Day 30: Going here, no there, no here, no there
Imagine my pleasure as I arrive to Tacna's bus station, ready to hop on a bus to Arica, Chile, only to be told that the protests at the border, which were supposed to end yesterday, continued again today and that for the second straight day it is impossible to get into Chile. That is, unless I wanted to walk through the protestors and another 2 miles to the Chilean border. What a great option that sounds! So about 2 hours ago I was faced with a dilemma, stay another night in this quite boring border city Tacna, or catch a bus right back to Arequipa, and then tomorrow morning get a bus to Copacabana, Bolivia, on the shores of Lake Titicaca.
The backpacker's code is to never backtrack, but in this case the soothing blue waters of Titicaca sound a lot better than this nothing-to-do outpost in the Atacama desert. So I bought a ticket for Arequipa, arriving there at 4 am tomorrow morning, where I will get a 5 hour bus to Puno an another 2 hour bus to Copacabana, where I will be relaxing on magical shores by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. Backtracking is a sin, but so is waiting here another day in the hope that the border will open up again. I would probably murder myself in frustration if I waited in this town another day, and the protestors decided that keeping people out of Chile again sounded like a fun idea.
So in a little bit I hop on a bus to go right back to where I came from. Running to stand still, as U2 would say? At the moment I am just happy to be going somewhere, after failing last night and this afternoon.
