Well, I´ve finally arrived in Peru, after a few slight complications. The first setback was that I accidentally bought my flight for October 26 instead of December 26. No wonder it was so cheap, haha. No comments on my idiocy. Anyway that was quite a fiasco but eventually it was solved and I was all set to get to Lima the night of the 30th. Well, then my connecting flight to Atlanta arrived an hour late and I missed the connection to Lima, had to stay in a hotel and leave the next day at 5.15, so i finally arrived in Lima last night and was waiting to grab my luggage off the conveyor belt when 2008 arrived and everyone clapped, cheered weakly and shook each other´s hands. So much for celebrating. But by that time I was just thankful that I had finally arrived.
Last night I stayed at the house of a middle-aged woman named Cecilia, who is the founder of the NGO I´ll be working for in Mancora, and turns out to be really friendly and a great person to talk to. Her husband is from the United States and hardly speaks any spanish even though he´s lived here for awhile. He used to be a stock broker on Wall Street, but then met Cecilia in Florida, fell in love, came to Peru, and stayed here. He and Cecilia are currently caring for two grandchildren because Cecilia´s daughter died of cancer a year ago and her husband was abusive. They are incredibly nice people and Cecilia told me all about how she and her husband founded the NGO, their mission, and basically her whole life story. She told me she always likes to meet volunteers before they go to Mancora to see what makes them tick and give them advice, and she said she thinks I need to relax and that I am too impatient. She commented that from my very anxious, indecisive emails to her in the last few weeks she could tell I was someone ´special.´ I think she meant it as a compliment though. Haha.
It´s been great just walking around Lima and being happy about the fact that I´m here. Even though I am not all that fond of Lima-- it´s mostly just a huge, crowded, unnatractive city with too much pollution and humidity-- still there is enough familiarity that I have the sensation of having finally arrived home after spending a long time away. Is that ironic, or what? Or maybe it´s not. Maybe this country really is my other home. I´m realizing that I´ve come to think of Middlebury as a prison. Some might say that is a strong word. I don´t think so. As histrionic as it may be, it´s how I feel. Coming here I feel like an enormous weight has been lifted off my chest, it´s just an incredible sense of liberation.
One more interesting anecdote--on the airplane here I was sitting next to a missionary girl who was about to embark on a 3-year assdignment to the Peruvian jungle and hardly spoke Spanish. On the other side of me was a Peruvian guy who now lives in the United States and was going to Lima to visit his family for the holidays. We were chatting a little and I was telling him about the time I spent in Peru and my travels. I asked him what other places he had been to in Latin America. He said he´d been to Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and all of Central America. I was impressed. ´Wow! Which place did you enjoy the most?´
´Well, I didn´s see much of any of those places. I was just passing through. On my way to the United States.´
´Wow! You came all that way by land??´ He said yes. I didn´t want to ask him directly if he had come illegally, so I just said, ´And was it hard to get a visa?´
´When I came I didn´t have one.´
So yes, just by chance I was sitting next to this guy who actually hired a coyote to take him all the way from Peru to the United States, just like the Mexican migrants do, just so he could get a job. He said he prefers Peru to the United States, but he has work in the United States, so he stays. Now he has a green card, an iPod and a spiffy cell phone, and flies to Lima every holiday season to visit his family.
It is a strange world we live in.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Sunday, December 9, 2007
How I Got Mugged-- July 2007
I guess it's a little late to be updating this blog about the adventure that technically ended several months ago, but for the sake of posterity, and for the sake of remembering it myself, I think I need to write out the whole "mugging story." Despite it being a little frightening at the time, it actually contains some quite humorous elements.
So. The day before I had just met up with Carlos in Cochabamba, and the first (and alas, only) semi-touristic thing we decided to do was make a journey to the Cristo Blanco, a White Christ (there are several of these in South America) mounted atop a hill that serves as a lookout point over the city. Usually, there is a chair lift that brings you up there, but the lift was broken and we were happy to get a little more exercise using the stairs. I don't know how many stairs there were, but I'm estimating about 500. Carlos and I walked about half the way up before stopping to admire the view and take a break to eat some clementines. In the company of a 26-year-old Peruvian man, I wasn't exactly on my guard for getting mugged in the middle of the day, and evidentally neither was he. We sat down on the stairs and had just begun peeling the fruits when we heard two people coming down the stairs from behind us. Assuming they were just some more tourists wanting to pass, we both moved over to separate sides of the stairs. Before we knew it, we both had knives pointed at us and two burly men were telling us to give them everything we had.
Luckily, Caity's mugging story from Ecuador had prepared me for pretty much anything, and I didn't panic, but just let the guy search in my purse, repeating in Spanish, "I don't have anything," which was a total lie. Later Carlos told me that he might have considered resisting if it hadn't involved me, but he looked over and saw that my assaulter had a serrated kitchen knife (kind of unprofessional, no?) and thought, "Man, that would be a painful death." I actually got incredibly lucky because my assaulter idiotically did not realize that I had a digital camera in my bag, worth significantly more than anything I had in my wallet or even my bank account (it was the end of the trip, I was getting low on funds). He took my wallet and was satisfied. Meanwhile, Carlos was negotiating with his assaulter to leave him his passport, and somehow succeeded in that, but in retribution the guy just made off with his entire bag minus the passport. They told us to stay where we were and ran back up the stairs with our stuff.
We emerged from the incident pretty much unscathed; I had a few scratches that I would later refer to as "knife wounds," and Carlos had an unpleasant cut on his hand, but nothing serious. I was thinking kind of irrationally after the incident; for a few minutes I had the idea in my head that the guys had asked us to stay where we were because they were coming back, and so I cleverly hid my camera in a bush and sat there waiting. After a few minutes we both got over the shock and started heading back down the stairs. Finally, about 5 or 10 minutes after the incident, we spotted a couple of policemen. "Help! We just got robbed!" we yelled, waving our hands in the air. After explaining to the police what had happened and giving them vague and probably incorrect descriptions of the perpetrators (when someone had a knife pointed at your throat, the last thing you're usually concerned about is the shape of their nose), the police mounted their motorcycles and sped up the hill in pursuit of the villains.
Carlos and I went back down to the bottom of the hill and waited. Not too long after we'd reported the crime, an officer came and told us that they had detained two men who appeared similar to our descriptions. We would have to come to the police station one by one to identify them. So Carlos got on the back of one officer's motorcycle and they sped off while I waited with another female officer. While we were waiting, this heavy-set woman started asking me some questions. What was my name? What was my friend's name? Where were we from? What happened? What did my assaulter look like? I described him to the best of my ability. He was "gordito," I said, using a very common Spanish term that essentially means "a little fat," though it is not taken anywhere near as offensively as it would be in the U.S. Nevertheless, the female officer's response challenged my American standards of politeness: "REALLY fat, or just fat like me?"
