Vallenar, Tuesday

1514 Had shower and done some illicit laundry. The wifi does work at least.

2109 Had Spanish lesson at 5, came out 830ish with hope of recording church bell version of Piano Man at 9 but it played something else. I may get up early tomorrow to try at 9am. Somewhat lardily I am at the place I failed to get food at this morning for chicken with rice *and* chips and a litre bottle of Cristal (which I am hoping is weaker than Escudo).

FFS in a good way. It's a 1.2 litre bottle, though it's 'only'. 4.6%.

Oh, I wanted to try the ca[sz]uela de ave but it isn't on. That is kind of how I was justifying a second 'proper' meal to myself, on grounds I was trying something new. Oh well.

2214 Not quite finished beer but getting bill, 5.5k. Got to look into cross-border buses from Calama when get back, bit of a drag, also need to check F&CO website etc. Tipping 600. Food pretty good. Also need to mark hotel & mine office on OSM in Calama. Need to be aware re buses so I can try to book one (modulo a major rush to drop bag off and go to mine office) on arrival in Calama. I emailed mine tour place this afternoon to see if I am on waiting list - think already said they never replied to my email saying I wanted to be put on - but not had any response yet.

This is a bar kind of place but it's just me and the owner/waiter/whatever here. Was one other chap in before. I suppose it is only Tuesday and perhaps it's also a bit early. Not a problem, just an observation.

2228 Forcing this beer down a bit as want to get back before too late re possible curfew plus things need to do. TV weather reminds me somewhat oddly that one of the boys I met on cruise in Valdivia said the moai in La Serena is *not* an original (contrary to my belief it was the only one not still on Easter Island) but that the sole such non-EI-resident original was somewhere in England. I suspect he is wrong, but who knows, worth researching at some point.

2243 Back, owner (presumably) chap gave me a tray with teabags and thermos of hot water and couple of biscuits, which is nice. Not going to name hotel on blog, will try to give balanced review if is on tripadvisor but do feel nature of 'private' bathroom highly deceptive and (even without the possibly-only-honest-hotel or possibly-exploitative tax issue) I do feel it's fing expensive for what it is. Maybe Vallenar is expensive, but for this I am paying only a smidge less (CLP40k vs CLP38k/night) than I paid for a fucking apartment in Santiago a block away from the Plaza de Armas. Anyway, less ranting, more getting research etc out of way.

2317 OK, it looks like there is probably no bus from Calama to Peru, so although I will see what it's like at bus stn I probably need to go to Arica. Tacna, Peru (just across border) now appears to have semi-cheap online bookable hotels, so I may spend a night or two there. F&CO not too scary wrt Peru through need to check before going on to anywhere. They do make the crossing from Peru directly into Colombia sound a bit dodgy (limited police presence, stay in groups) so although I always assumed I would go up through Ecuador anyway that suggests more so.

I am *not* intending to try to visit Macchu Pichu, unless it is an easyish daytrip from Cusco. If I ever do the Inca Trail it would make sense for MP to be new to be, and if I do the IT I feel it would be prudentish to do it on a shortish holiday (eg while I have a contract) when I could travel with appropriate gear and perhaps 'train up' a little first. Obviously will play things by ear a little but rough plan is something like couple of nights in Tasca (one night if nothing to do there, maybe), onto Cusco (I have been to Arequipa and Puno and Nazca) for a few nights, on to Lima for a few nights then push up towards Ecuador, probably stopping a couple of nights in one place to break journey up. Very roughly (calling it four nights each in Lima and Cusco and shoving in overnight buses) that is a bit over a fortnight. I would be leaving Peru approximately 24th Feb. That would give me about five weeks for Ecuador and Colombia, assuming I either fly back from Colombia to BA or do an intense bus trip across to BA and without allowing any significant time in BA (not a problem in itself, already spent 4 days this trip, but obviously I need a buffer).

