After Lima, I kind of bumped around in a series of Andean towns within a few hours´ drive of each other. There is a linear continuity between these towns, in terms of their physical placement along a single highway, but also in terms of their Andes-centric cultural and historical identity. Tarma and Jauja are small towns in a poor, agriculturally-oriented region where the Quechua language and custums flourish, where the struggle between the Shining Path movement and the military were most strongly felt, and where tourists, and especially foreign tourists, are rarely seen. In a week, I saw (from a distance) a trio of Canadian backpackers, but otherwise it was all Peruvians going about their business.
For the most part, that´s great. My Spanish is improving rapidly, prices are lower for food and hotels, and things, whatever they may be, are less tarnished/burnished/available/crowded/fake/restored than they will inevitably be once this region is more widely "discovered." The absence of other travelers emphasizes the pros and cons of traveling by myself. There is commonly a presumption of camaraderie among travelers who meet each other in foreign lands, an expectation that the common bond of being from "elsewhere" but choosing to come "here" is indication of a like-mindedness. I ocasionally find myself hating this, and I generally seek to avoid it, but every once in a while I really appreciate it, too. There is another dimension to sharing a new experience with someone else for whom it is also new, that is missing when one experiences it alone. That camaraderie may most often be ephemeral, but it has some value nonetheless. Although I`ve wholly enjoyed the challenges and the pleasures of these past few weeks far from the madding backpacker crowd, I do also harbor some anticipation for reaching Cusco and again having my excitement for sightseeing and foodtasting and funhaving augmented by the excitement of others around me.
The high point of my trip: Ticlio. Ticlio is a small town on the highway East from Lima, and I know nothing about it, other than it lies at just under 16,000 feet above sea level, on the highest-altitude paved road in the world. I was asleep on an overnight bus from Lima to Tarma, but the altitude woke me up and made me feel nauseated, light-headed, and extremely cold, so I can say I`ve been there. Then we started to decend over the other side of the peak, and after a while I fell back asleep.
All through the night I was half-awoken each time the bus halted in successive unannounced towns, to let sleepy and silent passengers get on or off, and each time I drowsily marvelled at their ability to know, in the near-total darkness, which stop was theirs. I awoke for good around six thirty in the morning, as the sun began to rise. The bus was scheduled to arrive in Tarma at five in the morning, but being behind schedule neither surprised nor bothered me. We had started a little late, and all the stops had further slowed our pace. I was mostly grateful to be able to enjoy some of the trip in sunlight. Everything I could see from the bus was beautiful. Huge mountainsides towering high up into the clouds on one side; steep rocky precipices tumbling far down into winding rivers and sharp canyons on the other. The trees were lush and surrounded by dense ferny undergrowth and fed by waterfalls that foamed down along the mountains` plicatures. It was the kind of scenery they use in movies to evince exotic, exciting possibilities of unknown adventure. Seeing it firsthand was even better.
Around 8, the bus got to the end of the line. I was actually quite happy to be getting there at 8 rather than at five: it was light out, already quite warm. Businesses were open or opening, and there was a lot of bustling energy in the air. I had left Lima with good thoughts of the city, but still it was nice to be out of such a big place, and it felt wonderful to see, and feel, the sun again, unhidden by Lima`s fog and smog. I walked around for a while with my bags, had some breakfast, walked around some more, and figured it was probably close enough to noon to find my hostel and leave my stuff there while I better explored the environs. The hostel was one recommended by my guidebook, and I had the address. But I couldn`t find the street it was on, even though my book assured me it was just off the main plaza. After searching fruitlessly for a bit, I asked a shopkeeper for directions. She looked at me askance and told me there was no street by that name. I told her the name of the hostel I was looking for, and she looked at me askew and told me I needed to go to Tarma. I blinked. "This isn`t Tarma?" "No, it`s La Merced."
I went and sat in the plaza, and looked at my map. Well, it all kind of made sense: the reason my bus trip was three hours longer than expected was not that the bus was slow, just that I was 3 hours slow in getting off it. One of those towns we had quietly stopped in, in the dark, had been Tarma. I had inadvertently gone from Lima, on the coast, across the Andes and down into the fringes of the Amazon, to an area called Chanchamayo that consisted of a few towns and a lot of rainforest. Scanning nervously for malaria-bearing mosquitoes, anacondas, and capybaras, I shouldered my bags and headed for the hills, and for Tarma. There were colectivos, small taxi-vans, heading that way, but I`d been on the bus all night and I felt like walking. It was hot, and humid, and uphill. I walked for a few hours, having fun in the sun. Finally the sun won out over the fun, and I flagged down a bus and rode the rest of the way. These were my six or so hours in the jungle, on the (out of the) way to Tarma. I saw some bright-green birds, a huge plantation that grows coffee for Starbucks, and some Peruvians in shorts (which is rare).
Before leaving Lima, I had bought a book of essays by Mario Vargas Llosa. I don`t hold much truck with his neoliberal political views of recent decades, but he`s a good writer and not hard to read in Spanish, and it just so happens that this book, which I´m sure to reference quite often in the weeks to come (so don`t forget I just mentioned it, now), could not be better complementing my trip. The essays were written in the 70s and the 80s, dark times in Peru`s history, and provide a very interesting counterpoint to the contemporary Peru I`m traveling through. One of the essays is about growing up in the 30s, under the repressive and corrupt regime of the dicator Manuel Odria. Tarma is known principally for two reasons: its Easter celebrations are apparently splenderous, and Odria was born and lived there. In September, of course, I found few hints of Easter wonder, but a few reminders of Odria´s influence. The colonial-era city center, its plaza and church and governor´s house, were deemed by the dictator too old-fashioned, and were remodelled to meet his aesthetic standard. 1930s dictators, unfortunately, all too often were inspired by an architectural aesthetic that has not remained in vogue, an Odria was no exception. The effect of his efforts is mostly boring. The plaza is still pleasant, lined with tall palm trees and shaded by a distinctive, if unassuming, cathedral. But otherwise, I found the town somewhat nondescript other than for its traffic, which given Tarma`s size was inexplicably and unnecessarily deafening and frenzied. My impression of Tarma may be somewhat unreliable, though: for some reason, perhaps because of the altitude change from Lima (although that`s only 2500 feet), I felt slightly unwell while I was there, a vague corporeal angst that dissuaded me from expending much energy exploring. I stayed two nights in Tarma, but mainly just sat in the plaza or on the hostel`s patio, reading. There was no one else staying at the hostel but me.
On the third day, I felt altogether better, and lit out for Jauja. On my map, the distance appeared to be about twenty miles. That`s walkable, so I started walkin` it. The walk was beautiful and initially refreshing, but longer than foreseen. Unnoted by my small-scale map, the road led uphill in a series of sharp switchbacks that zigzagged, more vertical than horizontal, up up up into the mountain range that stood between Tarma and Jauja. The switchbacks doubled the distance to a less-feasible forty miles of walking. The mountains around me were numerous and there was a great diversity of terrain. Dry, gray-brown rocky slopes patched with dust and trash gave way to auburn red soil spotted with green shrubs and cactii; at intervals there would be a sudden growth of green vegetation, a mountain´s sunny side cut into cascading man-made terraces that were tilled and furrowed and evenly lined by rows of sprouting things. From time to time, a car would pass by and honk at me approvingly - or disapprovingly, how does one distinguish? - and every so often I would pass by a homestead or even a small village of ten or fifteen houses, mules and sheep and dogs milling about while fat sows lay beside the road and suckled their teeming piles of squeaking piggy offspring.