"Well, I guess not THAT fat," I said awkwardly.
"Yes, I see, so was he fat like me?"
Finally I gave in. "Yes, fat like you."
So, after I called a police officer fat, the motorcycle cop came back and it was my turn to hop on the back of his vehicle (if you're imagining him taking some kind of safety precaution like giving me a helmet, don't). We arrived outside the police station, and there were two guys in handcuffs sitting on a bench, completely still and sedate, with stone-cold expressions on their faces. Having to decide whether to accuse these two men of the crime was almost as nerve-racking as getting mugged. I really could not remember one detail about the assaulters with certainty, other than the fact that one was "gordito," but I told the officers the truth to the best of my ability, which was that I thought I recognized one of the men but not the other. Apparently Carlos had recognized the same guy, but neither of us could even remember which one of us he had been assaulting.
Meanwhile, all the local friends and family members of the detained men had come to the station to defend their kin. They stood there ranting about how they knew these men and they were good people, that Carlos and I were just stupid tourists and scared so of course we would lay the blame on anyone, given the opportunity. Carlos and I just stood there silently, not knowing what to do or say. The officers kept asking to see our "wounds," but made no move to get Carlos a bandage or anything. "Look," said Carlos eventually to an officer, "we're not sure if that was one of the guys or if it's just someone that looks like him. We don't know anything else. Can we go now?" But no, we were absolutely not permitted to leave yet. Instead, we were taken inside the police station and asked the same three questions by at least five different people. After sitting there for about 15 minutes we started becoming a little aggravated, and Carlos said again, "Hey, we have nothing else to tell you, can we go?" The authorities kept objecting, but we were firm and eventually just announced our departure and walked out. That seems to be the nature of Bolivian bureaucracy: just be firm and you'll discover that most of the people in power actually have none.
After we escaped the police station, the most pressing issue was that we had absolutely no money, apart from 5 Bolivian pesos I happened to have in a little change pouch. I had stupidly been carrying my debit card in my wallet, and Carlos, being an artisan who lives off the money he makes selling his jewelry on the street on a day-to-day basis, doesn't even have a bank account as far as I know. Well, I decided to use the 5 pesos to call my parents. It was quite an interesting telephone conversation with my mother:
"Hello?"
"Hi Mommy, it's me. Listen, I don't have very long to talk right now, but it's kind of an emergency. My friend Carlos and I got robbed and I need money."
"You WHAT?!" [screaming and general panic]
"Why are you yelling at ME?! What was I supposed to do, they had knives!"
[more panic] "What the hell do you expect me to do? I don't even know how to send you money! And you're in the middle of Bolivia with some strange man!"
"OK, calm down. I'll go find a bank and figure out how you can wire me money, and then I'll call you back."
Well, that was the last of our money, so Carlos went and set out his jewelry on the street so that he would be able to sell enough for us to at least eat dinner, and meanwhile I went looking for a bank. By this time it was almost 6:00 and all the banks were about to close if not closed already, but I did manage to find out that it's pretty easy to send money almost instantly through Western Union. Considering it was kind of late though, it took Carlos a couple hours to sell anything, and evidently that was long enough for my mother to take me for dead. When I called home again my dad answered sternly.
"How could you wait two whole hours to call us back?! Your mother is in hysterics. She's over at the neighbors' house calling the Bolivian embassy."
Later I found out that my mother had spent at least $100 making phone calls to Bolivia, and all for nothing. The next day I picked up $200 from the Western Union office, and felt quite rich. And so ends my tale.
So. The day before I had just met up with Carlos in Cochabamba, and the first (and alas, only) semi-touristic thing we decided to do was make a journey to the Cristo Blanco, a White Christ (there are several of these in South America) mounted atop a hill that serves as a lookout point over the city. Usually, there is a chair lift that brings you up there, but the lift was broken and we were happy to get a little more exercise using the stairs. I don't know how many stairs there were, but I'm estimating about 500. Carlos and I walked about half the way up before stopping to admire the view and take a break to eat some clementines. In the company of a 26-year-old Peruvian man, I wasn't exactly on my guard for getting mugged in the middle of the day, and evidentally neither was he. We sat down on the stairs and had just begun peeling the fruits when we heard two people coming down the stairs from behind us. Assuming they were just some more tourists wanting to pass, we both moved over to separate sides of the stairs. Before we knew it, we both had knives pointed at us and two burly men were telling us to give them everything we had.
Luckily, Caity's mugging story from Ecuador had prepared me for pretty much anything, and I didn't panic, but just let the guy search in my purse, repeating in Spanish, "I don't have anything," which was a total lie. Later Carlos told me that he might have considered resisting if it hadn't involved me, but he looked over and saw that my assaulter had a serrated kitchen knife (kind of unprofessional, no?) and thought, "Man, that would be a painful death." I actually got incredibly lucky because my assaulter idiotically did not realize that I had a digital camera in my bag, worth significantly more than anything I had in my wallet or even my bank account (it was the end of the trip, I was getting low on funds). He took my wallet and was satisfied. Meanwhile, Carlos was negotiating with his assaulter to leave him his passport, and somehow succeeded in that, but in retribution the guy just made off with his entire bag minus the passport. They told us to stay where we were and ran back up the stairs with our stuff.
We emerged from the incident pretty much unscathed; I had a few scratches that I would later refer to as "knife wounds," and Carlos had an unpleasant cut on his hand, but nothing serious. I was thinking kind of irrationally after the incident; for a few minutes I had the idea in my head that the guys had asked us to stay where we were because they were coming back, and so I cleverly hid my camera in a bush and sat there waiting. After a few minutes we both got over the shock and started heading back down the stairs. Finally, about 5 or 10 minutes after the incident, we spotted a couple of policemen. "Help! We just got robbed!" we yelled, waving our hands in the air. After explaining to the police what had happened and giving them vague and probably incorrect descriptions of the perpetrators (when someone had a knife pointed at your throat, the last thing you're usually concerned about is the shape of their nose), the police mounted their motorcycles and sped up the hill in pursuit of the villains.
Carlos and I went back down to the bottom of the hill and waited. Not too long after we'd reported the crime, an officer came and told us that they had detained two men who appeared similar to our descriptions. We would have to come to the police station one by one to identify them. So Carlos got on the back of one officer's motorcycle and they sped off while I waited with another female officer. While we were waiting, this heavy-set woman started asking me some questions. What was my name? What was my friend's name? Where were we from? What happened? What did my assaulter look like? I described him to the best of my ability. He was "gordito," I said, using a very common Spanish term that essentially means "a little fat," though it is not taken anywhere near as offensively as it would be in the U.S. Nevertheless, the female officer's response challenged my American standards of politeness: "REALLY fat, or just fat like me?"
