after my little cycling escapade in argentina, i came straight to
peru (lima, to be exact,) to meet up with pamela, my
workmate-cum-friend while i was in santiago,chile. she had come back
home for her 3-week holiday, and it was a great opportunity to get to
know her family, friends, city, - in short, *her*, - through her eyes.
if i´d been alone, i would have given peru´s capital city a
cursory visit anyway (my curiosity dating back to primary school when
constable sharon taught us the military alphabet - lima being 1 of only
2 cities in the code, and sounding so much more exotic than
quebec), but i would probably have done a touristic circuit, visiting
the main attractions. as it was, however, i spent 10 days peppering
Pame with questions about everything, and learning more about local
´habits´ (for want of a better word) than i ever could have through a
guidebook or from the tourist information.
as a random example: the intracity bus companies are privately
owned, and there´s lots of them, leading to quite a bit of competition
as various companies travel the same route. as a result, the
fare-collectors lean out the door shouting their respective bus´s
destinations, and waving as many passengers onboard as possible before
rival buses arrive. since the more of the route the bus covers, the
more passengers get on, these usually grumpy-faced fellows are quite
anxious to waste as little time as possible for trivial details such as
passenger safety or polite service. cries of ´come on, hurry up, get
on/off!´, accompanied by (sometimes not-so-)gentle shoves while the
bus was still moving were the standard. the whole affair can be quite
intimidating to a newcomer, and i imagine almost terrifying if you
don´t speak spanish - throughout the whole time that i was in lima, i
never once saw another tourist on a bus.
another interesting aspect of the bus system was the presence of
´sapos´ (literally ´toads´) near the main busstops. as each bus passes,
these guys note down the time, the bus company, and the route that that
particular bus is travelling. this valuable information is bought by
the fare-collector (usually just a coin or two is given) so that he can
judge whether to tell the driver of his bus to slow down (if there´s
competition too close ahead) or speed up (if there´s a lag since the
last bus along that route) in order to maximise passenger pick-up.
sometimes these sapos are actually employed by the bus companies, but
others freelance their toadiness!
of course, with food never far from my mind, having Pame explain
all the strange and wonderful food items on offer was the best! so many
different varieties of corn cooked and prepared in so many different
ways, roadside vendors with everything from grilled banana to roasted
barley drinks, sweet potato and yam chips instead of the regular
variety... and the meat! (i´m no longer vegetarian, preferring to try
everything at least once) stirfried cow stomach, skewered chunks of
heart, cebiche (fish or other seafood cooked in spiced lemonjuice) ...
and guinea pigs! roasted, baked, fried, boiled... can´t wait to try the
llama dishes in the altiplano...
on a more intimate level, it was a pleasure to spend time in
Pame´s home. her family would be slotted into the lower middle class,
which means that while they´ve got a home, the family budget is pretty
tight. bills have to be prioritised (as opposed to all of them being
paid on time), and there are various installations/repairs in the house
that have been set for a later date. some examples include putting
doors in the doorways (at the moment, curtains are all that separate
the closet-sized ´bathroom´, and the girls´ room from the main stretch
running through the house (to call this stretch a ´hallway´ or
´corridor´ would be a joke)); putting glass in the windows (currently
partly boarded up with plywood, with a bit of space at the top for
ventilation); and regulating the hotwater system (my first few showers
were spent electrifying myself when i switched on the hot water, but
this problem was soon solved when the fuse broke and i showered with
cold water for the rest of my stay). but as Pame wrote to me before i
arrived, ´my house is tiny in size, but big in heart´, and nothing
could be more true!
(for more photos: 'lima' photo gallery)
