Tacna, Peru

On Saturday I took my first day trip to Tacna, Peru, a city of about 400,000 people that is only a 45 minute bus ride from Arica; border patrol is only 9 miles away. People from Arica go frequently to Tacna for cheap shopping. The deals are indeed incredibly good. Unfortunately, they are also a little suspect. For example, places that sell books actually sell photocopied books. They look like they have a regular cover, but sure enough, the inside pages are copied. You can buy movies in Tacna that have not come out yet on DVD in the United States because someone in Peru actually taped the movie while seeing it in a movie theatre and put it on DVD! (Sometimes you can see someone getting up to go to the bathroom.) The illegality of this frustrates Chileans because the cheap prices of things made illegally in Peru has closed down some legally run stores in Arica. There's just a different sense of how much to enforce laws in each country. Nonetheless, Aricans do shop in Tacna, as did I. I only bought one book, though - and felt a little guilty about it! Fortunately, we also stopped at a cathedral, where I could do penance. :) The church you see in the photo was designed by none other than Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, of Eiffel Tower fame!