Our plane was set to take off at ten am Saturday. At seven pm on Friday I got the email that
our flights were canceled due to weather in Newark, our connecting city. After coming up with some pretty creative (if
I do say so myself) obscenities with which to describe the city of Newark and
its mother, the camel it rode in on and its fine inhabitants, I did what every
well seasoned traveler loathes: I called
the airline.
Nothing is more frustrating than calling an airline not long
after a mass cancelation. Hold times are
simply ludicrous (I was on hold for an hour and a half, I wish I was
exaggerating here), customer service reps are tired, fed up, bitchy and have
English skills that can only be described as “sketchy”, and solutions to your
problem are few, far between, unsatisfactory and typically expensive. Luckily, I got through to a relatively
helpful and empathetic Indian customer service rep that spoke and understood
English fluently (I know he was Indian because he told me, don’t make me block
you for posting accusatory comments). However,
options were at a minimum. All flights
on the East Coast were grounded, the rest were sold out. Just when it looked like we were either going
to A.) miss two whole days of our trip or B.) have to drive to effing
Indianapolis to catch a flight to Arizona, to connect to Mexico, to have a
layover in El Salvador, do a little dance, click our heels three times, spit,
pray and pay off a local to catch a flight to Lima (I’m only slightly
exaggerating), an idea hit me.
It was like a ray of light, a message sent down from the
gods of good travel, a vision from a mystic dream of a world where turbulence
doesn’t exist, airline associates are pleasant and layovers are few (okay, now
I’m exaggerating): We’re within driving
distance of Toronto!
We caught the last
two flights out of Toronto and away we went!
Thank the travel gods for the land of moose, crappy hockey and poutine!
We arrived in Lima late Monday night to find that my cell
phone doesn’t work internationally.
Which would have only been a mild inconvenience except that when we
arrived we saw no one we recognized and my Spanish was rusty…. A less than
ideal situation to be in. We searched
the airport for my cousin or my sister, since we really didn’t know what anyone
else we were meeting looked like (I’d never met my step mother at this
point). Latin American taxi drivers, who
I am convinced have chips implanted in their brains so that they have access to
radar that zeroes in on lost and confused gringos, swarmed the Rock Star and I
almost immediately. Since the Rock Star
had never traveled before he was, adorably, attempting to be polite.
“You’re going to have to learn to be an asshole here, just
for sanity’s sake” I said to him, frowning.
“They’re just trying to make a living, I don’t want to be
rude!” How cute is that?
“Suit yourself, but you’ll see.”
Within ten minutes he had found the ability to be rude. And all it took was the same taxi driver
asking us if we wanted a taxi six times.
Alas, I found my baby sister with my cousin standing right
behind her! We got to the car where I
met my cousin’s husband (cousin in law?) and we ceremoniously cracked four
beers and headed out, across the city of Lima to my cousin’s house.
Lima, Peru is an interesting city. My personal theory is that all major cities
look the same. New York looks a lot like
Miami (sans palm trees), which looks a lot like Tokyo (with only slightly more English),
which looks a lot like Denver, which looks a lot like Rome (minus the
ruins). Lima didn’t necessarily change
that theory. Lima looks a lot like New
York. It is bustling, hot, dirty. There are good areas, bad areas, street
merchants, beggars and bars. What really
differentiates cities is their character and Lima definitely has character.
Contrary to popular opinion, Lima was not the capital of the
ancient Inca Empire, that distinction goes to the city of Cusco (more on Cusco
later). After the Spanish took over Latin
America in the sixteenth century Lima became the capital of the viceroyalty of
Peru, which it has remained. After the
Conquistadors sucked every major resource out of the region, Peru took well
deserved independence and Lima became the capital of the now sovereign nation
and economic stagnation set in.
Throughout much of the early twentieth century the military sporadically
took over the Peruvian government and instituted harsh policies and
repression. “Agrarian reforms” (read:
land redistribution) undertaken by military dictator Juan Velasco Alvarado
plummeted Peru into poverty and kept it on the brink of civil war. Democracy returned in the 1980s and by the
mid 1990s an economic boom had begun (this is a ridiculously synopsized version
of Peruvian history, for a more detailed version READ A FUCKING BOOK). Lima is now home to one of the hemispheres
most burgeoning economies and one of the largest urban populations in the
Americas.
All of this history is visible in Lima. There are still economic slums. There is still a vibrant indigenous Andean
culture and there are upscale restaurants and gated communities, of which we
were guests. The city is truly beautiful
with palm trees, genuinely Latin American calles, phenomenal food and a local
culture that allows gringos (assuming you don’t wear the word “tourist” on your
metaphorical forehead) to blend into the background rather well. But crime is still a thing, as in any major
city, regardless of hemisphere.
I have always maintained that in Latin America you need two
things to obtain a taxi ride: 1.) about
ten American dollars, converted to local currency and, 2.) no fear of
death. With this experience and the
knowledge that the Rock Star has never ridden in a cab in Latin America under
my belt, we (myself, my sister and the Rock Star), walked out of the gated
community we stayed in and hailed a cab.
I still have the Rock Star’s nail marks in my knee. Driving in most of Latin America is driving
through the creative use of horns and apparently this was a bit of culture
shock for the Rock Star. His face was
actually green when we arrived at our destination: Inka Market.
Inka Market is pretty much a market like one finds in most
Latin American cities: walking only,
cheap souvenirs, some mid-range souvenirs, and lots of haggling. Haggling is an interesting thing for gringas
traveling abroad. Imagine walking into
WalMart for to buy a camera. The price
tag says $100. You call the poor,
probably high school aged, underpaid and overworked counter associate (assuming
you can find him/her) over and proceed to offer to buy the camera for 30
bucks. That’s pretty much haggling and
it’s a ridiculously foreign idea for most of us (we would find out later that
my cousin is the world’s greatest gringa haggler, but more on that later).
After a couple hours walking around the market, working on
our Spanish and changing over dollars to soles with a seriously sketchy guy
sitting under a tree (hey, the shop keeper said he was legit), we hailed yet
another cab and headed to my step mother’s house.
My step mother was, unbeknownst to us, five minutes from
calling the cops at this point.
Apparently, taxi kidnappings are still a well known problem in Peru and
no one knew where we were, nor had any way to contact us. Visions of the Shining Path guerillas and the
horrible things they would do to three unassuming white Americans that don’t
speak Spanish ran through her head and nearly ruined the day.
But alas, with many apologies and big hugs I was finally
face to face with my Dad’s final wife (he had had three, all told). Shortly after a bouncing, energetic,
ridiculously adorable six year old boy bounded up to me and wrapped his arms
around my legs. My brother. The main reason for the trip. The final piece in the international circle
that is my family. He spoke quickly and
excitedly and gesticulated wildly .
All
in perfect Spanish.
This might be an
issue.
But it felt like home, and it
felt like love, and I have rarely been so happy.
Stay tuned for Part 3!
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