I walked from 9 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon. It was all uphill, and I was only halfway to Jauja. A shephard, supervising his flock from the grass beside the road, watched me looking at him as I walked up the road. He hailed me and I stopped and he asked me what I was doing, then where I was from. When I told him, he broke into a grin and shook my hand and said he´d never met someone from the US before. Could that be true? He was very friendly, and assured me there was no way I could make it all the way to Jauja before dark. I sat and rested for a while and he asked me questions. Then I kept on, but I was tired, and didn`t really want to keep on keepin`on. So I stuck out my thumb, and the 3rd or 4th car that passed stopped and took me to Jauja.
The name Jauja, in Quechua, means "Never-neverland of Milk and Honey," apparently. When Francisco Pizarro and his Spanish soldiers arrived there in 1533, there was enough food stored there for the winter that they were able to stay there for months, living lavishly, without having to worry about replenishing their stock. The Indians, of course, were left with nothing. The Spanish for a while called Jauja the capital city of their new colonial territory, and the church Pizarro ordered built there is the oldest in South America. It`s a rather plain building, whose simple symmetries and restrained decoration show no hint of the guilded Baroque flair that would soon come into fashion as Spain`s wealth from - and dominance over - its American colonies increased. I`d like to think the church`s unimposing character also reflects some degree of insecurity on the part of the Spanish about their continued ascendancy over the native culture, but I know better: Pizarro was, aside from being an astute showman, too arrogant for careful half-measures. In any case, the capital was not too long after transplanted to Lima.
Seemingly every aspect of life in the Peruvian Andes is a reflection of three pasts: the pre-hispanic series of Andes-centric cultures that culminated in the Inca Empire; the "modern" past that began with the arrival of the Spanish, who subjugated the Inca and transplanted the seat of power from Andean Cusco to coastal Lima; and the recent past, the terrorism, suffering, and alienation caused by the conflict between the Peruvian government and the Shining Path. Traces of these three pasts are to be seen everywhere here, but to be accurate they hardly ever stand alone. The three narratives run together and build upon (or tear away from) each other with such frequency that it becomes clear that they are very much all part of one story.
The Empire of the Inca, which stretched from southern Chile to northern Ecuador, and from the Pacific Coast into the Amazon, overcame and to varying degrees subjugated a huge range of cultures and religions. Rather than destroy the customs and the idols of the vanquished, the Incas adapted and appropriated them into their own pantheon. That said, Cusco was always the empire´s most elevated and central city (both geographically and figuratively). The theology, the mythology, the cultural and economic value systems, all looked to the Andes as their primary source.
That the Spanish came, saw, and quickly conquered, is quite a story, but not a unique one exactly. The Spanish did a lot of that, and their influence was of course world-changing. The action by the Spanish that, nowadays, still seems to most rankle the Andean Peruvians, was the movement of the capital to the coast. For the Spanish, the establishment of the Viceroyalty in Lima made sense: its proximity to the ocean simplified trade and communication with the rest of teh Americas and with Spain. It also marked the first time in 500 years that power, under the auspices of whatever authority, did not emanate from the Andes. Lima`s hegemony, from what I`ve read and heard, was total. The government, the Church, the military, the judiciary, the elite, the educated and the wealthy all called Lima their home. The mountains and the jungle were incredibly rich with natural resources; these were ruthlessly exploited and shipped to Lima and on to Spain, both of which grew richer as their sources grew poorer. Lima`s hegemony was little affected by Peru`s independence from Spain and the ensuing centuries of presidents and dictators. Today the government, the Church, the military, the judiciary, the elite, the educated and the wealthy all still call Lima their home. Until very recently (thirty years at the max) Peru had not system of regional or municipal representation. The national government and the national military were the only sources of law and order. In poor, sparsely populated areas (which description fits most of the Peruvian Andes) their presence was rarely felt or seen. The country was at least in name under the supervision and control of the Lima, but until the last decade, there was no trustworthy highway system, or paved roads, to permit for much of a physical connection between Lima and the greater part of the country. What traffic there was, was mostly logging trucks and gas- and mining-company vehicles. According to an essay about Peru, written by Mario Vargas Llosa in the 70s, some parts of the Andes were "centuries" behind the 20th century - which is to say, the Andean way of life was more reminiscent of the era of the Inca than the era of airplane.
In such an atmosphere of cultural and economic disparity, it is little surprise (from my retrospective second-hand perspective) that the Shining Path, whose aim was the destruction of the State and the implementation of a new, communist model, and whose target accordingly was primarily Lima, should have arisen and found a foothold in the Andes. It was easy to strike against the government and the military in areas of such isolation, and it was easy to inspire followers who were already disenfranchised and disenchanted. Not that people had much choice: as weak as the State`s infrastructure was in the Andes, weaker still once the S.P. started assassinating civil servants and bombing electrical stations and bridges, siding with the terrorists was more an issue of self-protection than ideology for some communities. Then, as the State began to fight back more strongly against the S.P., villagers found themselves under attack from both sides, vulnerable to retribution from either upon the slightest hint of aiding or sympathizing with the other. According to my guidebook, over 70,000 people died between 1980 and 2000, of whom over 50,000 were apparently civilians from the Andean region.
Over the last couple weeks, the quotidian reality and visibility of these three historical contexts is incredible. The majority of the people around me have spoken Quechua, either exclusively or, more commonly, in preference to Spanish, and they share a basis to the structure of their lives - food, agriculture, music, family, spirituality - whose continuity from the time of the Inca and before is undeniable. Outside of the cities, clothing and textiles are typically still handmade and a distinctive amalgam of traditional Quechua and Spanish garb. Catholicism is practiced by most, but it is interwoven with pre-columbian beliefs and practices that, among some communities, clearly take precedence over the tenets of the Catholic faith. While it is not often talked about, the recent pains of terrorism are not yet buried deep, nor should they be I suppose. Most people my age or older have witnessed, either firsthand or at close remove, the assassinations, torture, imprisonments, massacres, carbombs, and starvation and intimidation that defined three decades of life here.
That kind of sounds like a downer; well, it is. But: given the history, I think this is a very special time to visit the Andes. It feels that way. There is a lot of optimism about the future. Words like development, change, education, integration, and tourism are everywhere. The government, aware of its mistakes in the past and seeking (superficially? we`ll see) to make up for them, and the local populations, determined to keep history from repeating itself, are working to improve things in a conscientious and undestructive way. The greater part of the highway along which I`ve been walking and bussing, for instance, did not exist ten years ago. It leads along a route known in Quechua as the "Qapaq Ñan" or "Sacred Path" that for the Incas was important both as a trade and communication route, and also for its (obviously) sacred connotations. This overlay of asphalt on top of the Qapaq Ñan is not sacrilegious, but rather is welcomed, both as a recognition of the intersection of the contours of the Andean culture`s physical and historical contexts, and also as a potential conduit for tourists, and their dollars. Dollars that if put to the right use could both improve the quality of life, and also preserve and celebrate the traditional way of life, of local communities. The Qapaq Ñan and its modern paved two-lane reincarnation, after all, lead directly past nearly every significant landmark and monument of the Incas´ empire.
