The Falafel Adventure

Group Email- 07/08

My Dear Friends,

I have now spent two days in Lima, in a hostel with the same name as the one I loved to hate in Cusco. Other than trying to get over a very stubborn cold, packing, unpacking, and re-packing my backpack, I have done little except wander around the gray-cloaked coastal city, and been pleasantly surprised at every turn. I had heard so many negative assessments of Lima before getting here I was quite prepared to hate it and cloister myself for four days in the hostel, as others I have spoken to have done, but this really is a fascinating place to explore (with caution, of course).

The area I am staying is called Barranco, which is said to be the "bohemian district" though I think the person who dubbed it this misunderstood the term bohemian. Having walked all over this area, the wealthier neighbouring Miraflores, and being lost for some time in central Lima (you don´t want to know), it seems to me great care was taken in designing each neighbourhood. There are gardens everywhere, statues and brightly coloured (mostly purple and red) flowering plants creeping down from trees and up stone walls. The houses are in many colours, shapes, and carved with great detail and delicacy. Unfortunately, once built there was not the money to maintain them properly, and they have begun to crumble dramatically, being slowly devoured by ancient-looking plants. The rich areas, by contrast, are all neat and pristine and almost spooky in their whiteness.

But I should not even be in Lima- I have a saga to complete...

The group that had travelled with my from Buenos Aires to Cusco celebrated their last day with a contest to see who could locate the most hideous Peruvian souvenir for under 5 soles, and then exchanged them over dinner. I brought a pen, decorated with (what could only be described as) an alien bug, complete with antenna, with Cusco written across the bottom. I did not win. One of the Barbies gave me a pen key chain, for my "writing hobby", so I could "not miss a moment". I was almost touched.

The next morning the others left for Lima, to catch various flights to various locations over the next few days. I moved my stuff downtown to a hostel called The Point, which was noisy, overcrowded, and generally cheerful. On the first night (where i turned out to be the only girl in a "mixed" dorm) a very chatty Australian named Johnny asked to borrow my journal to do lines of cocaine off of-- this was by far the most surprising moment of the whole trip. The next morning I sat at the bar (breakfast is in the bar) and ate fruit salad with a Canadian photographer, travelling with two of his friends, more or less under the assumption of making a travel documentary. S. was excellent company, and we spent the rest of the day wandering around the city going to art galleries.

The three of them seemed to have very little in common, except that they had all been waiters in the same restaurant: S. was the typical All Canadian (please don't ask me what this means), E. was a suave Asian lady's man, and D. would be an escapee from a rock band, except that he's still in it (all with fabulous back stories, of course, such as D.'s missionary parents and almost becoming a priest...). Yes they were an eclectic mixture, and with me along they were even more so. They were planning to leave the next day for Puno and Lake Titicaca, but on a spur of the moment search for falafels D. stopped in a travel agent and booked a trip to the rainforest reserve, Manu, and they needed a fourth "You in?" So off we went.
We were to be picked up at The Point at 7 the next morning, but there was some unexplained trouble with the bus, and our guide, who's name turned out to be Ceasar, though for the whole length of the trip we thought it might be Cecil, said we would have to wait a while. "Waiting a while" is something one becomes very accustomed to, when travelling. Finally Ceasar says we are to take a cab to our bus (I know better than to ask questions), but by then E. had wandered off to buy tamales for breakfast (E. is skinny as a reed and never stops eating), and by the time he gets back D. is so angry S. and I must sit between them in the cab to prevent violence.

Our driver is Rufio, a very large and cheerful man, who sweats alarmingly, and listens to the same Bob Marley tape from the time we set out to when we arrive at our "jungle lodge" well after dark. The drive is phenomenal, and very dusty. We start off through the Sacred Valley, on a route similar to that we took on the way to the Lares Trek. We stop at the top of a hill because one of the boxes of provisions (tarped and tied down in a way that could not be described, or repeated) has fallen off the roof. Every time we stop D. is filming, I am taking pictures, S. is trying to suggest a more efficient way of doing things, and E. is smoking thoughtfully. Somehow we get back on the road again.
Lunch is in a local restaurant in a small town, and three of the four of us do not eat, as S., D. and I are all vegetarians, and D. has convinced us the soup is made with chicken stock. He is probably right. We take a short tour of the town to kill time (because Rosio, our cook, has vanished) and watch as school lets out and hoards of children come running (popsicles in hand) and go wading in the fountain.