"Well, I guess not THAT fat," I said awkwardly.
"Yes, I see, so was he fat like me?"
Finally I gave in. "Yes, fat like you."
So, after I called a police officer fat, the motorcycle cop came back and it was my turn to hop on the back of his vehicle (if you're imagining him taking some kind of safety precaution like giving me a helmet, don't). We arrived outside the police station, and there were two guys in handcuffs sitting on a bench, completely still and sedate, with stone-cold expressions on their faces. Having to decide whether to accuse these two men of the crime was almost as nerve-racking as getting mugged. I really could not remember one detail about the assaulters with certainty, other than the fact that one was "gordito," but I told the officers the truth to the best of my ability, which was that I thought I recognized one of the men but not the other. Apparently Carlos had recognized the same guy, but neither of us could even remember which one of us he had been assaulting.
Meanwhile, all the local friends and family members of the detained men had come to the station to defend their kin. They stood there ranting about how they knew these men and they were good people, that Carlos and I were just stupid tourists and scared so of course we would lay the blame on anyone, given the opportunity. Carlos and I just stood there silently, not knowing what to do or say. The officers kept asking to see our "wounds," but made no move to get Carlos a bandage or anything. "Look," said Carlos eventually to an officer, "we're not sure if that was one of the guys or if it's just someone that looks like him. We don't know anything else. Can we go now?" But no, we were absolutely not permitted to leave yet. Instead, we were taken inside the police station and asked the same three questions by at least five different people. After sitting there for about 15 minutes we started becoming a little aggravated, and Carlos said again, "Hey, we have nothing else to tell you, can we go?" The authorities kept objecting, but we were firm and eventually just announced our departure and walked out. That seems to be the nature of Bolivian bureaucracy: just be firm and you'll discover that most of the people in power actually have none.
After we escaped the police station, the most pressing issue was that we had absolutely no money, apart from 5 Bolivian pesos I happened to have in a little change pouch. I had stupidly been carrying my debit card in my wallet, and Carlos, being an artisan who lives off the money he makes selling his jewelry on the street on a day-to-day basis, doesn't even have a bank account as far as I know. Well, I decided to use the 5 pesos to call my parents. It was quite an interesting telephone conversation with my mother:
"Hello?"
"Hi Mommy, it's me. Listen, I don't have very long to talk right now, but it's kind of an emergency. My friend Carlos and I got robbed and I need money."
"You WHAT?!" [screaming and general panic]
"Why are you yelling at ME?! What was I supposed to do, they had knives!"
[more panic] "What the hell do you expect me to do? I don't even know how to send you money! And you're in the middle of Bolivia with some strange man!"
"OK, calm down. I'll go find a bank and figure out how you can wire me money, and then I'll call you back."
Well, that was the last of our money, so Carlos went and set out his jewelry on the street so that he would be able to sell enough for us to at least eat dinner, and meanwhile I went looking for a bank. By this time it was almost 6:00 and all the banks were about to close if not closed already, but I did manage to find out that it's pretty easy to send money almost instantly through Western Union. Considering it was kind of late though, it took Carlos a couple hours to sell anything, and evidently that was long enough for my mother to take me for dead. When I called home again my dad answered sternly.
"How could you wait two whole hours to call us back?! Your mother is in hysterics. She's over at the neighbors' house calling the Bolivian embassy."
Later I found out that my mother had spent at least $100 making phone calls to Bolivia, and all for nothing. The next day I picked up $200 from the Western Union office, and felt quite rich. And so ends my tale.
Friday, August 3, 2007
A kind of conclusion
Instead of trying to sum up my whole trip, and the meaning of everything, and how it all changed me (which would take more than a lifetime to do), I want to leave you all with an experience I had on my last day in Cuzco, which was all at once odd, disturbing, commonplace, and in some strange way an appropriate ending to this series of other-worldly events.
I spent the last couple days living in the house where I began when I first came to Cuzco, spending time with Rosita and reliving old memories in my head. Things had changed; the family was practically uprooting the entire house, redoing all three bathrooms. Mijael no longer works in the fish store underneath the house; his brother-in-law, who owned the store, decided to sell it. Rosita now sits at the table to eat with the rest of the family, instead of at a seperate table in the same room. She is almost finished her thesis and will soon be moving out of the house, but only once my host parents manage to find another maid (they really can't live without one).
At the same time, not much had changed. Erika, the maid in the house of my host mom's daughter, had off for awhile, the result being that Rosita kept being asked to come over and take care of the kids there. My host parents were away for the weekend in their house in the country while Rosita had to stay in the house and wait for all the different repairmen to come. Seeing as she was supposed to be taking care of the kids in the other house at the same time, I ended up having to stay in the house waiting for the repairmen to come.
Finally at mid-day on Monday Socorro and Ramiro returned from their weekend house. I left the house for a few minutes to buy something at the general store, and when I came back my host parents were gone, and at the kitchen table, like a ghost, was seated an elderly indigenous woman I had never seen in my life. It startled me, partly because she was obviously indigenous, in the characteristic sweater, hat and skirts, and for that reason I knew she couldn't have been any blood relation of my host family. It crossed my mind that maybe she had broken and entered, but I knew that was utterly ridiculous. Not knowing what to do, I entered the kitchen and just kind of stood there, looking at her, struggling to make some sort of connection but feeling as if there had never been two people on earth who understood each other less. Finally I said hello and asked her name. She said it was Juliana, and I introduced myself, explaining that I lived there. She just looked at me apprehensively and a little fearfully, and said she was waiting for la Señora Socorro. Mystified, I went up to my room.
Later it was explained to me what relation Juliana had to the family. When Socorro was growing up, Juliana had been the maid who took care of her. Yet it was impossible for me to imagine that this modest old woman had once had the authority to discipline Socorro. During lunch, which was kind of a going away party for me and in which I opened a bottle of wine from Argentina that I'd been saving, Juliana sat at the same table where Rosita used to sit. She was served a child-sized portion of wine and spoken to like a child. After lunch, Juliana sat at the table and waited there while Socorro went upstairs, watched some TV with the kids and took a short nap. I was waiting for Rosita to finish taking her shower so she could go out with me, so I came downstairs and sat at the same table as Juliana, neither of us saying a word to each other for several minutes. Finally Juliana asked me, "Is la Señora Socorro coming down, or has she fallen asleep?"
"She's not asleep right now," I said. "Should I tell her to come down?"
"No, she'll come down."
She sat and waited for another half hour or so, until Socorro finally came down, and started talking to her as if it were official business, about God knows what. During the part of the conversation I witnessed Socorro was giving Juliana a pair of earrings and saying they made her look so pretty--still speaking to her like a child. And to think, there was a time when Juliana spoke to her the same way.