The process of attracting tourists has not yet come to fruition. There are tourists, but few, not enough to provide the funds necessary for the upkeep and restoration of the sites tourists want to see. Most tourists from abroad still prefer to either fly directly, or take the quicker coastal highway from Lima to Cusco. My decision to take the Andean route was mostly influenced by my map: it looked simpler on paper to come this way. I´m happy I did, but mostly because it did lead me off the well-trod Gringo Trail and into territory that lends itself to exploration and discovery. I´m always slightly surprised, almost a thrilled, to walk through the mountains and see men and women in traditional clothes watching over mules and sheep or tending to their crops with scythes and wooden hoes - and it is often equally surprising to them to see me. My guidebook promised that after the harrowing decades of the Shining Path, many Andeans would be downright delighted so see outsiders consider the region safe enough, and interesting enough, to visit. And so it has proved to be.
Back to Jauja. The town was in the midst of a comprehensive process of overhaul and upgrade when I showed up: the streets in the vicinity of the Plaza Mayor, which were either lined with cobblestones or just dirt, were being fitted for sidewalks, electric streetlamps, and asphalt pavement. This was all being done at once, on all the streets in question at the same time, which had the pleasant result of blocking off the best part of town from cars. People maneuvered around the holes and wires and piles of gravel, and the workers sitting and chiselling out cobblestones one at a time with a chisel and hammer, on foot or on bicycle, and there was a blissful respite from the normally incessant hogging and screeching and screaming and horning of cars, buses and mototaxis. In the evening, the workers left and the streets filled up with people, families and couples and friends and schoolkids, walking around, shopping, eating snacks and sweets from the food carts along the half-finished sidewalks. Stores - a significant number of which for some reason used an image of Britney Spears on their signs to entice potential customers to buy a TV or a bag of chips or get a haircut or a puppy - stayed open late into the night, and their lights and soundsystems poured brightness and music into the streets and spread energy through the crowds walking past. Then it started raining, hard, and within minutes the streets were nearly deserted and the stores had pulled down their giant garage-style doors. The dirt in the streets turned to mud, which then slowly began to flow downhill and fill the holes and cover the wires and sluice through the piles of gravel. The rainy season had officially opened for business.
The next morning showed up bright and clear, however. I walked a little ways out of town to a lake, which was clear and large and surrounded on all sides by rolling hills and trees. It felt like an Oregon lake, for some reason. Although there was one novel addition: the middle of the water was freckled with small, man-made "enchanted islands." These islands were about ten feet by ten feet, from the look of them, and they each had grass, a small tree for shade, and a bench on them. For a few dollars, according to the billboard in front of a boathouse on the shore, a boat would deliver people to one of the islands, and leave them there for an hour. The hills around the lake were immediately remarkable for a plant that was growing on them, that looks just like a 20-foot tall asparagus. I thought that was amazing, and took pictures. It turns out they are pretty ubiquitous in this range of the mountains, and I'm not amazed by them anymore, but they do still look like asparagus.
There were purported to be Incan ruins in the hills, too, that are "rarely sought out" by visitors (sez the guidebook), so I sought to seek them out. And I may have found them; I'm not sure. I found lots of stacked rocks, but there was no indication of who had done the stacking. More continuity between the 16th century and the 21st: the Quechuans use the same rocks. They also stack them in the same way. Rock walls in fields and for small buildings were/are constructed without mortar, and plastered with mud. I'm sure some archaeologists trained in the subtle intricacies of carefully stacked rocks can tell the difference between an Incan-era farmer's wall and a modern one, but I can't. I stared at some circular stone-wall enclosures, about three feet high, and tried to decide if knowing what century they were built in would (or should) impart a greater or lesser sense of appreciation for them. Then I went for a long, quiet walk up the mountain. The meadows along the mountain's summit were completely empty except for a handful of heads of cattle, grazing unfettered and unsupervised among the giant asparagus. I was wearing my red shirt and the daunting thought of being charged upon by an enraged bull crossed my mind. Does that happen? I think I read somewhere that bulls are actually colorblind, and that they attack the torero during bullfights not because he's waving a red cape in their snout, but because he's sticking a sword in their shoulders. In any case, these bulls just stared at me.
From Jauja to Huancayo, I again chose to walk as far as I could before finding transportation. This time, the road led not through the mountains, but down the middle of a long valley. The Mantaro Valley is dotted with small towns but predominantly filled with cropland. It was a Sunday, and the fields were nearly empty of workers. In the little villages, there were a few gatherings of families and friends seated at tables under the trees that shaded the side of the road, enjoying what must have been hours-long midday meals judging by the amount of food spread out before them. As I passed they would wave and smile at me, and several times they called me over to ask where I was from and where I was going. When I told them, they offered me a chair to sit and rest in, and insisted on giving me a plate of food and a glass of corn beer. Most found it strange that an American should be travelling, and on foot, in the Mantaro Valley. They were all proud of the valley's beauty and listed out things that I must see while there. At the same time they assured me that it was not safe for me to be travelling by myself in such a poor place, and that I ought to be very careful because (they said as they heaped my plate with food) everyone would try to take advantage of me or rob me.
These generous people may have been right, but I felt nothing but welcomed by all. They were certainly poor though. The skin on their faces and hands were scarred, cracked, lined, the lines black with accumulated years of exposure to sun and dirt. When they smiled, their teeth proved to have nearly as many holes and stains as their shirts, pants, hats and shoes. Middle-aged and older men and women spoke mostly Quechua; teenagers and children seemed only to speak Spanish. Food was almost universally prepared in the same style of huge battered tin (or aluminum?) pots with red lids, and each pot's contents appeared to be the contribution of a different family's matron, but it was all being shared among everyone. I did my best to politely turn down their proffered food, but their insistence was too great.
The night before, I had been reading a report written by Mario Vargas Llosa, about an incident that, coincidentally, had happened in the mountains not too far from the Mantaro Valley, in the early 80s. An isolated cluster of villages, overwhelmed both by their treatment at the hands of the Shining Path, and by the inability and disinterest of the military to provide any kind of protection, decided to take matters into their own hands. When next a group from the S.P. came to demand food, clothes, and recruits, the villagers surrounded them and by weight of numbers managed to disarm them and then hang them or beat them to death. Communication with Ayacucho, the nearest place with a military and political presence, was infrequent and when news of the villages' actions finally spread, the facts had been diluted and distorted by rumor and retelling. A group of 8 journalists from the most prominent newspapers in Peru got together and determined to make the trip to the scene of the occurrence to ascertain the true facts. By car, foot, and horse they made it to Uchuraccay, the village in question. But the village's residents, on edge after their unheard of resistance to the Shining Path and fearful of reprisals, were on the lookout for interloping outsiders. When the eight journalists arrived on horseback, they too were surrounded, dragged to the ground and beaten to death, before they had any chance to identify themselves.
Although this all happened thirty years ago, I still felt a certain amount of trepidation on the eve of walking through the valley's villages. Would my ingress be seen as transgressive? my passing judged trespassing? I found it in poor taste that my book had offered me that particular history at that particular juncture. In the event, though, I was again and again struck by the incredible disparity between the climate of fear and isolation that sparked those gruesome events, and the warm, welcoming treatment I received; the contrast only served to heighten my appreciation and feeling of good luck that I should happen to find myself here, now, like this.
