JP's around the world adventure: Peru at last!

Friday, 14th of January 2011

As I took off from Milan yesterday evening I was overcome by a mix of fear, melancholy, expectation and relief. Melancholy due to the fact that I will miss my family, my friends and the town where I grew up; a little fear because I have no idea what to expect; relief for having survived the crazy driving skills of the enraged napoletano shuttle bus driver. As usual I finished packing 15 seconds before departure and had a mad rush to the bus station. Thanks to my dad’s driving skills I somehow made it.

Turns out half of Lugano was flying from Milan at the same time that I was: my friend Anna was leaving for Brussels just before me and was on the same bus; Thiago was leaving for Brazil, Ankur was going back to India and my friend Violetta also came to the airport to see me off. It was nice to see familiar faces before the departure.

I am traveling light, I have a 23kg backpack the size of a baby elephant, a 7’’ surfboard bag with extra padding (once again thank you dad for being a genius) and a backpack that contains the following items: five 300 page English grammar and teaching books, a digital camera, a Spanish-Italian dictionary, 5 USB sticks, a laptop computer that belongs in a museum, enough toiletries to groom the 10mio inhabitants of Lima, very official looking vaccination certificates, travel plans, a guide to Peru (thank you Rosy, Laura, Silvia and Nadia) and enough cables, chargers and batteries to wire a small city. Am I embarrassed? Yes, very, and I admit that I could have and should have traveled lighter, but 5 and a half months just seemed like an awful long time. I looked like a circus freak when I showed up at the airport dragging all this luggage around with me. In Lima I discovered that trolleys don’t make the enterprise look any more graceful unfortunately.

I boarded my Iberia flight in Milan and had, hmm, something in my eyes that made them water? It didn’t help that the in flight magazine contained an article about Cape Town and it really made my miss my grandmother, mom and sister. So I cried like a new born baby for about 30 seconds before take off and then realized that my fellow passengers were not in the least impressed.

After an uneventful flight to Madrid I finally started to feel excited about my upcoming trip. I was finally going to South America! “South America! Like America, but South”, I really like Castillan (Spanish) and I have always been fascinated by South Americans I met in Europe. This time I boarded my LAN flight to Lima and the in flight magazine had an article about surfing in South America, what a treat!

As usual I didn’t get much sleep on the flight and set my feet on South American soil looking much like left over dog food or decomposing hyenas in the Veld, you take your pick. I was surprised to see that my peculiar blend of “Itañol” (Italian+Español) appears to be widely understood, I was even more surprised that when I went past immigration and asked for a 6 month entry visa, the bored official didn’t even blink but just put a pretty little stamp in my passport. If I’d have been in his shoes I wouldn’t have granted myself entry to the country the way I looked, I would have locked me away in a dark jail and made sure the key disappeared forever. I am glad that he didn’t do that and glad that I got the six month visa, which means I can avoid a trip to the immigration office at a later stage. I then collected my traveling circus items and went to the customs, handed in my form. The customs official made me push a green button and told me to wait for the outcome. A green arrow lit up below the button and I was allowed to exit into the chaos of the airport arrival hall. What the purpose of the green button was I do not know, but I suspect it might have been a coded signal to the taxi drivers to let them know that a gringo was about to enter the arrival hall. I was assaulted by 15 taxi drivers that wanted to know if I wanted to go to “Punta Hermosa”, a rather popular surf spot in Lima. A polite, but firm “no gracias” seemed to do the trick as I quickly ran across the arrival’s hall looking for the check in desks. At 7 am the queue at the check in desks was an insane! I had to wait in line for 1 and a half hours where a baffled airport employee couldn’t understand how a decomposing corpse could push around a 7’’ surfboard on a broken airport trolley. Needless to say that a tourist here stands out like a sore thumb: Peruvians look, well, distinctly Peruvian and I look distinctly “gringo” (although this morning I would have looked pretty good in the role of a zombie in a b-series horror movie). But unlike most gringos here I speak a little Spanish and this seems to win over even the most upset-looking local and much to their surprise I don’t have an American accent. The expression on their faces when I answer them in Spanish is priceless! Since then I have sought asylum in the domestic departures hall and have been roaming around the two shops and one restaurant like a lost soul. After drinking a “camu camu” juice (a local fruit/berry that is very rich in vitamin C, the 475ml that I had contained 470% of the recommended daily amount) I sat down and decided to write this while occasionally gawking across the tarmac at the blue blue Pacific ocean. The view of Lima from above was actually almost intimidating, the arid climate makes the city look extremely barren and at the same time the sheer extension of the city is humbling for a little country boy that grew up in a small village at the feet of the Swiss alps. A brief glimpse of the Andes on the way down made me think of the Alps.

I suspect that the cleaners at the airport are paid by amount of times they sweep the floor per day, I have been sitting here for 3 hours and they have cleaned the floor 15 times at least. The tiles are so clean that you could eat off them.