I spent the last couple days living in the house where I began when I first came to Cuzco, spending time with Rosita and reliving old memories in my head. Things had changed; the family was practically uprooting the entire house, redoing all three bathrooms. Mijael no longer works in the fish store underneath the house; his brother-in-law, who owned the store, decided to sell it. Rosita now sits at the table to eat with the rest of the family, instead of at a seperate table in the same room. She is almost finished her thesis and will soon be moving out of the house, but only once my host parents manage to find another maid (they really can't live without one).
At the same time, not much had changed. Erika, the maid in the house of my host mom's daughter, had off for awhile, the result being that Rosita kept being asked to come over and take care of the kids there. My host parents were away for the weekend in their house in the country while Rosita had to stay in the house and wait for all the different repairmen to come. Seeing as she was supposed to be taking care of the kids in the other house at the same time, I ended up having to stay in the house waiting for the repairmen to come.
Finally at mid-day on Monday Socorro and Ramiro returned from their weekend house. I left the house for a few minutes to buy something at the general store, and when I came back my host parents were gone, and at the kitchen table, like a ghost, was seated an elderly indigenous woman I had never seen in my life. It startled me, partly because she was obviously indigenous, in the characteristic sweater, hat and skirts, and for that reason I knew she couldn't have been any blood relation of my host family. It crossed my mind that maybe she had broken and entered, but I knew that was utterly ridiculous. Not knowing what to do, I entered the kitchen and just kind of stood there, looking at her, struggling to make some sort of connection but feeling as if there had never been two people on earth who understood each other less. Finally I said hello and asked her name. She said it was Juliana, and I introduced myself, explaining that I lived there. She just looked at me apprehensively and a little fearfully, and said she was waiting for la Señora Socorro. Mystified, I went up to my room.
Later it was explained to me what relation Juliana had to the family. When Socorro was growing up, Juliana had been the maid who took care of her. Yet it was impossible for me to imagine that this modest old woman had once had the authority to discipline Socorro. During lunch, which was kind of a going away party for me and in which I opened a bottle of wine from Argentina that I'd been saving, Juliana sat at the same table where Rosita used to sit. She was served a child-sized portion of wine and spoken to like a child. After lunch, Juliana sat at the table and waited there while Socorro went upstairs, watched some TV with the kids and took a short nap. I was waiting for Rosita to finish taking her shower so she could go out with me, so I came downstairs and sat at the same table as Juliana, neither of us saying a word to each other for several minutes. Finally Juliana asked me, "Is la Señora Socorro coming down, or has she fallen asleep?"
"She's not asleep right now," I said. "Should I tell her to come down?"
"No, she'll come down."
She sat and waited for another half hour or so, until Socorro finally came down, and started talking to her as if it were official business, about God knows what. During the part of the conversation I witnessed Socorro was giving Juliana a pair of earrings and saying they made her look so pretty--still speaking to her like a child. And to think, there was a time when Juliana spoke to her the same way.
Is anything sacred?
A conversation between me and Carlos and a woman who sells vegetarian food in the market in Cochabamba, Bolivia, as we were sitting down to eat lunch. A little mean perhaps, but hilarious. It started with the woman saying something about me being Carlos's wife.
Carlos: We're not married, and we're never going to get married either.
Señora: [gasps] Why?!
Carlos: Because...because we're not. Why did you think we were married?
Señora: Well, because I saw you two together and I figured people from other countries couldn't be so different from us. We're all human.
Carlos: Well, we're never getting married. Naomi, tell her why we're not getting married.
Me: We're not getting married because we don't believe in love.
Señora: [gasps] Really?
Me: Really. My mother used to always tell me that love doesn't exist. Carlos, didn't your mother ever tell you that?
Carlos: My mother never told me anything. That's why I don't believe in love.
Me: See that?
Señora: They say that if you know God's love, you know the love of the universe...
Me: Shit! Carlos, we don't believe in God do we? That must be why we don't believe in love!
Carlos: Dammit, you're right!
Señora: And the president of the United States...he's a believer isn't he?
Carlos: In Satan. Yes. He worships Satan.
Señora: Good lord, he must, otherwise he wouldn't have started so many wars and killed so many people.
Me: Yeah, but that's normal in the Unites States. Lots of people worship Satan.
Señora: How horrible!
Carlos: We're not married, and we're never going to get married either.
Señora: [gasps] Why?!
Carlos: Because...because we're not. Why did you think we were married?
Señora: Well, because I saw you two together and I figured people from other countries couldn't be so different from us. We're all human.
Carlos: Well, we're never getting married. Naomi, tell her why we're not getting married.
Me: We're not getting married because we don't believe in love.
Señora: [gasps] Really?
Me: Really. My mother used to always tell me that love doesn't exist. Carlos, didn't your mother ever tell you that?
Carlos: My mother never told me anything. That's why I don't believe in love.
Me: See that?
Señora: They say that if you know God's love, you know the love of the universe...
Me: Shit! Carlos, we don't believe in God do we? That must be why we don't believe in love!
Carlos: Dammit, you're right!
Señora: And the president of the United States...he's a believer isn't he?
Carlos: In Satan. Yes. He worships Satan.
Señora: Good lord, he must, otherwise he wouldn't have started so many wars and killed so many people.
Me: Yeah, but that's normal in the Unites States. Lots of people worship Satan.
Señora: How horrible!
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
7/29/07 -- Roadblocks, assaults, etc.
So, just when you think Bolivia can't get any crazier, it does. What a country, I tell you--it makes Peru look like a very stable place. That said, now that I'm back in Cuzco my friends have been telling me that the strike of professors between Cuzco and Puno only got worse after I left--apparently the Peruvian president has proposed to give funding so that future teachers can take extra preparatory courses, but the teachers are protesting because they'd rather just be paid more. Meanwhile in Bolivia, there was a big controversy about the price of bread, which went up from 4 ´pancitos´ (little breads) for a peso to 3 pancitos for a peso, causing complete and utter chaos. OK, well maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but then add to that huge student demonstrations which resulted in universities in some areas being suspended for two weeks, a giant demonstration of 2 million people in La Paz protesting the proposition of moving the political capital back to Sucre (the country's historical capital), and an enormous mining strike that happened to be centered right where I was, in Potosi. Every single road out of Potosi was closed due to roadblocks, and I ended up being stuck there for five days, originally having planned to be there for two. Not that there's anything so bad about being stuck in Potosi, but there's something incredibly unnerving about not being able to leave a place and having no idea when the situation will change. I was staying in a small, very personal hostel and when I came down for breakfast the third morning the receptionist said to me, 'You seem to be suffering from a bit of anxiety.' I just nodded in consent.
