Monday, August 15, 2022
The Doctor and I made contact a few times on Sunday just tying up loose ends, and expressing mutual hopes that the rest of the trip would fall into place and go as smoothly as can be expected. He had managed to reschedule a one day tour of Lake Titicaca with the same tour group we had originally booked the two day tour and overnight home stay, and we are both glad that we will at least get to see some of the floating islands. He was still finding it difficult communicating with people in Lima, said he felt like a "deaf mute". Almost everyone I had talked to about this trip had told me that English was widely spoken in Lima and we wouldn't have any trouble there, but might at some of our other destinations. Apparently this has not been The Doctor's experience, and I can only imagine the difficulty we might face in Puno and Cusco.
He told me he went to a movie yesterday. He saw "Captain America". It had been dubbed in Spanish, with no subtitles. He knew this before he bought the ticket, and almost didn't go in, but finally decided to go ahead. He figured being an action movie, dialogue couldn't be all that important anyway. His choice to see a movie in a language he can't understand I can take only as further proof of how unimpressed he is with Lima. You would think he would have tried to find something else to do while visiting the capitol city of a foreign country to which he had never been. Upon leaving the movie he passed a church and could hear them singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" (in Spanish). The music drew him in, and he sat through a Catholic Mass in Spanish.
Monday morning, my Knight's Limo Van driver was about 20 minutes early; I was barely dressed! When I went out, he said to me: "They picked the right guy to pick you up. I knew right where you were". When I asked why that was, he said "I was friends with your father for many years." His name was William (Bill) Weisher, and he had known my father since he was a student at Atlantic Union College, back when my father was still running the Esso Station on Main Street in South Lancaster. He told me he had been at my father's funeral, and he remembered me giving the eulogy. He said he also knew my step-mother Lois well. When I asked if he had known my mother (Mae), he said he had known OF her, but didn't really know her.
Again, we made a couple stops to pick up attendees of the Clinical Hypnotists Convention. At the first stop, I heard some women outside the van discussing how flights from Logan were delayed two hours because of the heavy rains we have been having. That put me on edge; I had a three hour layover in Ft. Lauderdale, and a two hour delay would be cutting it a little too close for my peace of mind. I did not want miss that flight a second time!
My fellow van passengers were another man who sat next to me, and two women behind me, all hypnotists. One of the ladies was a pretty woman sporting pigtails whose name was Tina. We were all surprised when she said she had a 25 year old son, as she didn't look too much older than that herself (her youngest is only 5, and she said he is the one who keeps her young!) The other woman had a Spanish accent, and her name was Valentina. She was amazed that the first woman's name was Tina, as that had been her nickname when she was younger. But now " . . . when people ask me my name, I tell them it is Valentina. They ask 'Would you liked to be called Tina?', and I tell them, if I wanted to be called Tina, I would have said you may call me Tina . . ."
So anyway, Tina (as I like to call her) was an interesting character. She seemed to be quite obsessed with Pigtail Tina, and kept finding other amazing coincides (besides their names) that she believed connected them on a some sort of spiritual plain. There was something she saw in her eyes that was in her own eyes, and she spent several minutes trying to help Pigtail Tina find - and open - her "Third Eye" by rubbing a spot in the center of her forehead. She was almost conducting a therapy session with Pigtail Tina, even asked her quite out of the blue if she got along with her mother. She talked a lot about energy, and about Tesla, (who I believe she referred to as "The Master Of The World") and his ability to create earthquakes . . . At one point, the gentleman next to me told her she must be exhausted at the end of the day, due to all the energy she puts out. I think she was a little offended by that, maybe not exactly sure how she was meant to take it, and said she it was her hope that her energy was constructive.
At the airport, both the gentleman and Tina got off first, leaving me and Pigtail Tina in the van. We just kind of looked at each other, and indicating the empty seat next to her, I said "She was interesting . . . " Thinking I also was also from the convention, she asked if all hypnotists were so into the whole energy thing. She was surprised to learn I wasn't a hypnotist. She agreed that Tina had indeed been an interesting person, though she said she hadn't felt particularly "threatened" by her. I said I wondered how she felt the whole time Tina had been trying to find her third eye, and she said she herself just really wasn't into all of those aspects of the profession, but it seemed that many people she had met at the convention were. Although energy may not have been her thing, I much preferred Pigtail Tina's energy to that of Don't-Call-Me-Tina's. She seemed more grounded and far less intense - third eye or no third eye!.
