Comings, Goings, Befriendings, and Sore Calves

Things to do in Arequipa When You´ve Sleep Deprived

Never again shall I step on an overnight bus. They can haul me over coals, threaten me with castration, force me to drink pisco pura, but I shall not be moved. It was torrid, humid, thinaired bumpfest misery, accompanied by a chorus of exuberant Peruvian snoring. Dave acted for a large portion of the trip as a pillow for his bedfellow, and beside me Mark began to sweat and burn in the prodrome of the most venerable of travel afflictions: Montezuma´s (or Athualpa´s, I suppose) Revenge.

And our mood was so excited and childish as we left Nazca, eager for the next leg, the new adventure, the farther shore. Instead we arrived in Arequipa looking like three-day-old lettuce and swearing at the injustice of it all. We were met by the proprietress of our hostel, the incomparably beautiful Rosio. This raised our spirits somewhat, and we checked in, had some coca tea (for altitude sickness, dear Mother, nothing more) and chatted idly with our new acquaitance, Justin the Yank (more of whom later). Mark, looking increasingly like Death´s estate agent, staggered bedwards and passed out. Dave and I followed suit after a light lunch and some Arequipa sun. Goodbye excitable childishness.

The Yank, The Aussies, and Los Angeles Arequipeños.

Picture three Irish boys waiting on a street corner in Nazca, waiting on a bus. A character hovers a few feet away, trying to decipher the accent, wondering if the conversation is complete guff or actually interesting. He decides to join in and here we pick up the plot;

"Hey, you guys going to Arequipa?"
"Yes, all of us"
"Cool. I´m Justin"
"I´m Mark"
"Okay"
"I´m Dave"
"Cool"
"I´m Muiris"
"....huh? Murrt?"
"Merrrish"
"Oh. Okay, cool. So did you guys go to see the Lines today?"
"Yeah, they were pretty amazing. I didn´t really like the video before it though, the guy was an absolute gobshite"
"....Gabshyte?"

It turned out he was taking the same bus, so we shared a cab into Arequipa central and arranged to have a few drinks later on. Hey presto, the guy was interesting. He´s an artist and musician with prodigious knowledge of both, music especially. Conversation topics included baseball, national stereotypes, west coast music vesus east coast music, and of course, the Simpsons. He´s an interesting character, looks like he could have been in the Mothers of Invention, and we all plan to meet in Cuzco.

Imagine further the Irish boys gazing at Jupiter through a telescope outside the Maria Reiche planetarium. Everyone takes turns doing this and I, in my excitement, step in front of a six foot four guy and his girlfriend. I apologise immediately.

"Y´allright, no botha" comes the response in strong Melbournese.

Thinking nothing more of it, we head to Arequipa, only to find the Aussies in the same hostel as us, booking the same trek as us, interested in going for a beer with us. Thus we met Glenn and Cody, our walking partners for the next few days, and genuinely funny, friendly folks. More of them during the trek.

Further to the encounters described above, we befriended the two sisters who run the hostel, Rosio and Maribel. We had been warned by their brother Julio in Nazca not to "try any funny stuff", and to be fair kept our word. This did not stop at least two of us, possibly all three acting like shy teenagers in Rosio´s presence. They are our guiding lights here; friendly, helpful, with greater than usual proportions of dark eye and straight black hair and high cheekbone. Eventually, we asked them out for dinner to which they agreed on condition that they could bring their boyfriends, one of whom sits behind and to the left of me as I type, making me write this in haste. So that was that.

"The Walking Cramp"

It became apparent, as the trek date approached, that Mark was simply too ill to go. It started, as stated, on the bus to Arequipa, consolidated its presence in the hostel and began to taunt poor young Canney with abdominal cramps, fevers, sweats, and the eventual and horrible decision by his intestine to expel that which hath displeased it. Though he improved slightly the night before the trek began, he was back to white bowl blues the next morning. We couldn´t pull out of the trek, so Dave and I went the assurance from Rosio that she would take care of him, including a tummy massage. For a fleeting moment I wished I was violently ill, but thought better of it. So we went with Mark´s assent, though his misery was abject, and our morality questionable. Mark will give his own account, as we were sundered for a few days at that point.

