today. i drove to the border town of tacna. tacna is another typical peruvian town, with typical peruvian people….i’m ready for some change. they do have a cool train museum, though….it’s more like an old train station (with tons of repair equipment) that’s been abandoned for over half a century. you can just walk around and climb/touch everything. tacna is also overrun with pigeons.

the drive today took me through quite a bit of desert — it’s impressive how much desert there is in the americas. tacna is right in the midde of it….pretty impressive to see such a large city (couple hundred thousand) in the middle of nothing. i also followed a van for a bit which said ”panamerica-movie.com’, i think (i still need to check it out).

peruvians don’t seem to have respect for road rules. why do i say that? well, it seems like half of the road signs on the highway are non-informative. for instance, they’ll say ‘respect the signs’, ‘don’t break the signs’, ‘trust the signs’, ‘don’t pass if you’re in doubt’, or ‘don’t speed, think of your family’. then, there’s traffic cops….who people also don’t respect. it’s not that they don’t like them (that’s more or less universal, afterall), but that sometimes cars will just ignore them….like the taxi in huaraz which just drove by one flagging him down. or when the cops pull me over, they’ll look everything over, make me wait a few minutes, then ask me for a ‘coke’ or a ‘lunch’ (aka cash). in other countries, they’ll make up some infraction and threaten you for a bribe. here, they just implore you for a handout…..like those litte kids on the cordillera blanca who would always say ‘regala me!’….and you’d appease them with a piece of hard candy.