So, I did go on my tour of a cooperative mine, but the day I went was the first day of the strike and not one miner was actually working. It was still an unforgettable experience though; the good thing was that I had my own personal Spanish-speaking guide, since the rest of the people on the tour were Belgian and had there own French guide. My guide was the same age as me, 21, and worked in the mines from the time he was 18 to 20, for lack of a better option. We ended up becoming friends and hanging out for the rest of the time I was stuck in Potosi. Anyway, a couple interesting things about the mines: first, I couldn't believe it when my guide told me that during the colonial period the miners were basically enslaved and would be forced to stay in the mines for up to 6 months at a time without seeing the light of day. When they came out, the sunlight was so shocking to their eyes that many went blind. The production of the coca leaf was supported in this time period because it decreases hunger and made it possible for the workers to go longer periods without rest. Another interesting thing is that in each mine, to this day, there is a little sculpture of a devil to which the miners offer coca leaves every Friday, which is said to watch over those who work underneath the earth. There is also a sculpture of the Pachamama, the female counterpart who watches over the earth (but not the underworld).
After Potosi I went on to Sucre, which is where Bolivia's independence was declared, and which was the capital city until La Paz took its place by sheer power of numbers, I guess. It's also said to be Bolivia's most beautiful city, and has a much different feel than the rest of the country, full of beautiful colonial buildings. The week when I was there there was also a fair of miniatures, which I was really excited about because several people in Peru had told me about this Bolivian phenomenon. It's basically a big market in which all of the vendors sell miniatures of pretty much everything you can imagine--foods, toiletries, clothing, money, alcohol, Bolivian passports, marriage certificates, etc. Other than that, I went to an archaeological site in which some dinosaur footprints have been found (which sounded more interesting than it actually was) and La Casa de La Libertad, the very place where independence was declared which is now a museum. Pretty cool.
After that I went to Cochabamba, one of the biggest cities in Bolivia. I can't really understand why it attracts so many tourists, but I mostly went there to meet up with a friend I met in Cuzco, Carlos, who is kind of a nomadic jewelry maker and happened to be travelling in Bolivia at the same time as me. I was in Cochabamba for three and a half days, during which time I did basically nothing. The first day I was exhausted from having taken an overnight bus, and the second day, well, Carlos and I had the idea of walking up to a lookout point in the city, which involves going up a few hundred stairs. About halfway up, around 3:00 in the afternoon, we stopped and sat down to take a rest, and kind of ended up getting robbed, and the assaulters kind of had knives. Neither of us were hurt and it was mostly just a scare (my assaulter was dumb enough not to notice I had a digital camera, and Carlos somehow convinced his to leave him his passport) but there was the slight problem that we were left with a total of 5 pesos between us. So Carlos, conveniently being an artesan, went to sell some of the jewelry he makes in the street, and we managed to scrape up just enough to get buy until the next day when my parents wired me enough money for both of us to get by in Bolivia for probably about a month (thanks ma and pa).
Anyway, that pretty much ended our desire to do touristic things in Cochabamba. A couple days later we were off to La Paz, and spent the good part of a day there walking around looking for a movie theater playing something decent and not finding one. Luckily Carlos is quite entertaining and somehow we managed to keep each other amused. I spent the next day in a bus back to Cuzco, and here I am, just saying my goodbyes to everyone, trying to explain why I was in Bolivia for two weeks longer than I originally said I would be (this is difficult with Peruvians, who like to ask you the exact date and time you will be returning to see them, despite the fact that they themselves are never on time), and preparing to return to the US on Tuesday.
So, I did go on my tour of a cooperative mine, but the day I went was the first day of the strike and not one miner was actually working. It was still an unforgettable experience though; the good thing was that I had my own personal Spanish-speaking guide, since the rest of the people on the tour were Belgian and had there own French guide. My guide was the same age as me, 21, and worked in the mines from the time he was 18 to 20, for lack of a better option. We ended up becoming friends and hanging out for the rest of the time I was stuck in Potosi. Anyway, a couple interesting things about the mines: first, I couldn't believe it when my guide told me that during the colonial period the miners were basically enslaved and would be forced to stay in the mines for up to 6 months at a time without seeing the light of day. When they came out, the sunlight was so shocking to their eyes that many went blind. The production of the coca leaf was supported in this time period because it decreases hunger and made it possible for the workers to go longer periods without rest. Another interesting thing is that in each mine, to this day, there is a little sculpture of a devil to which the miners offer coca leaves every Friday, which is said to watch over those who work underneath the earth. There is also a sculpture of the Pachamama, the female counterpart who watches over the earth (but not the underworld).
After Potosi I went on to Sucre, which is where Bolivia's independence was declared, and which was the capital city until La Paz took its place by sheer power of numbers, I guess. It's also said to be Bolivia's most beautiful city, and has a much different feel than the rest of the country, full of beautiful colonial buildings. The week when I was there there was also a fair of miniatures, which I was really excited about because several people in Peru had told me about this Bolivian phenomenon. It's basically a big market in which all of the vendors sell miniatures of pretty much everything you can imagine--foods, toiletries, clothing, money, alcohol, Bolivian passports, marriage certificates, etc. Other than that, I went to an archaeological site in which some dinosaur footprints have been found (which sounded more interesting than it actually was) and La Casa de La Libertad, the very place where independence was declared which is now a museum. Pretty cool.
After that I went to Cochabamba, one of the biggest cities in Bolivia. I can't really understand why it attracts so many tourists, but I mostly went there to meet up with a friend I met in Cuzco, Carlos, who is kind of a nomadic jewelry maker and happened to be travelling in Bolivia at the same time as me. I was in Cochabamba for three and a half days, during which time I did basically nothing. The first day I was exhausted from having taken an overnight bus, and the second day, well, Carlos and I had the idea of walking up to a lookout point in the city, which involves going up a few hundred stairs. About halfway up, around 3:00 in the afternoon, we stopped and sat down to take a rest, and kind of ended up getting robbed, and the assaulters kind of had knives. Neither of us were hurt and it was mostly just a scare (my assaulter was dumb enough not to notice I had a digital camera, and Carlos somehow convinced his to leave him his passport) but there was the slight problem that we were left with a total of 5 pesos between us. So Carlos, conveniently being an artesan, went to sell some of the jewelry he makes in the street, and we managed to scrape up just enough to get buy until the next day when my parents wired me enough money for both of us to get by in Bolivia for probably about a month (thanks ma and pa).
Anyway, that pretty much ended our desire to do touristic things in Cochabamba. A couple days later we were off to La Paz, and spent the good part of a day there walking around looking for a movie theater playing something decent and not finding one. Luckily Carlos is quite entertaining and somehow we managed to keep each other amused. I spent the next day in a bus back to Cuzco, and here I am, just saying my goodbyes to everyone, trying to explain why I was in Bolivia for two weeks longer than I originally said I would be (this is difficult with Peruvians, who like to ask you the exact date and time you will be returning to see them, despite the fact that they themselves are never on time), and preparing to return to the US on Tuesday.
