In Lima, on a muggy Wednesday afternoon,
we barely made the 2 p.m. bus to Huacachina. All the cooing doves had gone to
roost, and the strung-out taxi drivers were feeling the need to come down and
take a nap. The fumes choked me and burned my eyes. I wish I had worn my
bandana. The street vendors walking between the rows of cars at the stop lights
sold everything but bandanas. They had cold Inca Kolas in small soft ice bags,
cheap colorful toys and trinkets and balloons and newspapers. But no car-fume
masks. I thought of the Chinese on bicycles riding through Bejing. I took
breaths with my t-shirt to my mouth and nose and wondered if we were really
insane or not, on our way to “the dunes.” It was not too much unlike the early
1984 David Lynch movie “Dune,” with hopped-up spice heads replaced by drunken
dune-buggy drivers. That day, we rolled the dice. And there was a feeling of
freedom to it all and danger, even though we were not going anywhere. We were
just stuck in traffic.
At the bus station BC managed to
somehow exchange our tickets to Huacachina for Wednesday instead of Thursday,
and it wasn’t long before we were loading up onto a shiny black double-decker
tour bus. The inspector did not find the four beers we hid in my backpack
between cold 2-liter water bottles and some clothes. And this made for a nice
refreshment on the four-hour ride southeast through this barren, seaside
landscape of tan dirt. There were small huts dotting the
sand, and an occasional village with Coke and Cristal signs. It didn’t seem
possible that someone could live in these huts. Surely, I thought, they were
just storage units. But, no, this was a neighborhood. I didn’t see anyone
living in them, but they were surely around somewhere, possibly making these
reed mats I see everywhere used as fencing and sand-wind barriers. It just was
all too unreal, but I’m sure they would think the same thing about Calion. It
inspired me to live as simply as possible.
Viewing all of this through the
tinted windows was not enough. I needed to get down in there and eat the same
sandy chicken they were. Not this time. This time I was sipping cool beer on
the top of a bus, with a loud TV. Is background music a Peruvian
necessity? BC and I whiled away the time by
taking snapshots of … the basics. Sand. Barrios. Ourselves in the bus with a
panorama app. One of us had to take the backpack downstairs to the bathroom to
pour the beers into a water jug, to keep the stewardess from busting us out.
You’re not supposed to have beer on the bus. I have a ring that doubles as
a bottle opener. There’s a story to tell later about that ring when we got back
to Lima three days later. In
the meantime, the ring was serving us well. And by 7 p.m. we were 300 km down
the Pan-American Highway in the city of Ica.
This city of over 219,000 was full
of little three-wheeler taxis called Tuk Tuks, personalized with colorful
paintjobs. We took a regular taxi to Huacachina though, and I recently read
that in 2007 researchers found the fossil remains of a prehistoric penguin,
Icadyptes salasi, that lived in this region about 30 million years ago. It was
about 5 feet tall, with a foot-long beak. Common crops in this “Land
of the Sun” are cotton, grapes, asparagus, and olives. They rely on an aquifer
fed by glacial melt water, but due to overuse it is drying up. This is leading
to calls for more efficient irrigation, or adding dams and water diversions. I
have seen a documentary film about the U.S. government encouraging Peruvians to
grow asparagus instead of coca to cut down on drug imports. This unfortunately
led to a downturn for the asparagus farmers in Michigan, and the migrant labor
force it employed. But, on the upside, it encouraged the Michigans
(Michiganese? Michaganites? Michagonians? Michiganders?) to modify their market
with more costly and hippy-happy organic produce. I’m not sure how that helped
anyone exactly yet.
Coca leaf in its raw form, hoya de coca, seemed no worse
than chewing tobacco, or taking a caffeinated BC Powder. But, apparently, I
have heard, when you make it into cocaine, for strippers and other sad people,
you have to add chemicals that offset its medicinal value. I’m not defending
its use, or am I? I’m just saying it’s part of the culture there, as much as
chewing tobacco is in Mississippi. But in Mississippi, they don’t use Red Man
for altitude sickness or an upset stomach. Or do they? The Coca Candies in
little green packages at the store came in handy on the plane ride back. But
they sure do mess up your taste buds. My mouth felt weird for a week after
eating the last one.
That afternoon, at the Hotel
Mossone, there was vacancy in both rooms. In the wide courtyard
centering this 1920s colonial style resort by Huacachina Lagoon, I looked up
into the night sky to spot the Southern Cross. This was my first opportunity to
do so. The city lights in Lima don’t afford such a view. And I think I saw the
Crux. Orion the Hunter off to the southwest threw me off. I didn’t know he
would be here. I read now that Crux, the smallest of the 88 modern
constellations, is sometimes confused with the False Cross. It was one of the
two. I think I can mark it off of my list of things to do either way. “Crux is
somewhat kite-shaped, and it has a fifth star (Crucis). The False Cross is
diamond-shaped, somewhat dimmer on average, does not have a fifth star, and
lacks the two prominent nearby ‘Pointer Stars.” In case you’re wondering.