Ceasar keeps turning around in his seat, fiddling with a large necklace he tells me he has made himself, saying "It is about four more hours more, then three more hours more", but I have completely lost track of time. The roads are so dusty we are all choking (and D. and I clutching our inhalers) in the van. S. tries to convince Ceasar to stop the air conditioning from drawing in air from outside, but Ceasar does not believe him.
We reach the Cloud Forest, which is exactly that, a forest in the clouds, and without doubt one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The fog is so thick we can barely see out our windows, and we blow out our first tire, splashing through one of the many streams that run across the road (more accurately where the road runs across the many streams). We drive up, we drive down, we drive up, we get out and walk along a road where the vegetation is so brilliantly green it hurts to look at it. We see a monkey, sitting in the top of a tree, looking down at us curiously. We see several of Peru's national bird, a ruby red creature called the cock-of-the-rock. We blow out another tire.
It is fully dark by the time we stop for the night, in a town framed on all sides by the jungle. I walk up and down the "street" three times, and it take 15 minutes. The showers are cold, but even at night the air is too warm for anything else. I drink tea and sit thinking how strange it is we have all ended up here; I look across at the others, who are thinking the same thing.
The next morning we start early, and leave more or less on time (though E. has gone to the market to buy something). The trees along the road thicken, and it gets very hot, inside and out, without our noticing. I am aware of nothing else until around lunch time, when we stop suddenly on the banks of a river, and Ceasar tells us the road has been flooded. He vanishes (rather conveniently), supposedly to make a phone call, and the guys and I go wading through the water which is very cold and surprisingly fast, watching as three large trucks try to extract another vehicle from the mud. Still, Rufio decides to make a try for it, and it takes all of us (and the cook) to push the van back up the stony beach. Eventually we hire another boat to take us the three hours down the river to where our boat is waiting. We were all quite giddy as the motor belched into life, the boat bobbed and the breeze cleared a little of the dust from our eyes. D. couldn't bear to turn his camera off until the battery died, E. fell asleep (how?) on the floor and S. took about 300 pictures of snowy egrets. I was doing my best to embody the expression ¨Drinking it in¨, not quite believing I was with three near strangers on a boat in the Amazon Basin, and couldn't be happier.
The next two nights were spent at a lodge built on a small clearing at the top of a hill. The cabins were built on long wooden platforms between the trees, and the walls were made of netting so we could see out as long as there was light, and in the dark the candles would project giant waving shapes over our heads. The other tenant at the lodge was a large, tick-ridden tapier named Pauncho, who kept turning up outside our door, hoping for a treat.
One of the most striking things about the jungle is how loud it is. You always expect when leaving the bustling city, leaving the cars and music (and rowdy drunk people singing Bob Marley, or Don´t Look Back In Anger, apparently the official song of The Point) that your environment will be still and peaceful, but this could not be farther from the truth. The rain forest is bursting with life, birds and bugs and bigger things, things you can´t see but feel sure can see you, all of which have their own sound and smell and energy. The air is thick and heavy, and for a long time I lie back under my mosquito net and try to isolate the whirs, whistles, and whines of this intricate soundscape- but I lose count.
We arrive at the campsite around 4:30, and almost immediately (after being fitted with large rubber boots) set out into the bush, which is no more than six steps from our door. We are walking to the clay lick, where all the parrots go after dark, but every few minutes we stop and Ceasar points out some other plant or creature that we are not to touch. There are lots of tarantulas, scorpions, and ¨"bullet ants"- who´s bite hurts for two days or more. Now I am not afraid of bugs, or snakes, or the dark, which quickly settles all around us, but bullet ants (around the size of your pinky) are far from friendly looking, and Caesar takes such care in describing to us the pain of their bite I am eager to move on.
It is too dark to see anything now, and each time we cross one of the rotting planks that serve as a bridge between --what and what? we can´t see-- I am thinking of nothing but not looking scared in front of the guys. A few seconds later there is a shriek behind me, and D. (who has been startled by a moth) confesses he hates bugs and snakes and the dark (S. and I wonder what he thought he would find in the jungle), and we all turn back to prevent him plunging blindly into the forest by himself. He is obviously terribly embarrassed, and I want to tell him it´s alright -I´m afraid of revolving doors- but I sense this is the wrong moment.

Late that night we stumble down the stairs to the beach to watch the endless stream of shooting stars (and drink -varying amounts of- rum and inca kola, Peru Libre?). I swear I have never seen stars so bright, so close, so infinite. I am grateful for everything, this night.
The next day we (E., S. and I, D. thinks better of it) go hiking again, following Ceasar and the slice of his machete through the breathtaking trees, which are only slightly less oppressive in the light. At night we have a bonfire on the beach, and go searching for Cayman (similar to crocodiles). Ceasar finds a young one and pulls it out of the water (gently, at the plea of the three vegetarians) and we all run our hands over it´s skin and then let it go again.

The next day we spend 16 hours in transit, by boat and by bus. We blow out two more tires, and find ourselves back in Cusco after dark. The boys stayed one more day in the city, and then left for Puno as previously planned. I was supposed to go and meet them in Arequipa, but predictably enough their "plans" changed, and I lost track of them. I realize this may not sound like much in the re-telling, but these few days were some of the most magical of my life (so far!), and there is not a thing about them that I would change. If I could just be sure I did not dream the whole thing... but that´s what pictures are for.
Now, back to the present... I am leaving Lima tomorrow at midnight, arriving back in Canada early afternoon on the 9th. Speaking of dreaming! Not really sure how I feel about being back, but I know I will need some time to convince myself that I am a student again. I guess this will be my last update for the time being (expect more next summer), but I will continue to write and post pictures to the blog, so be sure and check in, from time to time. Thank you all for travelling with me.

Keep dreaming.

N.

--
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Yogi Berra