7/16/07 -- Adios to my plans
Alright, that last email I wrote makes me laugh because just like usual on this trip, nothing that I mentioned has gone according to plan. It turned out I couldn't go to Quillabamba because there was a landslide blocking the only road that goes there from Cuzco. At that point I was a bit anxious to get out of Cuzco, so I told Braddy I was going to begin my travels in the Bolivia direction a bit early and that I would meet him in La Paz. On Monday I bought my ticket to Puno for Wednesday morning, only to arrive at the terminal and find that there had been a roadblock strike going on since Monday and that no buses were leaving during the day. I changed my ticket to that night and left at 10 pm. On a trip that was supposed to take six hours, the bus stopped at 5:30 am and informed all its passengers that it could not go any further and we were going to have to get off and walk. So at 5:30 am in the freezing cold with my little rolling suitcase, I walked about a half hour over a bridge, from where I had to take two mini-buses to get to Puno, finally arriving at 8:30 am. I was happy to finally be there.
Well, then my friend Braddy was busy for awhile with an art show and by the time he got done with that he informed me that he was sorry but he no longer had the time, money, or energy to come to Bolivia. Such is life.
But I will start from the beginning of my travelling adventures. As I've mentioned, my first destination was Puno, a small tourist city on the shore of Lake Titicaca, which is the highest freshwater lake in the world and was sacred to the Incas. The Lake is split between Peru and Bolivia, and a Bolivian friend I recently met on a bus told me Bolivians like to say that the 'Titi' belongs to Bolivia and the 'caca' to Peru ('caca' in Spanish means 'shit'). In reality though, the whole of the lake is quite gorgeous. Anyway, after a day spent wandering around Puno (in a day you can do pretty much everything there is to do in Puno) I took a boat to two different islands in Lake Titicaca, Amantani and Taquile. Taquile was particularly interesting to me because at Middlebury I wrote a paper dealing with the weaving tradition and tourism there. The paradox of the island is that it's both a fabricated tourist attraction and an isolated place where people really do still live somewhat 'traditionally,' if you ignore the island's many rstaurants and bars. Amantani is less touristy and people there live more 'rustically', but they do have one little tourist-attracting niche, which is staging little 'discotecas' for tourists at night in which they dress you up in the traditional clothing that they themselves don't wear anymore and everyone dances to a band playing traditional music. It's quite a show. While on the Peru side of the lake I also visited a couple of the Floating Islands, which are man-made islands built completely of reeds, no more than 20 meters in diameter. These communities were initially built as a way for people to escape from widespread tribal warfare, and people still live quiet lives there in tiny communities although they now get things like education and medical services in Puno. They're something you really have to see to believe.
After visiting those islands, I continued across the Bolivian border to Copacabana. On the bus ride there I met a fellow traveller from Morocco and another French guy that the Moroccan guy had met on the bus from Cuzco to Puno. The three of us decided to spend the night on the Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun), which is the mythical birthplace of the Incan civilization. Ironically, the first night there we got caught in a hail storm and ended up just sitting in our hostel drinking cheap, gross Bolivian wine and chewing coca leaves. The next day was a little clearer and Romain (the Frenchie) and I hiked to some really cool labyrinth-like ruins on one side of the island before taking the boat back to Copacabana.
After that I continued on to La Paz and spent two days there hanging out with Tarik (the Moroccan), visiting markets and museums, and the usual stuff you do in cities. While Lake Titicaca is the highest freshwater lake in the world, La Paz boasts being the highest capital, at something like 3800 meters above sea level. The main part of the city is situated in a bit of a valley, but like Lima, the outer boundaries of the city just keep growing due to people migrating there from the country, and from several lookout towers in the city you can see just how packed all the buildings are on the side of the mountains. It's pretty impressive.
It just so happened that Tarik was also planning on doing a tour of the salt flats and desert near Uyuni, so I decided to go with him. It was a very uncomfortable 12-hour overnight bus ride down to Uyuni, which is a freezing cold, isolated and desolate town which earns its livelihood almost completely from tourism. There are dozens of tour agencies that do three-day tours of the desert, and we ended up going with a different tour agency than we had made the reservation with, which apparently happens a lot. The tour group consisted of me, Tarik, two youngish Polish couples, and a local tour guide and cook, all packed snugly into a jeep. The tour was memorable both for the spectacular scenery (only my photos can describe that, which I unfortunately might not be able to posr online until I get home) and for the fact that the tour itself was comically bad. The guide and cook seemed intent on speaking to us as little as possible. The jeep arrived at the tour agency an hour late the first day, then stopped at several places around town to pick up a few personal items and some food items that our guides had neglected to pick up beforehand. Every time we arrived at one of the sites the guide would tell us we had 15 minutes to walk around, then after ten minutes would yell, 'Let's go, let's go, we're late!' On top of that, the cook made a hot dog casserole for the two vegetarians on the trip, then on the last morning when we asked for the scrambled eggs we had been promised, said that there were eggs in the bread. She finally brought us a bowl of scrambled eggs but without forks and plates to eat it with. Following breakfast we revolted and spent an hour and a half in the hot springs mostly just to piss of the guide. Because of this we arrived lateat the town in which we were apparently supposed to stop and get gas (the guide had told us nothing about this, of course) and the gas station was closed. But instead of telling us that he was going to try to find the owner of the gas station, the guide pretended we were at another stop in the trip and asked if we wanted to get out and see the local market or church. This resulted in all of us being quite confused when we ended up waiting 45 minutes for him to come back. We arrived back in the frigid Uyuni at 8:30, 2 and a half hours late. The good thing was that we all got along really well and were able to laugh at all the silly mishaps. Unfortunately we arrived back too late to stage a protest in front of the travel agency.
At the point of reaching the Chilean border on the last day we parted with Tarik, who was continuing on to Valparaiso. Coincidentally, me and the two Polish couples all had the same plan, which was to move on to the religious and mining center of Potosi, where I am now. On the bus here I was sitting next to and chatting with a Bolivian guy who is studying in Sucre, which just happens to be my next destination. The city of Potosi supposedly has a fascinating history, of which I know little because I unfortunately do not have the Lonely Planet Guide to Bolivia (this appears to be an essential). My Bolivian friend told me that at some point in history it was the biggest city in the world. Anyway, despite my ignorance, I am highly looking forward to taking a tour of one of the cooperative mines tomorrow. More on this to come.
Well, then my friend Braddy was busy for awhile with an art show and by the time he got done with that he informed me that he was sorry but he no longer had the time, money, or energy to come to Bolivia. Such is life.
