WHERE NO ONE KNOWS MY ANEM

The Doctor flew out early this morning, and hopefully has arrived in Peru by now.  He will be attending a conference in Lima for the next few days.  In roughly 48 hours I will be joining him.

At this point, most of our travel arrangements have been made.  The Doctor took care of booking our flights, arranging our two day tour of Lake Titicaca (including an overnight home stay with a local family on Amantani Island ), and the bus trip from Puno to Cusco, known as The Amazing Trip. While it is tempting to picture a rickity bus careening though the Andes with farm animals strapped to the roof and local's clinging to the sides, it appears to actually be a very modern luxury touring coach, complete with "Oxygen and hygienic bathrooms" - you know that's gonna make for a good ride!

My responsibilities were to book our lodgings, and the transportation from Cusco to Machu Picchu.  Making the train & bus reservations to Machu Picchu were relatively simple (including having to arrange a shuttle through a company called Pachatusantrek to take us from the hostel in Cusco to the train station in Poroy); booking our rooms was a whole other story. 

While searching on line, I found a company called Pirwa, sort of a "hostel chain" that operates several hostels throughout Peru.  As we will be traveling around the country, and Pirwa has facilities at all the places we are going, I figured it would simplify matters to book everything through them.  This procedure involved a series of e-mails between myself and someone named Liset.  Liset seemed pleasant enough in her correspondence, but it soon became evident she was not clearly understanding my requests. 

I'll be the first to admit that our itinerary was a bit confusing - we'll be staying at 4 hostels over 11 days, three of them twice as we back track - but I began to suspect there was a bigger problem.  No matter how clearly I tried to explain our plans, Liset was only confirming our first few nights at their Lima hostel, and not addressing anything else.  Either she wasn't reading my emails in their entirety, or she wasn't fluent enough in English to understand my requests. 

I finally recruited my co-worker Yolanda to call Peru and talk directly to Liset in Spanish.  We bought an international calling card for Peru, and after making several futile attempts over a period of a few days, Yolanda finally got through to Pirwa.  Yolanda went over our itinerary in detail with Liset, who, as I suspected, was completely unaware of any of my requests beyond our initial stay in Lima.  Within just a few minutes of the end of the phone conversation, I received a very nice email from Liset, accurately confirming all of our reservations.

A few days later I attempted to arrange for Pirwa to pick both myself and The Doctor up at the Lima Airport.  (I should have had Yolanda do this when she called Liset, but at that time I did not have all our flight information handy.)  Again, I can understand how it might have been confusing, as The Doctor and I are not arriving together, so two different airport pickups are needed.  I attempted to make it as clear as possible, and even attached Liset's previous confirmation to my email to help clarify things.  Liset responded with information regarding the pick up fee, and then requested that I let her know my "destition".  At first I understood this to mean "destination", which almost sent me through the roof.  If Liset didn't know where the hostel was, how was I supposed to tell her?  But Yolanda read the e-mail and her understanding of it was that Liset was asking for my "decision" as to whether I was agreeable to pay the fee for the pickup. I sent an e-mail agreeing to the fee, but included our destination (their hostel) just in case. 

The next email from Pirwa was from someone named Yeshica.  Yeshica confirmed my pickup on Aug. 12th, adding that I would be met at the airport by someone with " . . . a Pirwa signbaord where gonna be write your anem." 

There was no mention of a pickup for The Doctor on the 10th. 

I replied, reminding her that I and The Doctor were arriving on separate dates, and we BOTH needed pickups.  A couple days went by, and when I didn't get any further confirmation, I once again asked Yolanda for assistance.  Again it took several attempts to make contact with anyone at Pirwa.  Occasionally Yolanda would get an answering machine and would leave a message; other times it appeared that someone had answered, but there was no verbal response.  On one try Yolanda stayed on the phone for eight minutes, listening to voices, music, and the sound of someone typing on a keyboard, but no answer to her repeated cries of "Hola?  Hola? Hola?"