SATURDAY 15TH

Globalization: watching an Italian league soccer game on a Romanian TV channel from a Taiwanese computer whilst sitting in an airport in Peru with a power outlet provided by a Korean corporation.

Advert in the domestic departures terminal in Lima

We approach Trujillo from the sea, a real treat as I can see the clean swell lines rolling into the coast from above an I get my first glimpse of the city from the sky.

I thought that Trujillo would have a medium-small sized airport, I thought wrong: Trujillo’s airport makes Lugano airport look like an international hub, which is quite an achievement. The terminal is the size of a McDonald’s restaurant and the luggage belt was incredibly minute, especially considering the fact that the inbound plane was full and pretty large. The airport was really cute, kind of a lego center in the middle of the desert. I exited the airport and once again the taxi drivers asked the gringo if he wanted to go surfing in Chicama (probably the longest “left” wave in the world). “sorry guys, a friend is picking me up”, but once again I was impressed with the taxi drivers knowledge of the surf spots. I have barely seen the waves, but I think that surf tourism could prove to be a good source of income for Peru. Taxi drivers seem to think so too.

So I start looking for David, who is the founder of the organization I will be volunteering at and offered to come and pick me up. I eventually find David and he helps me organize a taxi back to Carmen’s place. The first impression is great; he strikes me as a really great guy, with a good sense of humor.

Carmen is David’s aunt and lives in a house with many rooms which she lets out, the location is pretty convenient because it is central and some of the classrooms are right on site! Carmen is very welcoming and she immediately makes me feel at home. After showing me around the house David suggests we go to Huanchaco, a seaside village that is approximately 30 minutes from here. How can I say no? So off we go and get there in time for my first Peruvian sunset. The beach town looks very pretty, although it has become a little touristy. I couldn’t see much because it was quite dark by now, but the waves looked really good. After that he takes me to Maria’s place, Maria is David’s former landlord and friend and according to David she is the best cook in Huanchaco. She cooks us a delicious fish chicharron and makes us a fresh lemonade which was a real treat! At this point in time I had only slept a total of 3 hours in the previous 40 hours… I was struggling to construct Spanish sentences, as a matter of fact I was struggling to even stay awake and make sense of anything at all. Here I was, sitting on the other side of the planet, eating traditional food in the company of kind and friendly locals and I could hardly stay awake. After finishing our delicious meal we thank Maria and we agree that she will teach me some traditional fish recipes, I am really excited about this! Things were a bit blurry at this specific point in time, but I seem to remember that I helped David transfer some of his possessions from his former flat at Maria’s place to the beachfront classrooms in which he teaches Spanish classes to tourists.

David has a fascination for languages and founded Espaanglisch (I guess the name derives from Español+Angels+English+Englisch+Spanisch) approximately 8 years ago. The idea behind it is that he offers tourists inexpensive Spanish classes and at the same time he started offering local people very low cost English classes. David is a great guy and it is obvious to me that he really cares about his community and from our conversation yesterday evening I can also say that we share pretty similar views. We both feel that education is a key tool to enhance opportunities and enable people to get better jobs and therefore have a better standard of living. Espaanglisch now collaborates with a series of local NGOs and I will be working for some of them during the course of my stay. These organizations do a lot for the local communities in terms of providing people with good educations that they would otherwise be denied. But there is a lot of poverty in the region and a lot needs to be done to ensure that everyone is granted equal access to education and all the natural consequences of receiving a good one.

SUNDAY 16th

Still a little jet lagged I struggled to get myself out of bed in the morning (although it should really be the opposite). At lunch time Carmen cooks us a delicious rice+chicken meal, which had a very distinct Asian flavor to it. Energized by the lunch I head to Huanchaco with David. I like Huranchaco it has a nice vibe to it. We meet a friend of David's, who's name is Carlos but everyone knows him as "Pinkish" or "Pinky", go figure... apparently Carlos would like to improve his English, so I agree that we can do an "intercambio", one day we speak English and the next we speak Spanish. After agreeing to meet the following day I decide that the time has come for me to go for my first surf in Huanchaco. There are several breaks and I decided to head down close to the touristic jetty because that is where the beginners break is.Being back in the water after one and a half months was a great feeling. I got out of the water exhausted, watched the beautiful sunset and waited for David to finish teaching his Spanish class. We moved some more stuff out of his former apartment and somehow managed to fit a bulky TV inside a "moto taxi" (kind of like a Tuk Tuk).

