Last days...just give me my effin money would ya!!
Trip Start
Apr 14, 2004
1
25
Trip End
Jul 27, 2004
Huaraz and Lima,
Peru
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
now on the 2nd last day in the country, i needed to get bus fare and food money...the atm wouldnt give me my money after trying multiple times...i was convinced i was being scammed by the teller so i got paranoid and emailed my card company of the problems...next i decided to try to cash a travellers check...i went to over 10 different money exchanges and no one would touch it...apparently only banks, that werent open till monday (2 days too late) would be able to cash them...argh...so i guess ill hafta dip into the stashed money and was proud of myself for having been prepared for such a situation as this...i join my friends at the restauraunt for dinner, explained the situation and grabbed a steak knife from the table...i entered the washroom to rip the seam on my hidden pocket to retrieve the cash...i pull out the plastic i had it sealed in, open it, and proceed to read an article from a peruvian newspaper...the sneaky bastards not only found the $$$, they switched it with newsprint, replaced it in the pocket, and stitched it all back up good as new...as mad as i was, i had to be impressed with their desire to put food in their mouths....at least thats what i tell myself was done with the cash, cause then i feel like i am a benefactor of sorts...
so after a few hours of running around, i am still out of cash when i realize that i have an overdraw feature on my debit card and finally get access to some money...are my problems over for the evening??? nope...because i didnt want to take out too much local currency, i took it out in us dollars, to change as i went...it was a holiday weekend in town, and none of the ten plus tellers that i returned to a second time for the evening had any local currency..."NO HAY SOLES!!" (there is no soles(peruvian money)...i couldnt believe this was happening...all i wanted was to join my friends for dinner and i was still running around trying to be able to pay for it...i also had to purchase one of the few remaining seats out of town into lima the following day...eventually i found a place that had soles and seemed to be back on track...
the next morning, i was up early to meet the crew of people i would be ice climbing with for breakfast...a 2.5 hour bus ride later and we finally arrived at the glaciers where we had to hike for an hour and a half further just to get to the base...we were up at 5400 metres above sea level-- talk about being winded...then we were supposed to climb ice wallls yet???it could have been much worse though, we could have been the guides who had to carry all the gear up there....they looked right tired by the time they got there...after donning the gear, i roped in and scaled the wall in quite good time in comparison to the less than impressive efforts of my fellow ice climbers...throughout the afternoon i scaled the glacier 3 or 4 times, and that was all i could muster energy for...i was tired from the trek, the high altitutde, and lack of sleep and food...on another ego stroking note, the others only managed 0,1, or 2 climbs ...
there was also a pretty neat ice cavern there as well that we wandered around in for a bit...on the way down, i started to get my first taste of altitute sickness, which came in the form of a painful headache...it lasted for a few hours, so i guess it was fairly minor, compared to what it could potentially be...
when i arrived back at my hostel, i quickly packed up all my gear, said goodbye to the awesome family who house it was, and caught a cab to the bus station...another overnight journey and i arrived in dodgy area of lima at 6 am...not really a great time to be wandering around with all your shit...i grabbed a seat in the waiting room beside a canadian family on vacation, and wasted some time talking to them until they caught their bus out....i hung around for a little while longer before catching a cab to a hostel that a friend of mine told me she had stayed at...i asked them if they would store my luggage for the day until my flight left that night...he wasnt too keen on the idea, as they only stored for guests (obviously), but i managed to convince him by telling him that my friend told me they had luggage storage...i guess since i was referred by someone who had stayed there earlier, it lightened him up a bit, and he took in my gear...
still early in the morning, i began wandering around the streets with no real destination in mind...even if i had a destination, i wouldnt have been able to find it anyways, as i didnt have a map...after a quick breakfast i ran into a young peruvian guy who asked me if i knew what time it was...after i told him, he asked me where i was from, and when i told him canada, he replied that he has spent some time in montreal studying in archaeology...so i began to wander around the city with him as he recounted his mornings story of getting his bag ripped off at the bus station...actually he didnt know where it got ripped off because it just didnt make it to the station at all...he was from the north west coast of peru, and now he was apparently waiting for his family to wire him money so he could purchase a bus ticket home...he was also dealing with the police trying to charge the bus company, etc...i was a bit suspicous of all this cause i kept waiting for him to ask to borrow money for the ticket...