But I will start from the beginning of my travelling adventures. As I've mentioned, my first destination was Puno, a small tourist city on the shore of Lake Titicaca, which is the highest freshwater lake in the world and was sacred to the Incas. The Lake is split between Peru and Bolivia, and a Bolivian friend I recently met on a bus told me Bolivians like to say that the 'Titi' belongs to Bolivia and the 'caca' to Peru ('caca' in Spanish means 'shit'). In reality though, the whole of the lake is quite gorgeous. Anyway, after a day spent wandering around Puno (in a day you can do pretty much everything there is to do in Puno) I took a boat to two different islands in Lake Titicaca, Amantani and Taquile. Taquile was particularly interesting to me because at Middlebury I wrote a paper dealing with the weaving tradition and tourism there. The paradox of the island is that it's both a fabricated tourist attraction and an isolated place where people really do still live somewhat 'traditionally,' if you ignore the island's many rstaurants and bars. Amantani is less touristy and people there live more 'rustically', but they do have one little tourist-attracting niche, which is staging little 'discotecas' for tourists at night in which they dress you up in the traditional clothing that they themselves don't wear anymore and everyone dances to a band playing traditional music. It's quite a show. While on the Peru side of the lake I also visited a couple of the Floating Islands, which are man-made islands built completely of reeds, no more than 20 meters in diameter. These communities were initially built as a way for people to escape from widespread tribal warfare, and people still live quiet lives there in tiny communities although they now get things like education and medical services in Puno. They're something you really have to see to believe.
After visiting those islands, I continued across the Bolivian border to Copacabana. On the bus ride there I met a fellow traveller from Morocco and another French guy that the Moroccan guy had met on the bus from Cuzco to Puno. The three of us decided to spend the night on the Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun), which is the mythical birthplace of the Incan civilization. Ironically, the first night there we got caught in a hail storm and ended up just sitting in our hostel drinking cheap, gross Bolivian wine and chewing coca leaves. The next day was a little clearer and Romain (the Frenchie) and I hiked to some really cool labyrinth-like ruins on one side of the island before taking the boat back to Copacabana.
After that I continued on to La Paz and spent two days there hanging out with Tarik (the Moroccan), visiting markets and museums, and the usual stuff you do in cities. While Lake Titicaca is the highest freshwater lake in the world, La Paz boasts being the highest capital, at something like 3800 meters above sea level. The main part of the city is situated in a bit of a valley, but like Lima, the outer boundaries of the city just keep growing due to people migrating there from the country, and from several lookout towers in the city you can see just how packed all the buildings are on the side of the mountains. It's pretty impressive.
It just so happened that Tarik was also planning on doing a tour of the salt flats and desert near Uyuni, so I decided to go with him. It was a very uncomfortable 12-hour overnight bus ride down to Uyuni, which is a freezing cold, isolated and desolate town which earns its livelihood almost completely from tourism. There are dozens of tour agencies that do three-day tours of the desert, and we ended up going with a different tour agency than we had made the reservation with, which apparently happens a lot. The tour group consisted of me, Tarik, two youngish Polish couples, and a local tour guide and cook, all packed snugly into a jeep. The tour was memorable both for the spectacular scenery (only my photos can describe that, which I unfortunately might not be able to posr online until I get home) and for the fact that the tour itself was comically bad. The guide and cook seemed intent on speaking to us as little as possible. The jeep arrived at the tour agency an hour late the first day, then stopped at several places around town to pick up a few personal items and some food items that our guides had neglected to pick up beforehand. Every time we arrived at one of the sites the guide would tell us we had 15 minutes to walk around, then after ten minutes would yell, 'Let's go, let's go, we're late!' On top of that, the cook made a hot dog casserole for the two vegetarians on the trip, then on the last morning when we asked for the scrambled eggs we had been promised, said that there were eggs in the bread. She finally brought us a bowl of scrambled eggs but without forks and plates to eat it with. Following breakfast we revolted and spent an hour and a half in the hot springs mostly just to piss of the guide. Because of this we arrived lateat the town in which we were apparently supposed to stop and get gas (the guide had told us nothing about this, of course) and the gas station was closed. But instead of telling us that he was going to try to find the owner of the gas station, the guide pretended we were at another stop in the trip and asked if we wanted to get out and see the local market or church. This resulted in all of us being quite confused when we ended up waiting 45 minutes for him to come back. We arrived back in the frigid Uyuni at 8:30, 2 and a half hours late. The good thing was that we all got along really well and were able to laugh at all the silly mishaps. Unfortunately we arrived back too late to stage a protest in front of the travel agency.
At the point of reaching the Chilean border on the last day we parted with Tarik, who was continuing on to Valparaiso. Coincidentally, me and the two Polish couples all had the same plan, which was to move on to the religious and mining center of Potosi, where I am now. On the bus here I was sitting next to and chatting with a Bolivian guy who is studying in Sucre, which just happens to be my next destination. The city of Potosi supposedly has a fascinating history, of which I know little because I unfortunately do not have the Lonely Planet Guide to Bolivia (this appears to be an essential). My Bolivian friend told me that at some point in history it was the biggest city in the world. Anyway, despite my ignorance, I am highly looking forward to taking a tour of one of the cooperative mines tomorrow. More on this to come.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Two ridiculous mishaps
Ridiculous Mishap #1: The case of the stolen cell phone.
After spending a lot of time bragging about how I haven't gotten mugged or robbed the entire time I've been in Latin America, the latter finally happened. Of course, it happened on the day of Inti Raymi, the biggest festival in Cuzco, when all of the robbers come out. I was on a bus going back from Sacsaywaman and forgot that I had my cell phone in my pocket. The bus was prety crowded and as I was getting off I felt someone behind me slip my cell phone out of my pocket. I yelled, 'Hey! Someone just stole my cell phone!' but no one did anything. It occurred to me that there was absolutely nothing I could do given that I didn't know who had taken it and everyone was getting off the bus. Well, if something had to get stolen from me, I figured, better my $25 cell phone than something more valuable.
The next day I went to one of the offices of the cell phone company I was using, Telefonica, to have them block my number. Seeing as Telefonica is the biggest and most well-established phone companies in Peru, you’d think they’d have their act together at least for issues as common as stolen cell phones, but no. I waited in line for 20 minutes just for the woman there to tell me to dial 123 on one of their phones in the office, and then to find that that number didn’t go through, and that the woman had no interest in listening to me anymore. Finally after waiting another ten minutes with her ignoring me and throwing a minor fit, she told me that the system was not currently in operation, that I’d have to wait an hour. In response to this I stormed out of the office and came back the next day only to find that the number still didn’t work.
In the meantime, I rented another cell phone from a friend and decided to call my old number just to see what happened. To my surprise, a woman answered. The conversation went something like this:
Woman: Hallo?
Me: Hi, who is this?
Woman: Hallo?
Me: This is the owner of the phone you’re using.