Poor Yolanda is getting married on Friday, the same day I'm flying out (unfortunately I'll be missing her wedding), and was in the midst of writing vows and making seating charts.  She really had no time for this nonsense.  Anyone else probably would have given up, but the more obstacles Yolanda encounters, the more determined and tenacious she becomes.  It turned into a personal issue with her, and she wasn't going to give up until she got Yeshica, or Liset, or ANYONE at Pirwa on the phone. 

Finally she was successful; Yeshica answered and when Yolanda explained why she was calling Yeshica assured her that they did have all the information and had confirmed BOTH pick ups with me.  I won't say they didn't send it, but I will say I never got it . . .   Yolanda let her know all the difficulty she had had trying to reach them, and told her - politely (according to her, anyway . . . ) - that she thought they had a very unprofessional way of doing things. Yeshica had no comment.  I'm hoping she doesn't cancel our pick ups . . . or our hostel reservations . . .

I thought that concluded my responsibilities as far making arrangements for the trip.  Then last Friday, I got a rather desperate email from The Doctor, who was concerned that we may be turned away from Machu Picchu unless we purchased tickets in advance.  Certain individuals and web sites had given him that impression, but when he went to the Machu Picchu web site, he found most of it to be in Spanish.  There was an icon that was supposed to translate the page into English, but when he clicked it, only certain portions were translated, and it was still impossible for him to place an order.  So, he asked me to once again call upon Yolanda to help me navigate the site and place the order.

I was not expecting to see Yolanda again until Monday, so I asked my step-brother Joe to assist me.  Joe has actually visited Peru, and has a fairly decent grasp of the language, so we got together on Sunday, and attempted to place the order. Joe was very helpful, but occasionally we had to Google certain words or phrases to figure something out.  The Doctor had instructed me to get tickets for Huayna Picchu for one day, and tickets for something he called "Montan" for the other day.  The closest thing to "Montan" I could find on the web site was "Montana" but there was no explanation as to exactly what Montana  was.  I had visions of ending up in Butte . . .  While trying to figure it out, I found a web site designed to help non-Spanish speakers navigate the Machu Picchu web site.  It listed and explained the various ticket options, but it was obvious even they did not know anything about Montana.  They were only able to say: "This is something new, no details available at the moment, suspiciously sounds like a fiddle to allow more visitors to Machu Picchu." 

I was hesitant to purchase something I didn't fully understand, especially something that sounded suspiciously like a fiddle . . .  I left a message with The Doctor, and within a few minutes he returned my call - he was at the ocean flying kites . . . He confirmed that I should order tickets for Montana, as he had seen it recommended somewhere, though he had no more of an idea than I as to what it was. Still, he seemed to feel strongly about it, so after hanging up I went ahead and ordered tickets for Montana on Aug. 20th, and for the 7:00 AM Huayna Picchu climb on the 21st. 

Which all would have been fine, except we will be there on the 19th & 20th, not on the 20th & 21st . . .

I didn't realize my mistake until the following night when The Doctor and I again talked on the phone and went over our trip itineraries.  I was almost sick when it dawned on me that I had confused the dates. And, not only did I screw that up, but I soon discovered that I had scheduled the Pachatusantrek shuttle to the Poroy train staion for the wrong date also! The worst part of that mistake was that I had originally scheduled it for the RIGHT day, but somehow thought I had the date wrong and had already changed it once - to the WRONG day!  Now I had to e-mail them again, tell them I was a complete idiot, and ask them to change the date once more.  My contact at Pachatusantrek has been a woman named Jessica Llontrop; her emails have always been very pleasant (not to mention coherent), and I have to say she has been extremely patient and gracious dealing with my apparent incompetence.  I am happy to report that that screw up has been settled.

My Machu Picchu snafu, however, has yet to be resolved.  I am unable to read the reservation contract on their web site (as it is in Spanish), but I am pretty sure the tickets are non-refundable.  The Doctor thinks we still might at least be able to exchange them for the correct dates, and agreed to contact the Call Center listed on the web site. As of Tuesday night he had not been able to get through, even with the assistance of an operator. He is hoping he may have better luck straightening out the mess after he arrives in Peru.

Maybe he can get Liset or Yeshica to help him . . .