Late in the afternoon I flagged down a bus and rode the rest of the way to Huancayo. Huancayo used to be small, but in the 80s and 90s people fled the violence and poverty of the countryside in vast numbers and settled in Huancayo, which accordingly grew into a large, dense grid of quickly-built two- and three-story buildings. It was dark when I got there, and it took me a while to track down my hostel - which, once tracked, proved to no longer be in business. A quick trip to an internet cafe offered me no shortage of alternatives, and I picked one more or less at random (called Hostal Samay, which name stood out for me) This hostel and its owners turned out to be wonderful, and had a significant, and favorable, influence on my enjoyment and understanding of not only Huancayo, but also of Peru thus far as well. More about that soon.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
Lima - August 24th-September 5th (but written in Jauja and Huancayo)
Right now I am in a small town in central Peru called Jauja, and, for the first time since I´ve been in the country, it is raining. Springtime. In Lima, after dark and as the streets cool off, the perpetual gray haze that hovers over the city succumbs finally to gravity and comes to rest on cars and sidewalks; but that isn´t rain, just a general dampening of things. This rain tonight brings to mind how ill-prepared I am for any actual bad weather. I have a water-resistant (not -proof) windbreaker and waterproof shoes, but otherwise I and my two bags are absorbant. According to my guidebook, the rainy season doesn´t begin until December, but there are always variations between the coastal, Andean, and Amazonean weather patterns. The weather may end up occasionally dictating my travels; this might not be an altogether bad thing. Having no set itinerary for the next five months is liberating and even exhilarating. But at this early point in my trip, it also makes it quite hard to decide, at each step, what the next step should be. Currently, I have a wealth of options (places, directions, lengths of stay), each as valid and as feasible as the next. Over time, perhaps some places will call out to me more than others; perhaps not.
Sometimes this indecisiveness feels like a bad thing. It can be frustrating to try to make the most of where I am, while the question looms of where I ought next to be. For the most part (again, it´s early days), though, it offers a welcome challenge and a sense of adventure at every turn. Which, after all, is a big reason why I´m here at all. The unexpected, the chance, the detour may not always be serendipitous but I can at least have a better likelihood of appreciating them if they are not just obstructions in a pre-set charted course. I´m not traveling to "find myself;" that will inevitably work itself (myself) out, and doesn´t interest me much. What I do enjoy is "finding myself in new situations and then seeing what happens." As long as I keep that mindset, which generally I do, it´s not too hard to find the serendipity in any unlooked-for occcurrence, and to make the most of it as such.
To wit: my time, so far, since leaving Eugene.
The train ride from Eugene to LA was enjoyable at first, then tedious. I asked the man sitting next to me what I ought to do in LA, for my first visit, with only a day to do it in. He said Disneyland. I went to sit in the observation car. The next day, in some city with John Steinbeck connotations, I forget which, the train stopped to pick up passengers. All the smokers on board got off to smoke, and I got off to use the ATM and buy a sandwich from inside the station. While I was there, the train left. I had my smaller bag with my passport and book and camera in it, but my other bag was still going to LA. I asked the ticket-counter-man what would be the next best way to Los Angeles; he gave me a ticket for an Amtrak bus - at no cost, which was very nice of him - to Santa Barbara, and a transfer ticket for another bus to LA. I got on the bus okay, and as it bowled down the vast Californian freeway, I tried to figure out who to call to ask that my bag be saved for me until I arrived at Union Station. Then we pulled off the freeway to a bus stop in some small town, and across the street, at the train station, I saw my train. The bus had been going fast enough to make up for the train´s head start. I hopped off the bus, onto the train, checked to make sure my luggage was alright, and off we went.
This is not the last, but rather the first of many stories to come about bad-timing-gone-good in the world of transportation.
After spending the night in a plaza in front of a condo/mall in Korea Town, I opted to go the J. Paul Getty Museum instead of Disneyland. Looked at impressionist stuff, mostly. Then I flew to Lima.
My friend Chael met me at the Lima airport. He was a few minutes late because it took him a while to find the right bus to take him to the airport and, once he had, it collided with a taxi and everyone had to switch buses while the two drivers argued over whose fault it was. The last time I had seen Chael, he was about to graduate from the U of O. Since then, he has spent two years on a south-bound trajectory, hitchhiking, camping and couchsurfing, mostly by himself, learning Spanish as he went along. His presence in Peru and his stories about his experiences were a strong factor in my choosing to come here, but I don´t know if I can, or if I want to, follow his model of travel as such. In less than three weeks, I think I´ve already taken more inter-city buses (two) and stayed in more hotels (three) than he has in two years.
Chael´s travels have changed him, but mostly into a more well-defined version of himself. He is gaunt, shaggy, and his clothes are worn and torn and frayed and faded. But he walks with a confidence of purpose that is new, and his congeniality and sense of humor are patina´d (not the word I´m looking for, but use your imagination) by an initial impression of reserved self-reliance.
He took me to Camilo´s house, which was his house too, and which would be my house as well. Camilo´s house, which deserves to be the subject of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez-esque Magical Realist novel. It is in a neighborhood in the eastern part of Lima, called Surco. Surco is not generally frequented by tourists, not because there is anything wrong with it, there´s just not much to see besides people living their daily lives. It is a warren of quiet (by Lima´s standards) streets without names, hedged by two-story buildings, the top floors residential and the ground level chiefly commercial, housing restaurants, small shops, and mechanics´ and plumbers´ and upholsterers´ workshops. Our house in question looks abandoned, and, in fact, was. Camilo borrowed it, half-built, and only finished the job to the extent of making the place habitable. Its floors are concrete, its walls a patchwork of plaster and bare brick. There is water, a gas burner, and a mini-fridge that smells to high heaven when opened. Each room in the house is devoid of furniture save for a mattress. None of it looks appealing in the least. Camilo tells his guests with pride that it is far below the standard of living of any house in the neighborhood. He pays some small rent, and he welcomes any and all travelers to stay as long as they like, rent-free. Rent: free. There lies the house´s first saving grace. As the initial distaste for the cold and the dirt wears off, other redeeming qualities become apparent.
There have been as many as fourteen people at the house at once; during my stay, there were only four, and then five. Chael aptly calls it the House of No Ends. Not only because the building´s construction unfinished, but also because the stream of couchsurfers coming and going is undending. Sunlight, diffused by the gray clouds above Lima and then seeping into the house through plastic-bag patched windows, gives no hint as to the hour of day, and time, at times, seems almost meaningless in the House of No Ends. Most people, including me, show up expecting to stay only a few days at the most - a resolve initially reinforced upon first view of the living quarters - and end up staying for weeks. Chael showed up in May; he only moved on at the beginning of September.
Camilo himself is immensely interesting. His father was the second-ranking political functionary in Peru´s left-most political party in the 80s. The fight against the Shining Path during the same decade took much of the power away from the left, and Camilo´s father retired from politics and is now a professor at MIT. Camilo was a precocious child who finished high school when he was 13 and had his Bachelors´ degree in economics by the time he was 16. After receiving his Masters´ degree, he has been working as an advisor to a governmental agency charged with national development . He is now 27 and preparing to go to Holland for a Ph.D program. I have no idea, really, whether any of this is actually true. It´s what he tells people. I do know that he is very intelligent and has a rather insane amount of facts, history, and statistics that he can reel off indefinitely in support of his argument in whatever discussion is being held. He is sometimes very awkward, in the way very smart people are, and his primary source of entertainment, after reading economics papers and graphic novels, is to make exceptionally racist, sexist, and/or xenophobic comments to his international houseguests and watch them react with varying degrees of indignation. At times, he can be quite hard to get along with.