Woman: What?
Me: That phone was stolen from me a few days ago. The phone you have is a stolen phone.
Woman: Oh. Well someone sold it to me.
Me: Well, in any case I’m going to have to block the account because you’re using a phone that’s still in my name.
Woman: Name a time and place to meet and I’ll return it to you.
Me: OK, do you know where the Parque España is in Santa Monica? How about we meet there at 5:30.
Woman: OK.
I went with Rosita to meet the woman in the place we had arranged. We even told the local police about what had happened and asked them to hang around for awhile in case the woman tried to ask me for money for my stolen cell phone. By 6:00 she still hadn’t showed up, and when I called my cell phone again she said she would be right there. At 6:15 I tried to call again, and my cell phone was turned off. The next day I went to a different office of Telefonica and they blocked my number for me with no problem. I really don’t understand bureaucracy.
Ridiculous Mishap #2: Bad Water
Last night I went out dancing with Braddy and some of his friends, and decided that staying at his house was a better idea than coming back really late to my house and waking up my entire family. I was sleeping in the same room where he does his painting, and in the middle of the night I woke up really thirsty, saw a brand-name bottle of water on the floor next to his painting materials, and started to drink it. I drank about half the bottle. Well, the next morning when I woke up I looked at the water and realized it didn’t look so clean. It was slightly yellowish in color and there were some particles floating on the bottom. ‘Braddy, one little question,’ I said. ‘Where is this water from?’
Braddy: Oh, shit. Did you drink that?
Me: Yeah, I was thirsty in the middle of the night and didn’t realize how gross it was.
Braddy (laughing): That water is from the ocean in Chile. When my friends travel I always ask them to bring water back for me because I like to paint with water from all different places. It’s part of my mystique.
Me: Oh, well if it’s from the ocean in Chile that’s not so bad. I was afraid it was tap water from here.
Braddy: No, it shouldn’t be that bad, just a little salty.
Me: Strange, it didn’t taste salty.
Braddy (10 minutes later): Oh shit. You know what, I just realized, that other bottle is the water from Chile, the one you were drinking is water from Pisac. (Pisac is a rural town about an hour outside of Cuzco)
Me: Oh. Well, that’s not good.
Braddy: No, that’s kind of bad. You better start taking antibiotics. That water is loaded with little creatures.
Me: OK, I have some antibiotics here actually. What water should I use to swallow the pill?
Braddy: Use the Chilean water, it’s cleaner. No, just kidding, I’ll boil some.
And so I am temporarily back on antibiotics. I can only hope that my body doesn’t become a giant safe haven for antibiotic resistant bacteria by the time I get back to the states.
After spending a lot of time bragging about how I haven't gotten mugged or robbed the entire time I've been in Latin America, the latter finally happened. Of course, it happened on the day of Inti Raymi, the biggest festival in Cuzco, when all of the robbers come out. I was on a bus going back from Sacsaywaman and forgot that I had my cell phone in my pocket. The bus was prety crowded and as I was getting off I felt someone behind me slip my cell phone out of my pocket. I yelled, 'Hey! Someone just stole my cell phone!' but no one did anything. It occurred to me that there was absolutely nothing I could do given that I didn't know who had taken it and everyone was getting off the bus. Well, if something had to get stolen from me, I figured, better my $25 cell phone than something more valuable.
The next day I went to one of the offices of the cell phone company I was using, Telefonica, to have them block my number. Seeing as Telefonica is the biggest and most well-established phone companies in Peru, you’d think they’d have their act together at least for issues as common as stolen cell phones, but no. I waited in line for 20 minutes just for the woman there to tell me to dial 123 on one of their phones in the office, and then to find that that number didn’t go through, and that the woman had no interest in listening to me anymore. Finally after waiting another ten minutes with her ignoring me and throwing a minor fit, she told me that the system was not currently in operation, that I’d have to wait an hour. In response to this I stormed out of the office and came back the next day only to find that the number still didn’t work.
In the meantime, I rented another cell phone from a friend and decided to call my old number just to see what happened. To my surprise, a woman answered. The conversation went something like this:
Woman: Hallo?
Me: Hi, who is this?
Woman: Hallo?
Me: This is the owner of the phone you’re using.
Woman: What?
Me: That phone was stolen from me a few days ago. The phone you have is a stolen phone.
Woman: Oh. Well someone sold it to me.
Me: Well, in any case I’m going to have to block the account because you’re using a phone that’s still in my name.
Woman: Name a time and place to meet and I’ll return it to you.
Me: OK, do you know where the Parque España is in Santa Monica? How about we meet there at 5:30.
Woman: OK.
I went with Rosita to meet the woman in the place we had arranged. We even told the local police about what had happened and asked them to hang around for awhile in case the woman tried to ask me for money for my stolen cell phone. By 6:00 she still hadn’t showed up, and when I called my cell phone again she said she would be right there. At 6:15 I tried to call again, and my cell phone was turned off. The next day I went to a different office of Telefonica and they blocked my number for me with no problem. I really don’t understand bureaucracy.
Ridiculous Mishap #2: Bad Water
Last night I went out dancing with Braddy and some of his friends, and decided that staying at his house was a better idea than coming back really late to my house and waking up my entire family. I was sleeping in the same room where he does his painting, and in the middle of the night I woke up really thirsty, saw a brand-name bottle of water on the floor next to his painting materials, and started to drink it. I drank about half the bottle. Well, the next morning when I woke up I looked at the water and realized it didn’t look so clean. It was slightly yellowish in color and there were some particles floating on the bottom. ‘Braddy, one little question,’ I said. ‘Where is this water from?’
Braddy: Oh, shit. Did you drink that?
Me: Yeah, I was thirsty in the middle of the night and didn’t realize how gross it was.
Braddy (laughing): That water is from the ocean in Chile. When my friends travel I always ask them to bring water back for me because I like to paint with water from all different places. It’s part of my mystique.
Me: Oh, well if it’s from the ocean in Chile that’s not so bad. I was afraid it was tap water from here.
Braddy: No, it shouldn’t be that bad, just a little salty.
Me: Strange, it didn’t taste salty.
Braddy (10 minutes later): Oh shit. You know what, I just realized, that other bottle is the water from Chile, the one you were drinking is water from Pisac. (Pisac is a rural town about an hour outside of Cuzco)
Me: Oh. Well, that’s not good.
Braddy: No, that’s kind of bad. You better start taking antibiotics. That water is loaded with little creatures.
Me: OK, I have some antibiotics here actually. What water should I use to swallow the pill?
Braddy: Use the Chilean water, it’s cleaner. No, just kidding, I’ll boil some.
And so I am temporarily back on antibiotics. I can only hope that my body doesn’t become a giant safe haven for antibiotic resistant bacteria by the time I get back to the states.
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