Am I spreading myself a little thin? Possibly. But no harm in that, it's not as if I am going to say 'I've been to (eg) Ecuador, not going back' so if I only see a few places it is a taster. The only thing is, by stretching myself am I spending too high a proportion of my time on buses? Somewhat arbitrarily looking at Lima-Quito, that flight is £315. The road distance according to Google is 1812km or 1 day of driving, so on my 'I value my time at £100/day' approximation it is probably prudent to hop that direction by bus doing up to three overnights, as long as the places I visit on my way are at least interesting enough to justify 1-2 nights there on their own merits. If I don't get bent out of shape about getting as far as Colombia, they probably are. Were the hotel cheaper, even Vallenar has been kind of cool to see for 1-2 days/1 night; in a silly way the Piano Man church clock is one of those charmingly obscure discoveries which will be a memory to look back on. (Also Quito is north edge of Ecuador, so naturally if you were bussing it in this south-north direction you would *want* to break the journey at least once or twice so as to see more of Ecuador than just Quito anyway. Ecuador is also not that huge, not to say there isn't plenty to see but for a taster I suspect the amount of travel within the country needn't be hugely time consuming, depending on state of the roads.)

Perhaps (assuming I like Colombia/Ecuador) on a future three month trip to Latin America I might fly into Bogota, head south through Ecuador into Peru, spending most of my time on those three countries, then blat down to Santiago (frankly I wonder if the 22h-ish bus journey would be tolerably un-hellish if you went cama and allowed a night to recover in Santiago) before flying home from there. Of course I also want to do central America and Mexico again. But *as long as I enjoy (most) of the journey and don't get totally focussed on getting to Colombia ASAP* I think it's reasonable to do roughly what I am proposing.

Incidentally a flight from Bogota (though I might want to fly from elsewhere, of course) to Buenos Aires at the end of March weighs in at £360 right now if you pick the right day, though none of those are direct, they generally require a change in Lima and some in Cali as well. There are no direct ones regardless of price. I need to let my subconscious grind over the implications of this, if any. Should I fly up from Lima to Bogota then make my way by bus back south? Does that make any difference? Can't think straight right now and it doesn't alter my plans for next few days.

Looking at map you could maybe do an interesting bus trip Colombia-Brazil-Paraguay/Uruguay-Buenos Aires but it would take weeks if you stopped anywhere en route and if you don't it would be pointless, and I don't want to visit Brazil with my current language skills. You could potentially do Lima/Cusco through Bolivia and Paraguay down to BA (I kind of did the Paraguay-BA bit of that in 2010) but for the sake of £360 and the tiny tiny dissatisfactoriness of not completing the circuit entirely overland I don't think it's worth it. I am sure there's good stuff I haven't yet seen in Bolivia and Paraguay, my travels in both have been limited (especially in Paraguay) but at the same time I'd much rather have a taster of Ecuador and Colombia than do that.

Do need to avoid booking the X-BA flight too late on but I certainly don't need to decide now. I think the main thing is that I don't do too many one or two night stopovers just to allow myself to cover distance; I need to be aiming at three or four in most cases. I will perhaps sketch out a more detailed itinerary based on actually reading guide book in a day or two. But for tonight the lesson has to be that I probably can't get a bus to Peru from Calama so I probably want to go to Arica (during the day; it's about 6h) and either go early enough to be able to cross to Tacna same day or stay one night in Arica, but if I can get a bus somehow I now also know Tacna/Arequipa (worth it if it was direct)/Cuzco would be worth it, Lima would probably cause me to 'skip' Cuzco and that would be a shame.

It's now 2353...

Oh, and frankly I'm probably not up for the Galapagos Islands this time round. Not entirely sure, will see when read guide book, but suspect they are expensive and not entirely my bag and might be better on a future trip. But let's not make any commitments now, wait til read guide books, I vaguely hope to have a dull night in one or both nights in Calama to sketch out an itinerary.

Anyway, let's move towards bed and go clean teeth etc.