Everything I´d heard and read about Peru´s capital reinforced the idea that there would be little to hold me there for very long. The keywords one hears again and again from those who´ve been there are unappealing: gray; dirty; polluted; huge; and with only a sparse smattering of the cultural and historical landmarks that generally draw tourists to visit cities. Indeed, Lima´s chaotic foggy sprawl did not immediately impress me favorably, and my first few days, serving as my introduction to the city, the country, and the continent, were tiresome at best and occasionally disheartening. But with time came familiarity, and the chaos and grayness were gradually leavened with enough order and color to bring the city´s good qualities to the fore. My three or four days turned into twelve, before I finally left Lima, excited to see the rest of the country, but with a long list of places and things, as yet unexplored, that I hope to check off when I come back to the city in January. After an initial period of figuring out the basics of geography, of communication and transportation, and seeing the obligatory attractions - which are truly not all that attractive - I began increasingly to find elements of the city that did appeal to me. One of the great luxuries of having five months of travel ahead of me, with no particular schedule to follow, is that I will, with luck, be able to take enough time to establish more than just a passing impression of places and people. Find the artifice beneath the superfice and whatnot.
Lima feels vast. It stretches and bulges along the coastline without any real center to speak of. There are six or eight sectors (neighborhoods? cities? I don´t know what to call them) within the city, connected by six-lane highways bordered by the same autobody repair shops and KFCs and Gold´s Gyms as the highways of any other city. It generally takes an hour to get from one sector to another. There are taxis, but the public buses are equally as prevalent and much cheaper - although often jam packed and usually barreling heavily along the razor´s edge of a collision with any given stationary or moving object in the vicinity. The Centro, the oldest part of the city, is grandiose with its huge cathedral and government buildings, and avenues of baroque crumbling colonial mansions from the days of the viceroyalty. Miraflores is where the backpackers are told to go. There are hostels, movie theaters, and overpriced fast food restaurants. The guidebooks call it safe, but it just feels sterile. Barranco is called "bohemian" and is full of art galleries and cafes and parks and trees. Those are the parts of Lima that have tourists, and things for tourists to look at and buy. But the things I liked most about the city are not as readily pointed out as the tourist attractions, and it took me a while to notice them. The colors, first of all. The overall impression is inescapably gray, but there are intermittantly buildings, especially older ones, are painted in pastels and primary colors, with sharply contrasting trim that flourishes and flows along the borders of windows and doors. Windows that are protected by unique and fanciful wrought-iron bars, doors that are made of surprisingly thick, heavy wood but with delicately raised carvings of floral and faunal symmetries. Earthquakes, fires, bombs, and urban development have resulted in a constantly surprising mix between old and new styles of architecture, seventeenth century merchants´ brick houses with enclosed wooden balconies sharing a wall on one side with modern white plaster simplicities and on the other with hastily built decaying wooden storefronts. And for every style of house, seemingly, there is a matching subset of Limeño citizens. It is neither a young person´s city, nor an old person´s city. There are slick teenagers in shiny jackets and there are old ladies in bonnets and shawls. It is Peru´s capital and largest city, but the politicians and businessmen work one street over from the plumbers and bakers. There is a great deal of mass-production, brand-driven consumerism to be seen, but the folks who value handcrafted artisanry are equally as evident.
Another near-miss story involving a bus:
One day I went to the Centro, which for most tourists / employed people is not the center of Lima, but the far north. It was built next to the Rimac River, which nowadays marks the border between the "good" and "bad" sides of town. The difference is apparent: on one side, colonial houses shaded by well-kempt colonnades of trees; bright sparkly fountains; tourists and Limeños eating ice cream and shopping for electronics. On the other bank if the river, a hill covered with brightly-painted shacks of plywood and corrugated metal, like a smaller version of a favela in Rio de Janeiro, the open spaces filled in with cardboard and plastic shelters, the shells of old, cars, and piles of trash. You can see all of this from a hill, but in the Centro itself it is all out of sight.
I passed a pleasant afternoon, looking at old buildings, art galleries, and the people in the streets. I had a spaghetti dinner at a restaurant that is famous for spaghetti, as well as having been a hotspot in the 20s for Peruvian writers and artists. Then after dark I walked along the pedestrian streets lined with high-end stores, and bought an ice cream cone. A young couple, my age or younger, heard my accent when I ordered my ice cream and asked if I was American. I said I was. They said they were both college students and wanted to practice their English. We talked a bit and they invited me to have a Pisco sour with them at the closest bar at hand. I was suspicious of their friendliness, and kept my hand firmly over my wallet, but said yes, so we went inside and had a drink and they asked me questions in broken English about the U.S. and my plans in Peru. Then they left to meet some friends, and I left to find a bus back to the house.
Finding a bus is more of an art than a science at the best of times in Lima. There are many, many buses, but generally only one or two of them go where you want to go. Since it was late and I was not very familiar with that part of town, I asked people where I ought to stand to catch the right bus. Different people gave me different answers. An hour passed. Finally I saw a bus that listed among its destinations Miraflores. I wanted to go to Surco, but I knew for a fact I could easily take a bus from Miraflores to Surco. A lot of people got on the bus and I was right in the middle of them all, so I didn´t ask, as I usually do, to confirm the bus´ direction. The bus went along, and people got off. The bus crossed the Rimac and followed along the base of the hill with the mini-favela. I figured the bus would go a few blocks, make a right turn across another bridge, and head toward Miraflores. More people got off the bus. I thought, "Ha, what a good opportunity to see the part of the city everyone has warned me never to visit, from the safety of a moving bus." There were only about seven or eight other passengers by this time. The streetlights ended and the only illumination other than from cars´ headlights came from piles of trash burning on streetcorners, surrounded by small groups of huddled men. I decided I didn´t want to be on this bus, after all, but I also didn´t really want to get off just then. The pavement ended, and the bus bumped slowly over a dirt road for six or eight more blocks, to a giant parking lot filled with buses. The bus parked, and everyone got off it. I put my money in my shoe, which probably has never fooled anyone, put my sweatshirt hood up, my head down, and walked as purposefully as I could past growling dogs and staring men, back to the paved road and then to the streetlamps. There, I hailed a taxi (there are always taxis). I felt somewhat better once in the taxi, but it was a very beat-up taxi and, with the state of mind I was in, I thought the driver looked like the kind of guy who might kidnap passengers and rob them (I was slightly reassured by the scandalous amount of money he wanted in exchange for driving me across the river). After a toe-clenching (to keep my money safe) ride, though, he delivered me as promised back to Surco.
When I got to the house, Camilo was there watching a movie with some of his Peruvian friends. I told them about my night across the Rimac, and they assured me that, had I been a woman, or of lighter hair color, or just less lucky, bad things would have been guaranteed to have happened to me. Since then, I´ve been scrupulous to a T about asking buses´ destinations before boarding them.
Aside from that one incident, I never once felft in any real risk in Lima. It is a city, and people don´t go out of their way to be nice to you, but nobody, as far as I know, ever sought to cheat or rob me. Apparently two of Camilo´s guests from a few weeks before my arrival were robbed, close by the house in Surco, but they had to some extent brought it upon themselves by trying to buy marijuana. They found a guy who said, "sure, sure, give me ten minutes to fetch it and meet me in this dark alley over here." They waited ten minutes and walked down the alley, and were met by two men with big guns who took all their money, passports, and jewelry - but left them a bag of weed. One good reason not to smoke.
There is a reason the safe parts of the city are called that: they are full of police, and every business and public building of any significance has at least one security guard. Their ubiquity speaks to the awareness of a prevalent criminal intent that would go unchecked were they not there. But most of the police guarding doors do it while sitting down and reading the paper or listening to the radio. Surco, like some of the other safe neighborhoods, is surveilled at night by video cameras. There is a brightly-lit building, made completely of clear glass, that houses a huge bank of TV monitors, which are monitored intently by two police officers. To one side of this glass safety-box, operating solely by the light it gives off, there is a collection of about ten food carts. They sell mostly cheap things that can be eaten with your hands or from a stick. Potatoes, rice, hot dogs, liver, tripe, fried pieces of the chewy parts of chickens. On nights when we didn{t cook at the house, Camilo, Chael, and I would walk there to buy our dinners. At ten or eleven at night there would still be a throng of hungry neighborhood people, most of whom knew each other. They would buy their food and then go stand in front of the windows of the police surveillance-station, and eat and watch with interest the comings and goings around their neighborhood.