I was next to be dropped off, and I gave Bill a slightly larger tip than I normally would have, in part because I had nothing smaller, but I didn't mind since he had been a good friend of my father's. I checked in, and was happy to learn that I would not be charged the $35.00 for checking my bag on this flight, as I had already been charged on Friday, when neither my bag nor myself had actually gone anywhere. Again I made it through security, and back to the same gate I had been to on Friday. I was happy to see that the flight's scheduled departure time did not seem to be delayed on account of the weather.
Soon an older woman and her young grandson - who was going to be traveling as an Unaccompanied Minor - came and sat across from me. He looked like a young Anthony Soprano. She gave him a ten dollar bill and he went off and came back with a soda and some gum, and gave his grandmother a dollar in change. She was quite suspicious that he had ripped her off, but his only response to her questions was to shrug his shoulders carelessly and tell her airport prices where high. Admittedly they are, but later I went investigating just to satisfy my own curiosity. Gum at the closest kiosk ran between $2.00 - $3.00, and the sodas were around $2.40. If my calculations are correct, the little con artist bilked his grandmother out of a minimum of $3.60. Charming young man.
Finally it was time to board, and soon and to my great relief my plane took off. It was roughly 72 hours after my original departure time, but at last I was on my way!
The flight was mostly uneventful, with the exception of the one or two very young children seated behind me who were either crying and shrieking, or kicking and hitting the back of my seat. There may have only been one of them . . . but it sounded and felt like two. I was happy to notice that the Spirit Airlines provided helpful instructions on the proper disposal of annoying children. . . .
Also, I am pretty sure the rather creepy man at the end of my row was hitting on the young woman sitting between us. I believe he actually called her "doll" at one point. I don't think he won her over.
We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale an hour or so late, but that was no big deal as my outbound flight was already listed as being 45 minutes behind schedule. The airport was - much to my surprise - small and over crowded. If felt like a snowbound airport around the holidays. There was one bank of may 5 or 6 electrical outlets, and a few other individual ones scattered around the airport, and every single one was being used by someone charging up their cell phones or plugging in their lap tops. The food service was also somewhat disappointing. The one restaurant or ("pub") had a long line that never seemed to dwindle. I got some "roasted vegetable sliders" at a kiosk, which I ate later on the plane, and they were surprisingly tasty. Spirit Airlines does not give you so much as a bag of peanuts. They have a snack menu, with overpriced items listed for sale.
I knew gay "superstar" Matthew Rush lived in Ft. Lauderdale. I follow him on Twitter, and while I was waiting I sent him a Tweet saying "I'm at the Ft. Lauderdale airport on a brief layover on my way to Peru. Would you humor me with a wave in my general direction?" I was delightfully surprised several minutes when later he Tweeted back: "Wave! Wave!" I am sure he has all but forgotten about it by now, but for a brief moment of time, Matthew Rush knew I existed . . .
Our flight was an hour or so late taking off. The plane was probably 2/3 full, and I had an empty seat next to me. I heard the stewardess telling an older, long legged gentleman traveling with this wife that if he would be more comfortable he could move back to the exit row (where I was), where there is a little more leg room. He started back, but when he saw he would be between two other people he began to return to his first seat. By this time his wife had moved over into his aisle seat, and while I could not hear what was said between them, it appeared that he was no longer welcome . . . so he came back and sat next to me for awhile. He kept squirming around, and I could tell his back was hurting, a fact he eventually confirmed. He got up again and went toward the back of the plane and was gone for some time. When he returned he went back and sat with his wife, so I ended up having the extra room for most of the flight anyway.
We arrived in Lima about a half our late, which was not bad all things considered. I was very nervous about going through immigration and customs, but that went off with out any issues - and I finally got my my passport stamped for the very first time!
According to Yeshica's e-mail, someone would be there to meet me, with - as she put it - " . . . a Pirwa signbaord where gonna be write your anem." When I came around through customs I passed through an area where there were a few men in suits holding signs, but none of them were my name, and I figured they were too well dressed to be from a hostel anyway. I continued on, thinking my pick up would probably be outside, but as I rounded the corner I saw a whole sea of people waiting. I assume most were there for family and friends but there were a LOT of signs waving in the air too - so many in fact it could easily have passed for some sort of political protest. I made several passes by them scanning the names, and those holding the signs waved them frantically at me hoping I was who they were there for. But nowhere did I see my name. One man a bit back in the throng was holding a sign that read "Freddy Ponce" and considering all the communication problems I had had with Pirwa, I wondered if perhaps he was there for me.
