Fe, WHAAA!!!
Trip Start
Sep 05, 2006
1
28
33
Trip End
Sep 04, 2007
Tacna,
Peru
Sunday, July 22, 2007
My favorite part was that we crossed the border in an old Cadillac taxi, probably from the early 80´s that looked like it had been maybe been through the carwash one too many times. I actually wasn´t sure if we were going to start bumping the hydrolics or do a drive-by... it was that kind of ride. But everything turned out and Becky, myself, 2 Spaniards and a Chilean woman all crossed the border without any problems.
We arrived in Tacna, the Peruvian border town and were immediately accosted by numerous taxi drivers, ticket salesmen, alpaca hat saleswomen and people selling peanuts. We eventually found our way to buy a bus ticket for 8 that night to Cuzco, checked our bags in the bus office and set out to explore Tacna with the 6 hours that we still had to kill.
Tacna was a nice city and we pretty much kept to ourselves until a couple hours before we were scheduled to get out our bus. We decided to try the local beer at streetside bar and sat down to order a glass. As our beer was arriving some locals from an adjacent table began beckoning to us to come and sit with them. A man and a woman both in their 40s and rather harmless. So we sat down and gabbed a bit with them until it became apparent that the woman, Luana, was trying to set us up with the man she was with. Her friend, Martin, she claimed was absolutely ¨enamorado¨ (in love) with Becky and wanted to buy her a drink. Luana did her best to explain how his love began and grew by exclaiming ¨Fe¨ (face) and pointing to her face and then bellowing ¨WHAAAAA¨ (we think that this was supposed to mean ¨wow¨) and slapping her on her butt (for those of you who don´t know Becky- baby got back!). I was completely unable to control my laughter and Becky sure was a good sport about it. She did this repeatedly and when she decided that Martin wasn´t going to cut it for us (probably because SHE IS HIS EX-WIFE!!) she started showing us photos of her 23 year old son and telling us how beautiful we were and that we should meet her ´negrito´.
By this time she was good and drunk (as if she wasn´t before) and we did our best to let her down softly but she wasn´t getting the picture. After some more friendly banter we finally managed to leave after we claimed we had to catch our bus, but not without her taking down our fake email addresses so we could be in contact with her son, ¨the Inca warrior.¨
In short, it was a wildly entertaining afternoon that preceded one of the longest bus rides of my life that among other things, had us seated next to a crowing rooster for 7 hours. Next up Inca Trail tour to Machu Picchu.
