1357 At small restaurant having cazuela vacuno, pollo asado and rice with a diet coke. Only got up about 1, bit slack but meh, no huge plans for today, will just wander a bit for afternoon, maybe beer or two tonight but obviously have to be up early. Slightly torn to enquire at some other company and throw away the TurBus ticket but seems a waste of money.
1442 Food not bad, and for 4k (1k of which was drink) with jelly & cream as desert fairly good value. Paid at counter as other people seemed to but left 400 tip on table. Place is Restaurant Mapasu on Vivar.
2053 Just come out after fruit binge - perhaps overdid it a bit, as hoping to compensate for probably not eating any tomorrow - and surfing and shower and photo uploading. Still bit slack. Locked key in room when it was for some reason on bed and I had to dash out urgently to bog, fortunately they had spare. At American Pub for somewhat pricey litre of Heinken at 3.7k, will make it 4.1k with tip left on table, waitress wanted paying when she brought it, think was same when here in 2011. Just me here and one raucous other table.
Walking round today found plaza and then Ramirez (street this place is on) and memories from being here in 2011 came flooding back. This is a couple of mins walk from hotel.
Waitress asked where I was from, I think she said she was Bolivian but bit noisy with music and the raucous group so didn't hear that well. Incidentally, ISTR reading on web when researching something that the infamously brutal passenger train from here to somewhere (Uyuni??) in Bolivia no longer runs. It was never very frequent anyway IIRC.
Bit nervous about beer after that unexpected toilet urgency and tomorrow's early start but take it easy, maybe just have this one, we'll see. This is barring accidents my last night in Chile this trip, about this time tomorrow I should be in Peru. I was going to come out for lomo a lo pobre tonight but as I was shovelling down the last of about 850g of grapes at about 8pm and feeling a bit stuffed I figured it would be foolish on multiple grounds to do so.
I am toying with staying an extra night in Tacna on 'not haring around too much' grounds, especially now I may well arrive too late/tired to do much on Saturday night. However, I am not absolutely sure how much stuff there is to see. I suspect as a completely new town to me (I just passed through in 2010, online hotels there were super pricey/scarce at the time so I crossed straight to Arica, not to mention was in a slight rush to get down to Santiago for my Easter Island flight) it would easy be worth an extra night. I am inclining to seeing how I feel when I get to the hotel tomorrow night and maybe asking them then, rather than booking online, I might get it cheaper that way and if I can't get anything I can just go on anyway.
2254 Back at hostel. Just had not-desperate shit and that was reassuringly ok, the one earlier had put wind up me a bit. Anyway, strongly inclining to booking extra night in Tacna now so let's try and write more after.
2255 Thanks, Gmail app! Thanks to tendency to scroll up to top if no to address entered (where random keypresses intended for the body of the email turn into an address book lookup) plus no confirm on send, I just emailed all the previous part of this blog entry to Hotel Riazor in Rio de Janeiro. Still, they never replied to my e-mails in the past if I remember rightly. But what a fucking usability disaster.
2303 OK, booked that. Partly due to feelings tonight that I'm haring around too much I decided it was more important to lock in an extra night than to save maybe a couple of quid booking it in person not over web. Towards end of litre one of the legs on my plastic chair was buckling (!) - I'm not that fucking fat, nor do I think I was leaning back in it. Some slightly 'rocker' looking maybe 30ish chap came over and suggested I double the chairs up as they were weak. We shook hands but he didn't overly push any friendship on me, but this made me think about wanting to hang out more and rush less. I dithered about another drink but earlier toilet doubts plus early bus made me dubious, I came back, perhaps fortunately as for first time noticed the sign saying when check in/out was also says 'close 11:30pm', I had assumed it would be midnight at earliest so good job I did come straight back. I think the Tacna hotel is 24h reception. Moreover modulo knackeredness from travel would be nice if I can go out for a few beers tomorrow night, it being Saturday, and even nicer if can get into a chat, which I can't do if I'm worried about getting up or dashing off. OK, I was definitely going to be in Tacna Sun night anyway but before I booked to stay there Mon, I would have to be booking onward travel on Sun and I might also be leaving early Mon so Sun would be my only chance to see the place during the day so it would all be super rushed and that's what I need to fight against. This way I'd still *like* to get onward travel sorted on Sun, but if I am knackered after bus+night out I don't *have* to, and even if I do sort out onward travel Sun (possibly pmish) I have Monday to do general tourist wandering.
Incidentally did see there is a train Arica-Tacna which would be cool but it only goes at 9am so even if I had been prepared to risk it not being sold out it wouldn't have worked this time anyway.
0030 In bed, dunno how soon will get to sleep but I will feel shit in morning anyway and of course I can hopefully drowse on bus. In a way will be quite nice to be on bus listening to music and reading a looking out of the window and not feeling I need to try to get to sleep. But not looking forward to getting up. Anyway.
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