru I thought why not. I didn’t realise I’d be paying for everything, at least that was their expectation. Drinks weren’t cheap and cost more than a day’s wage for a desk clerk. I boogied down to 1970s heavy metal like “Smoke on the Water”.

I awoke the next day dehydrated and with a sore knee. Without resting I headed off to the covered city market. To get there you had to cross the crowded side streets cluttered with stalls. Making my way to one of the entrances I became surrounded by a group of elderly women. Limping and lacking energy, I sensed danger. I covered my watch and pressed my arm to my side covering my money in a pouch under my arm.

Thieves and pickpockets are skilful often working in gangs and employing elaborate schemes to separate those that have from what they have

Being too polite to barge through the group was my mistake, allowing the time to pick my wallet from my pocket. As quickly as they assembled the group disbursed. If I’d been more ruthless I’d have grabbed one of them and dragged her off to the police. If I’d been resting up like I should’ve been, I wouldn’t have been caught out in the first place.

I retreated to the hotel to count my losses; my house key, a bus ticket from New Zealand, about US$2, and my wallet a birthday present. Aside from my pride I was unhurt. I’d met those who’d come off much worse, and given the behaviour of others I was to see later, there were far more targets setting themselves up for a fall.

This is what I’d refer to when travelling as a wake-up call.

Arequipa is a fantastic place to visit but like most places, it pays to keep your wits about you.