Last push

getting ready to try it out

For my last weekend in Peru I wanted to meet a friend in Chincha, the center of Afro-Peruvian music, because it was a place I really wanted to visit last year and never got a chance to. From Paracas I took a collectivo to Pisco, and from there a bus to Chincha. I walked around the market, enjoyed my favorite activity in Peru: drinking juice at one of the fruit stalls, and waited for my friend to arrive. When she got there, we took a taxi to El Carmen, the more tranquil town outside Chincha where beautiful plantations and haciendas remain from the colonial period.

Since I was running out of $$ as my time neared to an end, I planned to put our stay at the luxurious Hacienda San Jose on my credit card and then let Pamela pay for the things we needed in cash, like taxis and food. Well...it turned out that the hacienda (and most of the town) was still in disrepair from the earthquake 2 years ago, and so it was not open (unmentioned on their website)...nor was anything else, including the dancing/drumming shows that we had come to see.

filling up the bus on the side of the highway

So, we decided to take a bus 2 hrs south to Ica from Chincha...back to Chincha by taxi and then south again (the direction from which I had come that morning). Upon arriving in Ica, we decided to go to Huaca China, another small town outside of town that is more tranquil...another taxi (note the $$ flying by without much purpose). Again I thought, ok, well I´ll just pay for the hotel and we´ll be fine. It turned out that no hotels in town took credit cards...shit! Ok ok, well I have an emergency $20 USD in my bag, we´ll use that for the hotel. Pamela will pay for our excursions and we´ll have to eat at nicer restaurants so I can use my card. (I may have de-emphasized my lack of cash earlier, when what I meant to say was that I had exactly what I needed to get me to the airport and pay the airport tax and no more...I was just praying that in Lima, since it´s a big city that I could use my card to live for the couple days I was there). Well that worked for one meal, and then for the next morning for breakfast, we intended to pay with my card again and the electricity went out in the whole town...so we ended up using all of our money except what we needed for the taxi to get to Ica hopefully use an ATM there.

When we got to Ica, the electricity was out there too, and so we could not use any ATMs. With only 20soles (aka $6), there wasn´t much we could do, and Pamela had to get back to Lima (5hrs north) for class in the morning. I starting thinking, ok, I have almost all my belongings with me...what can I sell to get money for our bus fare?? Then Pamela had the genius idea to take a bus back to Chincha, for which the fare was only 6soles. So we walked to the bus station and returned to Chincha we went. We searched around for a little while before finding a working ATM, as even though they had electricity there--thank god--some of the ATMs did not have $$. Finally I was able to get some money out...just enough to pay for the bus rides back to Lima and minimal accomodations there.

Walking back to the bus station, we decided to buy snacks for the bus, since we had some change and by this time it was 5pm and we hadn´t eaten lunch. We also wanted to buy some wine, since we were in the center of the Peruvian wineland. We happened upon a place selling ¨wine¨ out of giant barrels, ciphened with a large hose into used bottles for 1.5soles (aka 50cents): we´ll take it!! We happily skipped back to the bus station with our $2 feast (the snacks costing much more than the bottle of wine). All of a sudden, a guy jumped on me, stealing my sunglasses off my head and our bag of treats (but not the wine, which Pamela was carrying)...we ran away but caught sight of justice in action, a bystander punching the guy who jumped us.

Finally we made it back to Lima after a traffic-filled bus ride. We feasted at a nice restaurant, using my card of course, and then back in my homey hostel in Miraflores, we drank our ¨wine,¨ which was delicious and surprisingly strong.

Ommitted from the story, was the fact that we did have a great time in Ica sandboarding and dune-buggying in the giant sand dunes. The end.

big sand dune, with dune buggy at top and Pamela at the bottom

Overnight flight to the US tonight! Looking forward to being ¨home,¨ whatever that means for me at this point...