Heartfelt Translation

the journey through Peru continues

Ian Thomas

In Puno, bus drivers’ redundant chorus heralds the bumpy road to Arequipa

Greetings, all…

The trip to Taquile Island was wretched indeed, lumpy gray and rainy, and the captain performed another exquisite T-bone approach to the dock, killing the engine and letting the vessel drift in and be manhandled alongside. We disembarked and then had another uphill climb to get to the main square where we regrouped to make for the restaurant and lunch.

Lunch was an odd conscripted affair, leaving little choice of dishes and less choice of place to eat... all the tour groups have deals with the local spots here. They rotate through the restaurants, spreading the money around, but leaving the tourists themselves paying twice the price we would had we had a choice of where to go. Kate and I split a plate and defeat the system.

After lunch, we hike 500 steps, almost straight down to the water on the other side of the island. There we catch the boat, rafted with others some seven deep, and begin a slow motion race back to Puno. Hour later we are going through the marshes and past the reed islands again. Not too much longer and we are back alongside and disembarking in downtown Puno. Kate and I indulge in some pizza and movies on HBO at the hotel.

The next day we are rousted out of the room at 11:00, an hour earlier than we had arranged for with the night man at the desk. Another great display of communication. We wander the streets for a bit before setting up camp in a cafe for mate´ and lunch for an hour or two until it was time to catch the bus. We go back to the hotel, grab our luggage and get a taxi. We get to the bus station about an hour before departure time. We are looking to get to Arequipa, and foolishly we let our SAS group buy the tickets for us ahead of time. Never again will we do this. They doubled the price on us, and there is no need to buy a ticket that far in advance.

Windows up high communicate with the room next door, and due to some strange phenomenon seem to amplify the sound in either room to the other. Sniffles and coughs blare out of the darkness.

Our destination is Arequipa and the Colca canyon, our last prearranged tour, for this trip and probably all future ones I will take. I have learned that, save for the Inca trail, SAS is just like any other huckster down here, and they will take your money and sign you up with someone else. You usually have no idea the actual name of the actual company taking you out wherever. There are contracts subcontracting contracts... ridiculous. It would seem you could do much better, have more control and save money by figuring most tours out on the ground, in country.

So we sit in the Puno bus station waiting. Our bags checked in and surrounded by three halls of concrete shooting off of a circular center area. Down each hall are food concessions, handcraft tourist trap stores and bus companies selling tickets. The halls are drafty and vacuous, large echo chambers. Every bus agent is yelling periodically, every minute or two. Arequipa is the next wave of buses leaving so we sit in the middle of a cacophony of people shouting, overlapping and staccato rhythms “are-QUIP-paaaaaa, arre-QUIP-aaaa, are -quipa quipa quipa quipaaaaaaaaa!!!!¨ They shout next to each other over each other, in concert with competitors, alternating with competition and partners alike. No matter which wing we go on... that is all we hear.... for an hour. The bus station is concrete and drafty, with open doors and breezes running through. It is easily 20 degrees cooler inside than outside. So we are cold to boot. Mercifully 15:00 comes and we head out to board.

Boarding is interesting as all passengers and the inside of the bus are videotaped. We are asked for passports and tickets as we get on and swept with a metal detector. The metal detector regularly goes off yet no searches are made. Instead the guy sweeping us just tries to guess what it is that is setting off the alarm. “Keys? Change?” He asks. The leather man and pocket knives we are carrying that we hurriedly stuffed into the bottom of our day bags need not have been stuffed down so far.

The bus ride started off promising, as there was a TV and a movie promised, plus food included. However, reality proved to be not quite up to the advertising. Food was a muffin and a small bottle of mango juice. The DVD player they used seemed to be a household model, with no accommodation made for the rigors of the road. The movie would play for 20 minutes or so and then blank out and stop as we went over a rough patch. The attendant would then come up, take out the movie, wipe the back of it and restart, taking a random guess at where it had left off. The third time it happened with the same disc, she switches out the disc. And it stops again and again... and then another disc... and then again it stops. And then no more movies...

We pass back thru Juliana, as if we didn’t get a good look at it the first time and then on into the night and to Arequipa. We arrive around 20:30 or so and manage to get to the hostel without haggling with a cabbie too much. We pay only one sole over the suggested rate and only have to listen to him pitch other hostels once or twice.

Alright, so once in Arequipa we get to deal with our hostel not remembering who exactly we are or what we reserved and how much we reserved for. But by 22:00 or so we get it figured and pass out. The room is small and stuffy, only about two feet wider and 3 feet longer than the bed. The wall without the door or the bathroom on it has windows up high that communicate with the room next door, and for some strange phenomenon seem to amplify the sound in either room to the other. Sniffles and coughs blare out of the darkness. Sometime after midnight we are treated to loud and drunken reminiscing of our neighbor’s nightly activities. Great fun. Good practice for Spanish.

The next morning we head and catch up with our subcontracted tour agency to check in. Everything seems cleared and ready to go, though once we actually take a tally on what meals are included and which ones are not, the deal loses its luster a bit. Seems only one breakfast, at the hotel in Colca, is included. So be it.

We head into the Plaza de Armas of Arequipa to take in the sites. The churches are huge, monolithic and white, made out the volcanic stone so abundant around here. The weather is hot and sunny, a surprising change from the last couple of weeks. We are approached by a gentleman with a briefcase and a piece of paper. On the paper are a couple paragraphs he says he is trying to translate from French to Spanish via English, or something to that effect. Kate responds and starts to help him out as I scan our perimeter for his accomplice, sure that someone is just waiting for us to be distracted so they can swoop and snatch the bags. No skulking lurker appears, so I start to pay attention to what is being translated. It is a seemingly non-sensical paragraph dealing with naked people in cages and men in iron masks... maybe something to do with the Inquisiton, but the English version I see has few sentences that are coherent in any sense. Nonetheless, he has a couple words he is stuck on. We helped him the best we could and he put the paper away in his briefcase. As he opens the case, we see laminated pictures of the very churches and buildings we are surrounded by, with this guy and various tourist-looking folk posing for the shots.

He introduces himself as Freddy, an out of work teacher looking to give us a tour for free just to help with his English. We talk to him a bit more, he seems genuine and bonafide, so we take him up on the deal. He takes us around to two churches, a monastery turned into a market, and to the balcony of an art school or something. He tells us of the history of the town: The volcanoes and the earthquakes destroying churches. Seems to be a lot of that down here he also tells us, and it is bore out through the tour that all the churches are free in Arequipa, except the convent, for tourists. Quite the opposite of Cusco. We a have a fine time of it with Freddy and as we go to part ways, he makes a small modest and humble pitch for a tip. We like him a lot, so we drop a 10 sole note on him, for which he seems genuinely surprised and thankful.

The rest of the day we idle around town, meeting a British fellow and an Australian girl, a couple traveling together who ask us about the best way to tour Colca Canyon. We tell them about what we are doing and they seem pretty keen on doing something like that. We part ways exchanging hopes to see them on the way or in the canyon the next day. Chet and Kelly are the first travelers we have met since the Inca trail that seem savvy and interesting.

Out of time now, more later, the canyon and condors and all that...

Take care,

—Ian