Trekerouac

I am tiring of my writing style, so shall pull the trick of ripping off Kerouac in style, thus breaking the fifth seal of the travel cliche inferno (the others: North Face apparel, constant use of the term "transcendent", dodgy facial hair, and "getting into" the local music despite secretly considering it utter horseshit).

Dramatis personae:

Vladimir Nikoli: our hard driving guide
Glenn and Cody: the Aussies
Dave
Me
Rodolf: an 18 year old qualified pastry chef training to be a pilot, practising his trekking and his English. Believer in UFOs and their creation of the Nazca lines. Nice guy.

Here we go- a bold new attempt to describe the Colca Canyon Trek through the medium of plagiarism

Down, down, down to the bridge at the canyon base, all our breath expended in following the crazy Vlad, tauting us as we went, for he dug misery. Then all of a sudden, Vlad kicked up his heels- "Hmm!"- and ran, Incaman swift, up the impossible incline at impossible speed, dragging our sick souls behind him until we collapsed, heartattack breathcaught. "Come on boys and girls! All like this tomorrow!" and I wanted to kill Vladimir. But he disarmed with smiled promises of dinner and took off up the crazy hill with his crazy grin and the boy and I got all manful, chests paining, and got to our lodgings in about four minutes, some kind of record.

We got to the farmhouse and dug the old man, and his woman, and his lovely browneyed daughter, and dug his little garden, far up out of the canyon, like nowhere isolated and squared and smelled the smell of the wood fire and sipped the coca tea and lashed the Antipodeans, with their talk of boguns, crazy cat characters, and Rodolfo talked about UFOs, and that was fine.

The Boy Dave was talking "Man, I´m just like one of those condors, you dig? I fly around all day and think about all things and see things and know things, but don´t tell a soul, just drift and nest". And I dug this and said I was a condor too and pretty soon we were all laughing and Canney was a hummingbird and Vlad produced a lomo saltado and the tiredness of the trek west that day got all sucked up into the stars overhead as Orion tossed the misery to Scorpio who chewed it up and spit it toward Saggitarius who shot it into the next universe. We were on the outside of the world´s envelope peering in from the archaic into the new. The old man talked about his last trek over the Andes to Cuzco in eight days flat. We drank, drunk on the high altitude and the oxygen suck and it was the fast straight trail of happiness.

Sleeping that night, I had no comfort, three blankets to hide under and my trusty fleece and socks and pants and I was freezing like Achilles and burning like a Promethean tragedy with the sweats and the chills and the fevers , my chest pounding and aching in the dust riddled air. On waking I had a terror of the next walk, the hateful trek, a full day of Vlad the Impaler´s torture. We ate breakfast and descended throught two villages, sun above, rock below and lung dust laden and into the oasis at the bottom of the canyon. There we ate and swan and felt good but sensed the pain of the incline in our minds eye, losing couage by the second. We made gallowsjokes and challenged each other to take the way of the mule, the easy route, but we all did it anyway and the peaked and the glory of or triumph shouted its great whoop over the mountainside. We were back when we started, dear Cabanaconde, citadel of the Fringe Andes, and we talked and ate and slept.

Next morning we set off early to the Cruz del Condor chattering and freezing like lemmings, but not minding as we had a date with skybound majesty. We reached the viewpoint and who was there but the lost boy, the stray cat, out friend with the Achilles gut, striding up to us like Lazarus with a smile of triumph over sickness and of happiness at us all together at the crazy hour watching the condors swoop and wheel in graceful nonchalance. It was a happy reunion.

Back in Arequipa, I gave the now heroic Vladimir 50 soles and he shoot my hand and skipped off grinning like Stalin after a nice satisfying purge.

What a voyage, what a journey.

Or something like that.

Muiris 27/8/6

Next week:

Is Cuzco such hot shit after all?

Is there such a thing as trail rage?

Is Elvis still alive? And living in Sacchsaywaman?

All of this and more in the next edition of Hefty Women, you guide to the soul of the South American tourist industry.