Which leads to two important topics: food, and TV.
TV is popular here. Every restaurant has a TV, and everyone in the restaurant sits facing it while they eat. According to Camilo, literacy has improved dramatically over the last decade, but people don´t much read for pleasure. Pirated movies are available on nearly every streetcorner, and soap operas and game shows are very popular. My favorite game show is called "Sing, If You Can!" Contestants, who are good singers, choose songs and then perform them onstage. The audience judges them and picks the best performer. The show´s main concept, though, is that while the performers are singing, they are subjected to various trying circumstances: being lowered up to their necks in ice water, for instance, or being pelted with tennis balls. Whoever manages to finish their song with the most grace and poise wins.
There is a huge used-book market in Lima, that operates in covered metal stalls that take up a couple city blocks. According to the internet, it is the largest collection of books in a single location, anywhere in South America. Each stall is packed, floor to roof, with books; packed to the point of rendering it impossible to differentiate any single book from the stack as a whole. Taking out any book from the stacks other than the one at the very top is out of the question. I bought a collection of essays by Mario Vargas Llosa, which was wrapped in plastic and was clearly used, but looked in good shape. But something, a bookworm I guess, got into it at the top of the spine and ate a tunnel through the pages. It´s still readable, and it has a great deal more character than most books.
Among so many books, the options for good reading are surprisingly limited. Since so few Peruvians read books, the market caters mostly to students. Reference books and textbooks, from elementary to college-level, make up the majority of the stalls´ stacked stock, along with flashcards, maps, and, most fascinating, ready-made science projects: painted foam-board volcanos, cardboard dinosaurs, popsicle-stick models mechanical processes, and so on.
As for food. The food in Lima was often good, sometimes not. It was always cheap. Away from Lima I have so far found meals to be more reliably good, and also much cheaper. In Lima, a meal of soup and a main plate of rice, potatoes, and chicken, with a piece of lettuce and a slice of tomato on top, would be just under $3; in smaller towns, it´s more like $1 or $1.50. I discard the lettuce and the tomato, as the most likely to lead to stomach ailments, but otherwise, I tend to eat whatever comes my way. Whatever comes my way, in the sense that I rarely know what I am asking for when I order. Some restaurants don´t even give you a choice. No digestive problems yet, though I don´t doubt that I´ll get sick sooner or later (D-Day, so to speak). I don´t eat raw things much or cooked things that have been sitting in the open for a long time if I can help it. I´ve eaten a great deal of street food, which my guidebook warns against, and find it well worth the risk (easy to say, of course, when I´m still parasite-free). The prevalence of cheap, tasty food is wonderful, although it is hard sometimes to find food that isn´t fried and served with a side of french fries. On days when the available Peruvian food options aren´t appealing, there are innumerable "Chifa" restaurants, which serve Peruvianized Chinese food. Chifa places are hit and miss, but when they are good they are excellent.
I generally eat one real meal a day, alternating between dinners and late lunches, and filling in the gaps with a daily Sol´s worth (about 40 cents) of bread - which at most bakeries is ten palm-sized airy white crusty loaves - which I eat with honey or jam. Pastries look incredible, but have thus far been a complete disappointment. They all taste stale and dry.
Food markets, outdoors or under cover, are extremely stimulating and a wondrous feast for the senses. Away from Lima, every place has a once- or twice-weekly market, and farmers, shephards, fisherfolk and artesans come from the surrounding area to sell. There are many constants: huge burlap sacks full of dozens of varieties of potatoes, carrots, and corns; skinless chickens hanging from hooks by their necks and disembowelled hairless pigs splayed across countertops; and woven blankets and knitted hats and carved and painted gourds. But each time I´ve gone I´ve found new things, too. Especially in the Mantaro Valley, where I´ve been for the last few days, Peru´s agricultural heartland, where there are easily twenty kinds of fruits and vegetables that I´ve never seen or heard the names of before, as well as dead birds and animals I cannot identify. Some of them look delicious. Others are questionable. All of them must be tasted.
Sometimes this indecisiveness feels like a bad thing. It can be frustrating to try to make the most of where I am, while the question looms of where I ought next to be. For the most part (again, it´s early days), though, it offers a welcome challenge and a sense of adventure at every turn. Which, after all, is a big reason why I´m here at all. The unexpected, the chance, the detour may not always be serendipitous but I can at least have a better likelihood of appreciating them if they are not just obstructions in a pre-set charted course. I´m not traveling to "find myself;" that will inevitably work itself (myself) out, and doesn´t interest me much. What I do enjoy is "finding myself in new situations and then seeing what happens." As long as I keep that mindset, which generally I do, it´s not too hard to find the serendipity in any unlooked-for occcurrence, and to make the most of it as such.
To wit: my time, so far, since leaving Eugene.
The train ride from Eugene to LA was enjoyable at first, then tedious. I asked the man sitting next to me what I ought to do in LA, for my first visit, with only a day to do it in. He said Disneyland. I went to sit in the observation car. The next day, in some city with John Steinbeck connotations, I forget which, the train stopped to pick up passengers. All the smokers on board got off to smoke, and I got off to use the ATM and buy a sandwich from inside the station. While I was there, the train left. I had my smaller bag with my passport and book and camera in it, but my other bag was still going to LA. I asked the ticket-counter-man what would be the next best way to Los Angeles; he gave me a ticket for an Amtrak bus - at no cost, which was very nice of him - to Santa Barbara, and a transfer ticket for another bus to LA. I got on the bus okay, and as it bowled down the vast Californian freeway, I tried to figure out who to call to ask that my bag be saved for me until I arrived at Union Station. Then we pulled off the freeway to a bus stop in some small town, and across the street, at the train station, I saw my train. The bus had been going fast enough to make up for the train´s head start. I hopped off the bus, onto the train, checked to make sure my luggage was alright, and off we went.
This is not the last, but rather the first of many stories to come about bad-timing-gone-good in the world of transportation.
After spending the night in a plaza in front of a condo/mall in Korea Town, I opted to go the J. Paul Getty Museum instead of Disneyland. Looked at impressionist stuff, mostly. Then I flew to Lima.
My friend Chael met me at the Lima airport. He was a few minutes late because it took him a while to find the right bus to take him to the airport and, once he had, it collided with a taxi and everyone had to switch buses while the two drivers argued over whose fault it was. The last time I had seen Chael, he was about to graduate from the U of O. Since then, he has spent two years on a south-bound trajectory, hitchhiking, camping and couchsurfing, mostly by himself, learning Spanish as he went along. His presence in Peru and his stories about his experiences were a strong factor in my choosing to come here, but I don´t know if I can, or if I want to, follow his model of travel as such. In less than three weeks, I think I´ve already taken more inter-city buses (two) and stayed in more hotels (three) than he has in two years.
Chael´s travels have changed him, but mostly into a more well-defined version of himself. He is gaunt, shaggy, and his clothes are worn and torn and frayed and faded. But he walks with a confidence of purpose that is new, and his congeniality and sense of humor are patina´d (not the word I´m looking for, but use your imagination) by an initial impression of reserved self-reliance.
