More of Lumbisí...
The universe's best dryer.
More dogs than people, not kidding.
Learning to walk.
These past 10 days have been the most fun and most terrible of my stay here. Fortunately it started out terrible and turned amazing. My two friends, Hannah and Alyssa, and I left for the airport on Wednesday after class for our plane to Lima, Peru. Hannah and I arrived two hours before, but waited for our Alyssa who was taking a midterm for a while before we checked in. Check-in went smoothly, and we arrived at the gate twenty minutes or so before our boarding time. The screen next to the gate said “pre-boarding” and no one was in line. A woman checked our boarding passes and told us to wait until we hear our rows called. About 10 minutes past our leaving time the screen changed to “departed” and I ran up to ask what happened. “Se fue” are the worst Spanish words ever. Our plane left right in front of our eyes. Three intelligent college students managed to miss a plane while being at the gate before boarding time. We must have been in the bathroom when the plane boarded early and the woman who checked our boarding passes didn’t notice we were supposed to be on the plane. After those terrible two words, a woman whisked us off to the office and we eventually paid about $150 to change our flight to 24 hour later after fighting it for an hour in Spanish. They told us the only thing we could do was send a letter, and changing our flights with the same airline was the cheapest option. There was a moment I thought I wasn’t going to Peru. None of us had any extra money so all three of us, crying, called our parents for guidance. It made me realize how we are still not quite independent yet. Hannah and I went home together and the taxi driver ripped us off. He claimed that I didn’t say “el parque” (the park) of Lumbisí, when I clearly did, and he changed the price on us because it was farther than he wanted to drive. We were too upset to argue, though, and with our luck that night…
I could barely sleep because I knew I had to change my connecting flight with another airline the next day, which was the most disastrous and stressful part of this disaster. I spent hours trying to get someone to talk to me, partially with mi padre on the phone, trying to explain the situation. Understanding Spanish on the phone is difficult, but when I got switched to an English speaker (multiple different ones) it was worse. Their English was a few nouns and uncongagated verbs with a poor accent even though I was transferred to “English speakers.” Mi padre was trying to help, but he was making it worse, asking if I wanted frequent flier miles and not understanding that I simply needed to change my flight to the next day. Sometimes he just doesn’t listen to me. He also has never flown with an airline. I thought I was never going to make it to Peru and spent the whole morning in tears because I had lost so much time and money over something so preventable.
However, he somehow got someone to change my flight for free, when it should’ve cost $50. Hannah had to change it for that amount and Alyssa didn’t reserve her flight that morning so she needed a different flight without us, which was the first of many problems of her trip. We did the exact same thing the next day, except we arrived 3 hours early (taking no chances that time). Everything went smoothly, and we planned on camping out in the airport in Lima because our connecting flight was at 5:45am, but after talking to a guard, we decided against it. We slept in a hostel for 3 hours and returned to the airport without our other friend, who was on a flight much later. A taxi driver ripped us off by charging us $30 for an 8-minute ride. He said it’s because he was “official.” He told us 30 when we got into the taxi, which we assumed was in soles, Peru’s currency, which is equivalent to $10, but he meant dollars. We ended up paying a lot of money for a paltry 3 hours of sleep.
Statue or human...or both?
In Cusco.
We were one of the few people to go to Macchu Pichhu and see the surrounding sites without any guides, which would have been nearly impossible without knowing some Spanish. It was so painless to be a vegetarian in Cusco (and Peru in general) and the food was great. We were still without our friend that day and the next because our friend missed her flight and was stranded in Lima with no money and no phone. My friend and I bought tickets to Machu Picchu and train tickets, but it was a confusing matter because Machu Picchu just opened up a few days before. The train tracks had been destroyed due to mudslides, and no one had the correct information, and according to a couple, who used to work for FEMA, said they were not ready to run the trains because it was chaos and hazardous.
In Machu Picchu/horror movie
Luckiest llamas.
Before Machu Picchu, we visited the Sacred Valley, seeing two beautiful and very different sites: Pisac and Ollantaytambo. Pisac was quite a hike and not crowed at all (we almost got lost), while Ollantaytambo was the opposite, compact and crowded. We ate a wonderful restaurant http://www.heartscafe.org/ that’s completely non-profit, which was recommended by a wacky retired Texan. We took taxis and buses until we got to our train to Aguas Calientes, where we stayed the night. Our friend couldn’t get the same train as we could so she took the train before us and couldn’t get a returning train. We expected her to be at our hostel waiting for us, but unbeknownst to us, she had seen Machu Picchu and left before we got there so our reservation was given to someone else. She had the wrong number of the hostel and our phones didn’t work in Peru, so we were worried about her. Our train was delayed a couple hours, so we arrived in Aguas Calientes near midnight with no hostel and no friend. We found one with vacancy and slept a few hours and woke up early to take a quick bus up to Machu Picchu. We climbed Waynapicchu, which is supposed to give you this amazing view of Machu Picchu, but it was cloudy. It was surreal and mystical nonetheless, an ancient world in the clouds surrounded by mammoth mountains. The buildings were impressive and the fact that no one knows why Machu Pichhu was built amongst these treacherous mountains makes me want to write trite superlatives and type multiple exclamation points. The train home was annoying because they simply cancelled our train without any sort of announcement. Hannah and I are always paranoid about missing transportation, so we did a good job of getting on the next train after asking half the train station if they were on our train.
Drizzle. Llovizna en Machu Picchu.
We left the next day for Lima and spent half a day touring the city. Lima is large, busy and loud, but we saw some beautiful parks in the center of the city by a double-decker tourist bus. We left next morning (another complicated affair—gate change without notification, signs, or screens and there was something wrong with Alyssa’s ticket) but we made it to Guayaquil and toured the city. Guayaquil was more noise and chaos, but we walked though some beautiful urban renewal projects: the excellent new boardwalk on the Pacific, the Malecón and an old but completely renovated section of town, Las Peñas. The next day we took a bus to Salinas, probably the nicest family beach in Ecuador. We went during the week during off-season, so the beach was not crowded, and our hostel was close to the water. It was a nice end to a crazy vacation. We all ended up getting burnt, but it was worth the perfect weather and water, but as for food, I had a nice long black hair in my lunch. I’m not picky about food, but it has to be food. Hygiene and service in restaurants in Ecuador is not what it is in the states. The waiter just smiled awkwardly and didn’t do anything until I took a look at the bill and told the waiter I wasn’t going to pay for my meal. Mi mamá said she found a bug in her meal once and told the waiter, but no one did anything.
We then took a two-hour bus to Guayaquil and an 8-hour night bus. It’s common for long-distance buses to get stopped during the night for checks. The first time police stopped our bus and had us all get out and they searched our bags. At 2 am, two policemen got on dressed in camouflage (police usually look like the military), and out of everyone in the bus, only checked Hannah’s and my passport and censo. I’m assuming it’s because we look the most foreign, and it was definitely discriminatory. If I were a minority in the U.S, I would be outraged if that happened, but because I’m in Ecuador, I guess have to go by their rules. I’m not going to argue with men in camo and big guns.
General thoughts. I feel much older and wiser after this trip. I hate the feeling of everyone trying to take advantage of me in Latin American countries. I think about my whiteness a lot. I hate the catcalls, whistles, words, and kissy noises I get for being a young woman. It was stressful not being with anyone older and more responsible, and I wish we had more time in each place so every day didn’t feel like the goal was to not miss transportation. Once I have enough money saved, I want to some serious traveling, like all the 30-somethings we met who took a year off to travel. None were American. I love how helpful fellow travelers and locals were. Losing money won’t ruin a trip. Tourist places are touristy for a reason.