not long after he borrowed some money to make a phone call to check on his money transfer...still not there...he told me he had a cousin in the city that he wanted to visit, and asked me if i wanted to tag along...not having anything to do for over 15 hours when i had to catch my flight. i went along with him...after walking quite a distance, we finally arrived at a neighbourhood store where he called up and his cousin came down...after introductions it was decided to go down the street to a different store to have a beer....which when translated forom spanish to english means, i bought three beer for us...my new friends were super friendly and the cousin even gave me his necklace that he was wearing...i was starting to get a little paranoid, as it felt like they were too nice and setting me up for some kind of scam...therefore i was sure to mention whenever possible about my being broke, and having to have borrowed money to get myself home, to disuade any ideas they might have been having about getting me drunk, rippin off my shit and leavin me for dead in an alley somewhere...(positive thinkin you know!!!)
thats one of my major pet peeves about travelling in foreign countries...whenever you meet nice people, you are automatically on your guard about whether they really are legitimately good people...in fact i spent the entire day having what should have been an awesome last day bonding with a couple of local guys, and the entire time i couldnt help but be uncomfortable and worried that bad shit was gonna happen...we ended up at the cousins families house, where he put on a movie in the kitchen/dining room/bedroom part of the house...after partaking in some of the local greenery with the fellows, i of course got even more paranoid about the situation...
the guy i had met orginally had to leave for some reason, so i was left with the no english speaking cousin...now i was convinced that the other guy was going to set up the "hit" with some accomplices, and when me and the cousin left the house, it was gonna be all over for me...we actually just ended up walking thru all the markets and stuff getting free fruit and lunch etc... he seemed intent on showing me how many people he knew and had "working" for him, he called it...
at one point, he wanted to introduce me to his little girl, so we went to a somewhat dodgier, locals only type neighbourhood, where there were many youths on the street hangin out or playing soccer...i was convinced that this is where the proverbial shit was gonna hit the fan...but no, we went to a house, and knocked on the door where a lady(the grandma of the kid) answered, and from what i could make out of their conversation, i cocncurred that he doesnt get to see the kid very often, and he was using introducing me to her as an excuse for him to see his daughter...he seemed very grateful that i had come along to meet her...
i needed to use the internet to get in touch with the girls i had been travelling with earlier in arequipa and nazca, so we stepped into an internet cafe...he informed me that he had to go home for a bit, but that he would return for me in an hour or so...i said sure thing...now, in my paranoid delusional state, i decided i had to get out of there just in case...i wrote a note to him and his cousin for the internet cafe owner to give to him when he returned, saying that i had to go meet some friends and sorry i couldnt hang around...nice to meet u, etc...i had to think a bit before doing it, because he had been "borrowing" my sunglasses for most of the afternoon, and i forgot to get them from him when he left...i decided to forfeit them in the interest of making my "get away"...
in retrospect i have concluded that they probably were genuinely good guys, pumped to hang out with a gringo for the day, but like i said, a guy is always wary about situations like that, because the minute you let your guard down, that is when you are gonna get scrwewed...its sad reallly, because many times you cheapen what would otherwise be a meaningful short term relationship with the locals in their own culture, because you are concerened about your own well being...oh well, part of the adventure i guess...
after leaving the internet place, i realized i was wandering around a slightly dodgy area and was not even sure if i was going in the right direction...therefore i decided to hail a taxi to get me to the downtown area...i made a couple of phone calls but was not able to get a hold of my girls, so i sat down on the park bench in the central square...not 5 minutes later, i was approached by a bolivian girl who started chatting me up...apparently she had been living in peru for a few years for school...she asked me if i wanted to go for a walk to go see the area, at which time i got suspect again, but went along anyway (as i always do), i mean whose gonna argue with a pretty local girl right??? after walking around for an hour or so, we went to have a beer at a bar (which means a pitcher, of course on me again)...we did our best at conversation which involved alot of me teaching her the english names and meanings of the songs playing on the radio...she spoke exactly no english...but it went alright...
after a romantic fried chicken dinner at the local grease pit, we wasted the rest of the evening hanging out in the park and wandering thru the markets, until i had to leave for my flight back home...if it were at all possible i probably would have delayed my flight back for obvious reasons, but it couldnt be done, so it was time to say ciao...after getting her to get a good price from a taxi to take me to the hostel, wait, then take me to the airport(after 4 cabs wanted to charge about three times as much when i asked), i found myself booking in at the airline, and a new reality began to set in...soon i would be on my way back to canada, and would begin another adventure, called readjusting to life in north america...