He took me to Camilo´s house, which was his house too, and which would be my house as well. Camilo´s house, which deserves to be the subject of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez-esque Magical Realist novel. It is in a neighborhood in the eastern part of Lima, called Surco. Surco is not generally frequented by tourists, not because there is anything wrong with it, there´s just not much to see besides people living their daily lives. It is a warren of quiet (by Lima´s standards) streets without names, hedged by two-story buildings, the top floors residential and the ground level chiefly commercial, housing restaurants, small shops, and mechanics´ and plumbers´ and upholsterers´ workshops. Our house in question looks abandoned, and, in fact, was. Camilo borrowed it, half-built, and only finished the job to the extent of making the place habitable. Its floors are concrete, its walls a patchwork of plaster and bare brick. There is water, a gas burner, and a mini-fridge that smells to high heaven when opened. Each room in the house is devoid of furniture save for a mattress. None of it looks appealing in the least. Camilo tells his guests with pride that it is far below the standard of living of any house in the neighborhood. He pays some small rent, and he welcomes any and all travelers to stay as long as they like, rent-free. Rent: free. There lies the house´s first saving grace. As the initial distaste for the cold and the dirt wears off, other redeeming qualities become apparent.
There have been as many as fourteen people at the house at once; during my stay, there were only four, and then five. Chael aptly calls it the House of No Ends. Not only because the building´s construction unfinished, but also because the stream of couchsurfers coming and going is undending. Sunlight, diffused by the gray clouds above Lima and then seeping into the house through plastic-bag patched windows, gives no hint as to the hour of day, and time, at times, seems almost meaningless in the House of No Ends. Most people, including me, show up expecting to stay only a few days at the most - a resolve initially reinforced upon first view of the living quarters - and end up staying for weeks. Chael showed up in May; he only moved on at the beginning of September.
Camilo himself is immensely interesting. His father was the second-ranking political functionary in Peru´s left-most political party in the 80s. The fight against the Shining Path during the same decade took much of the power away from the left, and Camilo´s father retired from politics and is now a professor at MIT. Camilo was a precocious child who finished high school when he was 13 and had his Bachelors´ degree in economics by the time he was 16. After receiving his Masters´ degree, he has been working as an advisor to a governmental agency charged with national development . He is now 27 and preparing to go to Holland for a Ph.D program. I have no idea, really, whether any of this is actually true. It´s what he tells people. I do know that he is very intelligent and has a rather insane amount of facts, history, and statistics that he can reel off indefinitely in support of his argument in whatever discussion is being held. He is sometimes very awkward, in the way very smart people are, and his primary source of entertainment, after reading economics papers and graphic novels, is to make exceptionally racist, sexist, and/or xenophobic comments to his international houseguests and watch them react with varying degrees of indignation. At times, he can be quite hard to get along with.
Everything I´d heard and read about Peru´s capital reinforced the idea that there would be little to hold me there for very long. The keywords one hears again and again from those who´ve been there are unappealing: gray; dirty; polluted; huge; and with only a sparse smattering of the cultural and historical landmarks that generally draw tourists to visit cities. Indeed, Lima´s chaotic foggy sprawl did not immediately impress me favorably, and my first few days, serving as my introduction to the city, the country, and the continent, were tiresome at best and occasionally disheartening. But with time came familiarity, and the chaos and grayness were gradually leavened with enough order and color to bring the city´s good qualities to the fore. My three or four days turned into twelve, before I finally left Lima, excited to see the rest of the country, but with a long list of places and things, as yet unexplored, that I hope to check off when I come back to the city in January. After an initial period of figuring out the basics of geography, of communication and transportation, and seeing the obligatory attractions - which are truly not all that attractive - I began increasingly to find elements of the city that did appeal to me. One of the great luxuries of having five months of travel ahead of me, with no particular schedule to follow, is that I will, with luck, be able to take enough time to establish more than just a passing impression of places and people. Find the artifice beneath the superfice and whatnot.
Lima feels vast. It stretches and bulges along the coastline without any real center to speak of. There are six or eight sectors (neighborhoods? cities? I don´t know what to call them) within the city, connected by six-lane highways bordered by the same autobody repair shops and KFCs and Gold´s Gyms as the highways of any other city. It generally takes an hour to get from one sector to another. There are taxis, but the public buses are equally as prevalent and much cheaper - although often jam packed and usually barreling heavily along the razor´s edge of a collision with any given stationary or moving object in the vicinity. The Centro, the oldest part of the city, is grandiose with its huge cathedral and government buildings, and avenues of baroque crumbling colonial mansions from the days of the viceroyalty. Miraflores is where the backpackers are told to go. There are hostels, movie theaters, and overpriced fast food restaurants. The guidebooks call it safe, but it just feels sterile. Barranco is called "bohemian" and is full of art galleries and cafes and parks and trees. Those are the parts of Lima that have tourists, and things for tourists to look at and buy. But the things I liked most about the city are not as readily pointed out as the tourist attractions, and it took me a while to notice them. The colors, first of all. The overall impression is inescapably gray, but there are intermittantly buildings, especially older ones, are painted in pastels and primary colors, with sharply contrasting trim that flourishes and flows along the borders of windows and doors. Windows that are protected by unique and fanciful wrought-iron bars, doors that are made of surprisingly thick, heavy wood but with delicately raised carvings of floral and faunal symmetries. Earthquakes, fires, bombs, and urban development have resulted in a constantly surprising mix between old and new styles of architecture, seventeenth century merchants´ brick houses with enclosed wooden balconies sharing a wall on one side with modern white plaster simplicities and on the other with hastily built decaying wooden storefronts. And for every style of house, seemingly, there is a matching subset of Limeño citizens. It is neither a young person´s city, nor an old person´s city. There are slick teenagers in shiny jackets and there are old ladies in bonnets and shawls. It is Peru´s capital and largest city, but the politicians and businessmen work one street over from the plumbers and bakers. There is a great deal of mass-production, brand-driven consumerism to be seen, but the folks who value handcrafted artisanry are equally as evident.
Another near-miss story involving a bus:
One day I went to the Centro, which for most tourists / employed people is not the center of Lima, but the far north. It was built next to the Rimac River, which nowadays marks the border between the "good" and "bad" sides of town. The difference is apparent: on one side, colonial houses shaded by well-kempt colonnades of trees; bright sparkly fountains; tourists and Limeños eating ice cream and shopping for electronics. On the other bank if the river, a hill covered with brightly-painted shacks of plywood and corrugated metal, like a smaller version of a favela in Rio de Janeiro, the open spaces filled in with cardboard and plastic shelters, the shells of old, cars, and piles of trash. You can see all of this from a hill, but in the Centro itself it is all out of sight.
I passed a pleasant afternoon, looking at old buildings, art galleries, and the people in the streets. I had a spaghetti dinner at a restaurant that is famous for spaghetti, as well as having been a hotspot in the 20s for Peruvian writers and artists. Then after dark I walked along the pedestrian streets lined with high-end stores, and bought an ice cream cone. A young couple, my age or younger, heard my accent when I ordered my ice cream and asked if I was American. I said I was. They said they were both college students and wanted to practice their English. We talked a bit and they invited me to have a Pisco sour with them at the closest bar at hand. I was suspicious of their friendliness, and kept my hand firmly over my wallet, but said yes, so we went inside and had a drink and they asked me questions in broken English about the U.S. and my plans in Peru. Then they left to meet some friends, and I left to find a bus back to the house.
