Smack in the middle of Peruvian election fever
There were busloads of people at the border, and we all stood in line patiently waiting our turn, until our line was told to move to another window, so our line snaked around into another line. Man, talk about herding cattle. Mine was a special case, since I was the only one with a passport, though it was uneventful. I did have to wake the guy at customs up, though. “Uh, hello? Do you want me to put my back through the x-ray machine?” At the bus station in Tacna, Peru, I got mobbed by people aksing me where I wanted to go. To the bathroom…leave me alone. I eventually talked to some kid from some agency and decided to go with the bus he was offering. The yet-to-shave-his-little-moustache kid was 17 and hitting on me! I later found out that the agency charged me twice as much for the bus ticket, and I let the kid hear about it. (These things happen, and while they piss me off, sometimes I forget the breaks I get, like the hotel in Arica only charging me for one night rather than 2, and charging me less than my quoted rate…which of course means they were going to charge me more than the going rate, but, nevertheless, I did get a discount there.)
For being the “luxury” bus it was supposed to be, it was rather cramped…the seat in front of me was practically on my lap, and of course the chick in front of me put her seat back all the way…they always put their seats back all the way in front of me. I slept for 1/2 the way there, waking up in time for the 2nd movie, Congo. I’ll tell you, I’ve seen some crappy movies on these buses. I asked the man next to me how much for a cab to the center of town (to ensure I wouldn’t get ripped off), and headed to a hotel. I negotiated down the price of the hotel (I was still bitter about the bus), getting a pretty sweet deal for one of the nicer hotels I had been in for a while…TV, big, comfy bed, and a large bathroom with hot water (hot water that actually comes out of the faucet when you open the special hot water tap…not that stuff that’s heated as it comes out and never really gets all that hot).
I plopped down on the bed to read and must have hit the remote control, turning on the TV. On the screen I saw a big rally, saying Arequipa, Plaza de Armas, Live. Well, that was right down the block from me! Alan Garcia, one of the presidential candidates was speaking in the plaza, just a few blocks away. I ran out to go check it out. I’ve never seen any presidential candidate live before, and a big political rally should be cool. Well, by the time I got there, he had left, though there will still a bunch of people there and the stage was blasting out music. I didn’t stay that long, but it did spark my interest in the political affars of Peru, with the election only a week away.
The next day I walked around the city…it’s called the White City because many of the buildings in the center are built with a white volcanic rock, called sillar, and it shines in the sunlight. I went to the anthropological museum in town, which is famous for housing Juanita, the name given to an Incan ice mummy found in the nearby mountains. Juanita wasn’t actually on display at the time, but another ice mummy was. The Incan believed that the mountains were gods, and as an offering to the gods, they would bring the most beautiful girl from the village to the top of a mountain and offer her as a sacrifice. They got her drunk (more or less), and then killed her with a blow to the head with a blunt object. Because of the cold at the top of the mountain, their bodies were perfectly preserved, frozen. They’re displayed in a refrigerated case, kept frozen.
I walked around town a bit more, but most everything was closed, as it was Sunday. There was another political campaign going on in the square, but much smaller. This guy’s name was Lay, or something like that, and he must have been religious, because I could hear all the people chanting “Jesus Lives”, or something like that. Peru had about 20 or so people running for the presidency, with 3 top candidates all running pretty closely – around 30%. Alan Garcia, who was campaigning the night before, had formerly been president, and one of the worst in history. It was amazing to me that he was actually in the running, but people explained to me that he was really young back then, and had been manipulated by a lot of people, so he might be alright after maturing a bit. Ollanta Humala is the leftist nationalist (perhaps the Evo Morales of Peru), although a lot of people don’t like him because he has no plan, just wants to be a dictator. Lourdes Flores is the third main player, and was labeled as the rich-person’s candidate. All the news reports talk about choosing the lesser of the evils.
I spent another day in Arequipa, just lazing around town. I had some vendor selling drawings come up to me and ask me to do his English homework for him. I told him he wouldn’t learn anything if I did it, and he told me it was for a friend. Well, your friend won’t learn anything either…I eventually did it for him, illegibly scribbling in the words, which was probably kind of mean, but funny, too. Perhaps I taught him something…
That night, Lourdes (they call all the candidates by their first names) was campaigning in the plaza, so I checked that out. Arequipa is the 2nd largest city in Peru, so it was a prime campaigning location. I couldn’t see her from anywhere…the trees in the plaza blocked most everything, and getting close didn’t help with the dense crowd holding signs up. I also couldn’t understand a word she was saying (the loud reverb in the plaza not helping that). I did, however, get stuck in a huge people jam when she was done, and got a close-up view of her as she ducked into her car and pulled away. Do we have large public campaigns like that in the States? I’ve surely never been to one…
The next morning I left on a 2-day tour to the nearby Colca Canyon. It was once thought to be the deepest canyon in the world, but it was recently discovered that another nearby canyon is actually deeper. The sole reason for going out there was to see the Andean condor, one of the largest flying birds in the world. I slept a good amount of the way out to the little mountain town we were staying the night in. We were all staying in seperate hotels, and I was glad to discover that mine was the cheapest option, paying almost 1/2 of the next most expensive option (I thank the girl at my hotel for hooking me up with that one).
That night we went to some hot springs, which were nice, though our stay wasn’t very long. For dinner, we went to a peña, a place where they play traditional music…we even had them showing us some traditional dances, such as the marinera, where they dance around waving handkerchiefs. In one particularly odd dance, the guy came out dressed like a girl, and they each took turns pretending to eat an apple, then falling on the ground, twitching, while the other one hit them repeatedly, to wake them up. In the end, they got us out there to dance…I don’t know what the dance was, but we pretty much just held hands and ran in a circle, switching directions occasionally.
We got up ungodly early the next morning to make to the Cruz del Condor, or Cross of the Condor, the spot to see the condors. The place was pretty crowded (this is a populr tour), and everyone stood around peering down into the deep canyon and watching for the first signs of the condors. We saw only two, and a hawk. The condors made the hawk look tiny. They were pretty cool, though everyone was slightly disappointed at the limited showing. I had actually hoped there would be a lot…a cow had fallen off a cliff nearby and died, which I thought would attract more condors, since they eat carrion. Carrion, I learned, is already dead meat; they don’t kill their dinner, they just wait until it’s already dead. Apparently they’re in the same family as vultures, which also wait for their dinner to die.
On the way back, we stopped at a road-side souvenir stop and were greeted by a whole bunch more condors, which was pretty cool. We had then pretty much all to ourselves here, and they soared over our heads for quite a while. The condors are so big that they don’t flap their wings…they just let the air current push them around, while their wings just allow them to soar and steer. I had already taken my pictures, so I just sat back and watched them. They’re amazingly huge birds, but pretty ugly (when you look at them up close). I have to admit, even knowing they only prey on carrion, I still felt a little vulnerable, knowing, if they wanted to, they’d probably have no problem mauling me to death. Pretty fierce, for a bird.
Tags: Peru, Tag Index
Tania