After this we headed home. The local transportation system is most interesting. There are many means to get around: Combis, Colectivos, Minis and Taxis. Combis work like the South African taxis: thousands of vans drive around down and follow predefined routes, you can hail them anywhere and get off wherever you want. The only minor problem is: you have to know where they are headed because there are no maps or official bus stops. But once you figure out the routes they follow they are a lot more convenient than the rigid European transportation system. Minis are small buses that look like old US school buses, but the system is identical to that of the Combis. Colectivos are taxis that seem to follow more or less predefined routes and wait for enough people to full the taxi before leaving, it is pretty common to fit up to 8 fully grown adults in an ordinary car. Taxis are like the European taxis, except that the cars are usually cheap and old Chinese brands and evil taxi drivers occasionally rob their clients (literally, not metaphorically) and give all the taxis a bad reputation.

Combis and Minis are my favorite means of transportation. There is of course a driver who usually loves to honk a lot and curse other people, but there is also a cobrador. When I grow up I want to be a cobrador they have the coolest job ever: they jump out of speeding taxis and then jump back on and yell all day long; they advertise the destination of the combi (Huanchaco, Huanchaco, HUANCHACO! UPAO, UPAO!), they tell the driver that someone is boarding or exiting the combi (baja, baja, a la esquina. Dale! Dale!), they curse the other taxis, make sure the driver avoids collisions, warns the driver if there is police up ahead and the collect "pasaje" (the fee) from the passengers.

Combis are loud and colorful. Which means that the streets of Trujillo are loud and colorful.
Honking is a national sport and anyone that drives a car around here is a serious contender for the honking world championship. You don't just honk in order to warn another driver about an impending collision, you also honk to warn pedestrians that if they do foolishly attempt crossing the street, you will run them over, you honk because you are angry, or because you are happy. You just honk no matter when, where and how.
Some minis, combis and taxis have changed the sound of their horns to make them sound like 1980 video game music and the coolest thing is when taxis reverse because they play a digital rendition of the "Lambada" tune. All drivers have a wonderful collection of assorted junk on their dashboards and windscreens. Some of the local favorites are pictures of the Madonna, World Cup Stickers dating back to USA '94, surf stickers, pictures of family members, shoes, blinking disco-lights and generally anything that looks like the toy from a Kinder chocolate egg. Crossing the streets in Tujillo is an extreme sport, not something for the faint-hearted. The moment you attempt to cross taxis, combis and minis accellerate and honk at you; the message is clear: if you don't stop you will suffer.
The 14km journey from El Recreo to Huanchaco costs 1.5 Soles (more or less 0.65 CHF/USD).

Week of the 17th
I met up with Carlos (pinkish) and his cousin Tato (no idea what his real name is) and we had long conversations about that state of the world and more importantly the state of world football. It is interesting to get a local perspective on events and at the same time it is really good for my Spanish.
I met Billy, a really nice Irish guy who is traveling around Peru and will probably also volunteer here in Trujillo. We decided to go for a surf together and had a great surf session.

David's new landlord and friend Margarita has a small surfshop by the beach and she lets me keep my board there. She is really kind and always looks out for us. She is extremely grateful that we are volunteering our time to help those less fortunate in her country and always has something funny to say. Her sister runs a food shelter in one of the poorest parts of Trujillo/Huanchaco and would like Billy (who is a nutritionist) to give the parents a speech on how to feed the children in a balanced and healthy manner. So I will go along to help Billy with his Spanish as he's not feeling very confident yet.

Elizabeth is the volunteer coordinator at Espaanglisch and I finally met her after days that I have been here. She is a very organized power woman. She has all schedules figured out. I will be working with Una Sonrisa de Amor a non profit organization that amongst other things runs a primary school in Alto Trujillo, where I will be teaching English. I some how get the feeling that I will be the one that does most of the learning.... I will also teach a conversation class at Espaanglisch and teach English at a government school in El Milagro.

Other things I did this week:
This week I also finally figured out the combi route to and from Huanchaco and visited the center of Town on 3 separate occasions. Trujillo has a beautiful center, with many majestic colonial houses. I withdrew money from an ATM in a spectacular colonial mansion that is now owned by a bank.

This was in front of the ATM

Trujillo was founded by the Spanish conquistadores in 1534. There are many squares with beautiful little green parks, which really stand out in the barren landscape that surrounds the city. There are also many churches. The city is like a big shopping mall: all dentists are to be found in one street, all car repair shops on another, all electric appliances are sold on yet another street and there is one entire street where one can buy shoes. I also went out to celebrate Carla's (one of the volunteers at USDA) birthday party and met some of the volunteers with which I will be working. I had a real good time.

Me at the Plaza de Armas (main square)

I went surfing every day and really enjoy the good vibes in the water, surfers here are a cheerful bunch, paddle out with a smile and greet you on the way out. And most locals that surf are absolutely amazing surfers.
After a surf last week I decided to have a pastry at a cute little café right close to Margarita's surf shop and ask the waitress what typical Peruvian pastries she could recommend and she suggested the typically Peruvian "strudel de manzana" (apple strudel)... ok, I'll have a "typically Peruvian Strudel". It wasn't bad, but not too sure if the Austrians would like to hear that apple strudel is typically Peruvian.