Finally some kind of taxi agent asked who I was looking for, and kindly offered to call Pirwa on his cell phone for me. He told me the number I had - the number Yolanda had called so many times - was actually in Cusco, not Lima, but it was the only number I had ever had for Pirwa, and he agreed to call it anyway, even though it was long distance. Of course no one answered - no big surprise there . . . We both agreed I should wait and look around for a few minutes, but he said if no one showed up he would have one of his taxis take me. He said something about waiting for an American woman to arrive, and she might be willing to share her cab with me.
No sooner had I left him than I finally saw a man holding a Pirwa sign with my name - correctly spelled no less!. He led me outside and we waited in line to pay the parking attendant. The driver seemed to moving around quite a bit, as if he were cold. After he payed the parking attendant, we headed to his car and on the way he said to me "Mucho frio!" It was exactly hot, but I didn't think it was uncomfortably cool either. He asked if I spoke Spanish, and I said no, and it was obvious he spoke very little English. Once at his car, he carelessly tossed the Pirwa signbaord with my anem on it into the trunk. During the ride he asked a couple more times if I spoke Spanish, and even talked to me a little in Spanish. I just nodded and smiled.
He had the radio on, and while the DJ and advertisements spoke Spanish, probably 2/3 of the songs where in English. Most of them were cheesy old pop love songs, and I was reminded of a passage I had read just that day on the plane from Mark Adams' book "Turn Right At Machu Picchu". He was writing about the popularity of bad 80s music in Peru, and his "theory on the matter" is this. ". . . the record companies in New York and London gathered together all the millions of cassettes and CDs that they couldn't sell, even marked down to 99 cents at truck stops and shipped them off to Peru, where they were were air-dropped all across the country . . . " That pretty much described what I was listening to. The one possible exception was "Hotel California", which I consider something of a classic. But hearing that particular number while being driven to a hostel by a stranger in a foreign city was, I have to admit, a bit unnerving.
It was after dark of course (the plane arrive around 10:30 PM), but I was still able to get some little feel for what Lima was like. I only saw small a fraction of it, and I am sure there are parts of it that are more deplorable, but what I did see was not as grim as what The Doctor had described. I saw nothing that boarded on affluent, but nothing that implied dire poverty either. It had a very different feel from American cities, mostly in the style and structure of the buildings. And there billboards and advertisements everywhere you looked - many of them for Coca-Cola. Another thing I noticed right away, and which I thought was pretty cool were the traffic lights, which are a little more high tech than ours. They have a digital countdown on both the red and green lights, so you know exactly how many seconds are left before the light changes. We have those on pedestrian signals, but not on the traffic lights. I didn't see any homeless people, or at least any that were obviously homeless. One thing I did see that I might not expect to see in an American city was a pack of probably 8 - 10 stray dogs gathered on a street corner who appeared to be eating something.
We drove past a long stretch of road that ran along the Atlantic Ocean according to my driver, but I couldn't really see it because it was dark. We finally turned up a hill, and into the Miraflores district, which had a grand entrance, and felt almost like entering a private gated community. Once inside however, I didn't notice much of difference from where we had just been.
Finally we arrived at the Pirwa Inclan Hostel, and I paid the driver, using Nuevo Soles - the Peruvian currency - for the first time. My guide book said it is not customary to tip taxi drivers in Peru, but he wasn't really a taxi driver, and I am so used to doing it I went ahead and gave him a s/5.00 any way. The ride was s/15.00; in US dollars the total was around $5.50!
The driver rang the bell of the hostel, and a man came to the door wearing a chullo hat and let me in. He spoke marginal English, and asked if I had a reservation, and I told him I was with the Doctor. He nodded, then asked for my passport which he made a copy of. We went back outside into a small, locked courtyard and pointed up a staircase to a door at the top. I went up and knocked, and the Doctor answered. We were so glad to see each other at last!
The room, was actually a "dorm" room with 2 sets of bunk beds but we were the only two in it. It was very small but clean and rather cozy. Right outside the door was a small patio. I think The Doctor had had another room for most of his stay but had been moved here for the last night. We visited for a bit, and then went to bed. We had an early morning flight. It was after midnight when I arrived, and we had to set the alarm for 2:45!
Good night's sleep!
ReplyDeleteNice adventure so far.
I really like Latin American culture so I would be happy to visit Lima again someday.