Sailing from Peru to Chile

More desert from bus window

Tiny buildings are homes.

Folk dancers at dinner

Today we are sailing along the coast of Chile after leaving Peru last night.  Chile is 4000 miles long so we will be in Chilean waters for many days.  Tom is anxious to start hitting the wineries!
Yesterday we docked at Matarani, Peru, a small southern Peruvian port.  We went from sea level to 7000 ft in elevation to visit a museum in Arequipa,(Peru's second largest city).  It was a 2.5 hour bus ride on a two lane mountainous road with literally hundreds of trucks coming and going from the port.  The distance from the port to the city was only 70 miles but we probably averaged about 30 miles per hour.
"The ice mummy museum" was well worth the trip.  There were displays of Incan artifacts as well as one of the frozen mummies.  The mummies were sacrifices to the gods over 500 years ago, well preserved because they were at the top of 20,000 ft volcanoes buried in ice.  The six mummies were discovered in 1995 as the ice had melted from volcanic activity in the area. 
Before heading back to the ship we had dinner at a restaurant owned by the same chef as the place where we had eaten a few days ago in Cusco. This time it was a more typical Peruvian meal, some mystery meat wrapped in dough and deep fried, pig hocks deep fried, potatoes and a baked apple.  The Peruvian pinot noir was quite good however.
We were surprised by how dry the Peruvian cost was, getting less than two inches of rain per year.  The landscape along the coast was as stark as anything we have seen.  However, it changes quickly as you get into the Andes.  We will be seeing more of the same in Northern Chile for the next few days as the Atacama Desert is the driest place on earth.  Some areas have never had recorded rainfall.