Peruvian ways (Peru)

February 2015:  Unearthed my journal from my first trip to Peru in June 1986, and these excerpts (in chronological order of occurrence as we travelled from Lima up to Cuzco) just make me chuckle:

Excerpt 01:  Pisco.  We packed and bought tickets for the 3.15pm [long distance Pisco-to-Ica bus].  The wall chart at the bus terminus says 3pm and 3.30pm, and then the bus left at 2.40pm!  I suppose this is how you filter out overcrowding — by wrong-footing the passengers with crazy, shifting time-keeping!

[NB: Being a long distance bus service, they wouldn’t have had a bus leaving at 3pm, one at 3.15pm, one at 3.30pm, which is too frequent at 15-minute intervals, so it must've been purely the Peruvian fluid time-keeping. ed.]

Excerpt 02:  2.5-hour journey [from Ica] to Nazca.  Well, add to that an hour late in departing from Ica.  The driver then stopped for lunch about half an hour out of Ica despite protests from passengers.

Excerpt 03:  Nazca.  The two strange American chaps (one doing weights, the other very dark skinned with greyish hair) were leaving for Chile via Tacna.  Their bus was something like an hour late — we should’ve booked the 7.30pm instead of the 9.30pm then for Arequipa!  Sure enough, our bus came at about 10.30, and then we found two women in our seats.  The driver finally got a chap with an empty seat next to him to move to the back.  I’m sure two other chaps also got moved off the bus to make room for us but maybe I was wrong.

Excerpt 04:  Cuzco.  Arrived from Juliaca after sundown.  Collected at the train station by mini-bus, 10 of us tourists packed in like the locals are, and driven through unlit streets.  We were told that we were going this way into town because the direct route had suffered the effects of an earthquake.  At one point, the driver turned left into another unlit street and I saw the headlights of two mini-buses coming towards us, side by side.  It was one overtaking the other just before the junction!  I let out a long and low, “Ohhhhhhhhh…!” and the other passengers laughed at me.  Somehow, in a Peruvian sort of way, we managed to avoid a head-on collision.  With nine gringos in the bus, it was laughed off — the locals would probably not even have noticed it, let alone bat an eyelid.

[Gringo: what Peruvians call (usually white) foreigners — one version says this is from when the latter first arrived and, homesick, used to sing around the campfires, Green Grow The Rushes (in their own homeland).  You can google for more precise versions.]

Excerpt 05:  Cuzco.  Outside the [hotel] bathroom window which overlooks the Indian shacks by the Machu Picchu railway track under the bridge, the train was leaving noisily for Machu Picchu, hooting its way out of town like it does into town.  I remember the TV series Great Railway Journeys of the World — the one on Peru was about the world’s highest railway:  as the train was getting out of town, it had to hoot continuously because there were people selling, working, resting on the tracks.  People gathered up their things and chickens, and one peasant had a goat which refused to budge, so the train had to stop until the animal could be persuaded.

Excerpt 06:  Cuzco.  Tried to look for the Viasa office to change date of departure from Peru from the 20^th to the 27^th, giving us one more week to enjoy Cuzco.  It turned out to be a nightmare — everyone (including the traffic policeman in a little kiosk in the middle of the long road where the Viasa office was meant to be, according to the guide book) giving us wrong directions rather than saying they didn’t know.  

[ed., 2015:  This was something the guide book did warn us against:  Peruvians, or maybe all South Americans, will just give you any answer rather than say they don’t know.]

Excerpt 07:  Cuzco.  The man at the camping equipment hire shop said we could go back the next morning to collect the equipment, saying that they open at 9.  I said, “So we’ll see you at 9.”  He said, “No, come at 10.”  I said, “I thought you said you open at 9?”  He said, “Yes, 9, 10, something like that.  Come at 10.”

(Peru, 1986)

Customer service Peruvian style (Peru)

We spent two nights in Nazca, which was quite sufficient for the little place, having done the Cessna flight over the Nazca lines and the little local museums.  

Nick had gone down with a bad tummy — he thought it might’ve been the Chinese roast duck noodles he'd had back in the previous town, Ica, at a chifa (see blog entry Chifa) — so I was appointed to go and get the tickets for the overnight bus to Arequipa.  As I didn’t speak any Spanish, he gave me the list of questions — in Spanish, which I wrote down, to put to the man at the bus terminus.

The bus terminus was housed in the middle of a terraced row on the main street, looking like, and about the size of, a small town shop or restaurant with the whole of the frontage opened up.  As you went in, there was a long counter on the left, running away from you from the front to the back, behind which was the man dealing with ticket sales, among other things.  On the right, against the wall, was a long wooden bench running the length of the room for people to sit on, facing the counter.

As I went in, the man was dealing with someone, then it was my turn.  I started off by asking him if he spoke English, to which he replied, “Muy muy poco.”  So I had to resort to my list in Spanish.

I asked him the first question on my list:  What time was the bus to Arequipa?  He answered it, repeating it when requested to and waiting patiently while I painstakingly converted it — I find numbers in most languages the hardest to grasp for speedy daily use, and because they’re the most basic and frequently used in any language, they’re always very speedy.  

Then someone came in to get a ticket, and as I wasn’t in a hurry, I deferred to that person.  After that person left, back to my list of questions:  What time was it arriving at Arequipa?  He gave me the answer.  Another slow conversion, with the man showing no sign of impatience at all.

A long distance passenger coach arrived, and the man had to hand over the sack of post for it, with all the paperwork it entailed.  I waited to one side.

To my list of questions again:  How much were the tickets each?  He was about to answer the question when another long distance passenger coach arrived, this time with a sackload of post for him to receive and process the paperwork for it.  

As he was doing this, I happened to look up at the wall behind him, on which was written all the information I wanted (which I hadn't noticed before, for some reason — being too short maybe??): which bus went where when and how much the tickets cost.

The man had fielded each of my questions good-naturedly, with courtesy and patience, in spite of all the chores that rightly required his personal attention, coming back to me for the next question and the next, when he could've drawn my attention to the board behind him, which would've saved himself a lot of work.  

Such was my general experience in my three weeks on that trip and a subsequent three-week trip 16 months later.  In spite of their obvious poverty, the Peruvians are very good-natured, when one might expect them to be grumpy and stressed out by the sheer grind of eking out a living, so poverty is no reason, not even excuse, for rude and horrible behaviour.  They make the visitor, even the ignorant ones like me, feel very welcomed.   

I’d never seen them being short, brusque, abrupt and rude with their own kind either, unlike another, much less poverty-stricken, country — that I shall leave unnamed (for now) — where there's constant shouting and yelling, among other things.  They might want to look to Peru for some lessons to be gleaned.

(Nazca, Peru, 1986)

Blog Chifa:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/07/chifa.html