Finding a bus is more of an art than a science at the best of times in Lima. There are many, many buses, but generally only one or two of them go where you want to go. Since it was late and I was not very familiar with that part of town, I asked people where I ought to stand to catch the right bus. Different people gave me different answers. An hour passed. Finally I saw a bus that listed among its destinations Miraflores. I wanted to go to Surco, but I knew for a fact I could easily take a bus from Miraflores to Surco. A lot of people got on the bus and I was right in the middle of them all, so I didn´t ask, as I usually do, to confirm the bus´ direction. The bus went along, and people got off. The bus crossed the Rimac and followed along the base of the hill with the mini-favela. I figured the bus would go a few blocks, make a right turn across another bridge, and head toward Miraflores. More people got off the bus. I thought, "Ha, what a good opportunity to see the part of the city everyone has warned me never to visit, from the safety of a moving bus." There were only about seven or eight other passengers by this time. The streetlights ended and the only illumination other than from cars´ headlights came from piles of trash burning on streetcorners, surrounded by small groups of huddled men. I decided I didn´t want to be on this bus, after all, but I also didn´t really want to get off just then. The pavement ended, and the bus bumped slowly over a dirt road for six or eight more blocks, to a giant parking lot filled with buses. The bus parked, and everyone got off it. I put my money in my shoe, which probably has never fooled anyone, put my sweatshirt hood up, my head down, and walked as purposefully as I could past growling dogs and staring men, back to the paved road and then to the streetlamps. There, I hailed a taxi (there are always taxis). I felt somewhat better once in the taxi, but it was a very beat-up taxi and, with the state of mind I was in, I thought the driver looked like the kind of guy who might kidnap passengers and rob them (I was slightly reassured by the scandalous amount of money he wanted in exchange for driving me across the river). After a toe-clenching (to keep my money safe) ride, though, he delivered me as promised back to Surco.
When I got to the house, Camilo was there watching a movie with some of his Peruvian friends. I told them about my night across the Rimac, and they assured me that, had I been a woman, or of lighter hair color, or just less lucky, bad things would have been guaranteed to have happened to me. Since then, I´ve been scrupulous to a T about asking buses´ destinations before boarding them.
Aside from that one incident, I never once felft in any real risk in Lima. It is a city, and people don´t go out of their way to be nice to you, but nobody, as far as I know, ever sought to cheat or rob me. Apparently two of Camilo´s guests from a few weeks before my arrival were robbed, close by the house in Surco, but they had to some extent brought it upon themselves by trying to buy marijuana. They found a guy who said, "sure, sure, give me ten minutes to fetch it and meet me in this dark alley over here." They waited ten minutes and walked down the alley, and were met by two men with big guns who took all their money, passports, and jewelry - but left them a bag of weed. One good reason not to smoke.
There is a reason the safe parts of the city are called that: they are full of police, and every business and public building of any significance has at least one security guard. Their ubiquity speaks to the awareness of a prevalent criminal intent that would go unchecked were they not there. But most of the police guarding doors do it while sitting down and reading the paper or listening to the radio. Surco, like some of the other safe neighborhoods, is surveilled at night by video cameras. There is a brightly-lit building, made completely of clear glass, that houses a huge bank of TV monitors, which are monitored intently by two police officers. To one side of this glass safety-box, operating solely by the light it gives off, there is a collection of about ten food carts. They sell mostly cheap things that can be eaten with your hands or from a stick. Potatoes, rice, hot dogs, liver, tripe, fried pieces of the chewy parts of chickens. On nights when we didn{t cook at the house, Camilo, Chael, and I would walk there to buy our dinners. At ten or eleven at night there would still be a throng of hungry neighborhood people, most of whom knew each other. They would buy their food and then go stand in front of the windows of the police surveillance-station, and eat and watch with interest the comings and goings around their neighborhood.
Which leads to two important topics: food, and TV.
TV is popular here. Every restaurant has a TV, and everyone in the restaurant sits facing it while they eat. According to Camilo, literacy has improved dramatically over the last decade, but people don´t much read for pleasure. Pirated movies are available on nearly every streetcorner, and soap operas and game shows are very popular. My favorite game show is called "Sing, If You Can!" Contestants, who are good singers, choose songs and then perform them onstage. The audience judges them and picks the best performer. The show´s main concept, though, is that while the performers are singing, they are subjected to various trying circumstances: being lowered up to their necks in ice water, for instance, or being pelted with tennis balls. Whoever manages to finish their song with the most grace and poise wins.
There is a huge used-book market in Lima, that operates in covered metal stalls that take up a couple city blocks. According to the internet, it is the largest collection of books in a single location, anywhere in South America. Each stall is packed, floor to roof, with books; packed to the point of rendering it impossible to differentiate any single book from the stack as a whole. Taking out any book from the stacks other than the one at the very top is out of the question. I bought a collection of essays by Mario Vargas Llosa, which was wrapped in plastic and was clearly used, but looked in good shape. But something, a bookworm I guess, got into it at the top of the spine and ate a tunnel through the pages. It´s still readable, and it has a great deal more character than most books.
Among so many books, the options for good reading are surprisingly limited. Since so few Peruvians read books, the market caters mostly to students. Reference books and textbooks, from elementary to college-level, make up the majority of the stalls´ stacked stock, along with flashcards, maps, and, most fascinating, ready-made science projects: painted foam-board volcanos, cardboard dinosaurs, popsicle-stick models mechanical processes, and so on.
As for food. The food in Lima was often good, sometimes not. It was always cheap. Away from Lima I have so far found meals to be more reliably good, and also much cheaper. In Lima, a meal of soup and a main plate of rice, potatoes, and chicken, with a piece of lettuce and a slice of tomato on top, would be just under $3; in smaller towns, it´s more like $1 or $1.50. I discard the lettuce and the tomato, as the most likely to lead to stomach ailments, but otherwise, I tend to eat whatever comes my way. Whatever comes my way, in the sense that I rarely know what I am asking for when I order. Some restaurants don´t even give you a choice. No digestive problems yet, though I don´t doubt that I´ll get sick sooner or later (D-Day, so to speak). I don´t eat raw things much or cooked things that have been sitting in the open for a long time if I can help it. I´ve eaten a great deal of street food, which my guidebook warns against, and find it well worth the risk (easy to say, of course, when I´m still parasite-free). The prevalence of cheap, tasty food is wonderful, although it is hard sometimes to find food that isn´t fried and served with a side of french fries. On days when the available Peruvian food options aren´t appealing, there are innumerable "Chifa" restaurants, which serve Peruvianized Chinese food. Chifa places are hit and miss, but when they are good they are excellent.
I generally eat one real meal a day, alternating between dinners and late lunches, and filling in the gaps with a daily Sol´s worth (about 40 cents) of bread - which at most bakeries is ten palm-sized airy white crusty loaves - which I eat with honey or jam. Pastries look incredible, but have thus far been a complete disappointment. They all taste stale and dry.
Food markets, outdoors or under cover, are extremely stimulating and a wondrous feast for the senses. Away from Lima, every place has a once- or twice-weekly market, and farmers, shephards, fisherfolk and artesans come from the surrounding area to sell. There are many constants: huge burlap sacks full of dozens of varieties of potatoes, carrots, and corns; skinless chickens hanging from hooks by their necks and disembowelled hairless pigs splayed across countertops; and woven blankets and knitted hats and carved and painted gourds. But each time I´ve gone I´ve found new things, too. Especially in the Mantaro Valley, where I´ve been for the last few days, Peru´s agricultural heartland, where there are easily twenty kinds of fruits and vegetables that I´ve never seen or heard the names of before, as well as dead birds and animals I cannot identify. Some of them look delicious. Others are questionable. All of them must be tasted.
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