That night at the hotel’s restaurant
we ate possibly the best meal ever produced. That aji sauce needs to go global.
It’s the perfect blend of spices. We were lapping it up like hungry dogs. This
is a reason Peru is known as the Gastronomy Capital of South America. I told my
mother about these aji (peppers) and she found a website that sells all sorts
of Peruvian and South American favorites to gringos like me and Peruvians away
from home. It would have been good to have more friends at this time, to enjoy
the space and awesome edibles. But we made do with just two. And off to bed we
went to rest up for a big day of sand dune buggy riding and sliding. And
bouncing.
The feeling of sand bits hitting
your face at 30 mph is not necessarily the most pleasant feeling in the world,
but my skin did have a nice shine to it at the end of the day after I showered.
It’s what you might call an incidental micro-derm abrasion treatment. I can’t
recall our driver’s name, but he was a good fellow and drove us as fast as the
little 4-cylinder would allow arriba y abajo the great sand dunes of coastal
Peru. At one point overlooking this cinematic landscape he came to an abrupt
stop, and said “you want to slide?” I knew what he was talking about. Those
damn snow boards. The last time I attempted to do anything like this I nearly
broke my thumb. It was also on spring break, but in Colorado, in the snow. Me
and skis simply do not get along unless it is in a body of warm water. I have
all of this on video, from my perspective with those video glasses Dad got me.
But the short end of it is, I fell over 2 seconds into my run and went end over
end for about 30 feet. This cartwheel flying maneuver induced a good shot of
whip lash that exhorted its torment on me all the way home. I couldn’t feel
anything of course on the dunes. I was sufficiently dosed up with hoya de coca,
and Peru beers consumed at the store by the dunes while waiting on the buggy
driver. This became a trend for the rest of the day, as we each took on less
intense forms of Dr. Thompson and Oscar Zeta Acosta in an apparent attempt to
unlodge something festering in our brains.
Judging by my bizarre handwriting
--- asking questions about Haiti to el president Obamamama and the Time Warp drawing “Ahora Wharpa” – I can confidently report we achieved our twisted goal.
And it had nothing to do with slipping on the tile floor. I had slipped on it
before I was drunk, too. These glassy tiles were an uncommon safety hazard.
They are usually reserved for drunk-tank degenerates and time-bomb terrorists.
I could not wrap my head around it. How in the hell could they legally allow
these to be installed? It was inhumane. It was only something Steve Martin
could make me forget. And so we laughed ourselves to sleep listening to his
standup from the speaker of an iPad.
The next morning I awoke in a wicked underworld, where all sounds are amplified to wrenching levels and sunlight scalds eyeballs with blazing luminosity. BC's AADC (Above Average Drinking Capacity) is coupled with a Wolverine recovery rate. We got a quick breakfast, he got a beer, and we paid out. It was low rent, this place. Two nights for about $120, and the food was incredible and cheap. We and and drank like kings for two days on $60. That made it better, and I was coming around, but I wasn't ready to drink a beer yet. We hired a ride to Ica for a visit to the Museo Regional de Ica before stopping into another eatery, and then taking a bus ride back up north to Lima.
At the museum I had to sit down for
a few minutes. My stomach churned looking at those 500-year-old mummified human
remains. I tried reading the descriptions, but my eyes wanted to cross and
close. I managed to look head-on at one of the mummies for five seconds to get
my money’s worth. He was sitting down with his legs up to his chest. He looked
like Willie Nelson, with long reddish hair and a bandana. I saw mortality.
Laying in bed the following week I would imagine myself as a mummy, a thousand
years from now, as people walked around my remains and wondered the same thing
I did about him. “What did he do? Was he a sculptor … a painter … a farmer … a
writer? What names did he have for the stars? What was his favorite food? Did
he wear boots?” This caused a flaskback of the night before, when I slipped in the hotel room. I still had sand in my boots from the dune buggy ride and they made a loud, grinding noise as I walked along the tiled floor. I tried to be polite and step easy. Maybe it was just these damn boots causing all the problem....
Final Note
It was all a thrilling mad dash. A
little dangerous. Very dusty. And my mind is a bit wider than before. I have a
long way to go before I am able to travel to a Spanish-speaking country on my
own though. I will likely never stand up on a snow board again that wreck on
the sand hills of Huacachina. And I will never eat bus food again. (Forgot to
mention I got sick from the bus food.) And I had that feeling of impending doom
once too often in the back seat of a Lima taxi cab. At one point, a bus had
nearly hit my side of the car as the strung-out driver slipped the clutch and
stalled us in the middle of a busy intersection. And yet there seemed to be
very few accidents. Have they done studies on this? I lay awake at nights
thinking about the trip and its effects on me. Why had I not studied up more on
my Spanish before I left? Why did I lose my customs papers at the airport and nearly
miss my flight? When, if ever, will I return?
There are no perfect answers. Just
more questions. But one thing is for sure: The more you see, the less you know.
