lumière des étoiles

Back in the Big City
2005-08-15 5:59 p.m.

Lima Lima Lima. It's not so scary after all. But then I have no desire to go out at night, no matter what the gaggle of Welsh teens told me about "all the great bars in Barranco". Yeah yeah yeah, save it for someone who didn't grow up next to NYC. We found a great place to stay here in Lima - well great, relatively speaking - that lets us use their fancy kitchen and watch BBC for news updates that have been hard to find everywhere else.

The city is WAY more developed than I thought it would be. We must have been a sight yesterday, walking into a proper SUPERmarket and being so overwhelmed we were clutching each other and sort of wandering around aimlessly, forgeting all the simple things, like Garlic and Chicken Stock, that we came into buy. Every year, I think it will be easy to snap back into fast-paced and plenty-stocked everything-ness, and every year I am wrong.

We got so used to the mercados and small bottle shops of the highlands and jungle cities that the big EWONG supermarket (yes that's really what it's called) offered TOO much...what on earth would we eat for dinner when more than noodles, potatoes, and eggs were on offer?, we thought to ourselves. Is that REAL beer I spy? Is that yogurt and that cheese being REFRIGERATED in a GLASS CASE?

We snapped back pretty quickly, though, don't you worry - quick enough to get a kitkat and a Fanta and a slice of Quiche each. It's even good quiche.

Well enough about food - and I regret that's on the forefront of my mind, but you have to understand we've been away for a bit and still have a couple days to go. We're in the wealthy Miraflores district, with pretty parks and a sparkling Plaza de Armas with stunning colonial cathedrals and museums not too far away. We're ocean-front as well, though in seeing that a municipal land-fill was situated ON THE BEACH fifty or so meters up from where a bunch of surfers regularly go out for their daily runs, I remembered why it is I was sort of fed up with Peruvian city planning, and decided not to return for a second stroll along the Pacific.

This has been such an interesting time to be in Peru, really - as I said the other day the entire country is on the verge, of what, though, I'm not sure. It has the potential to be greatness, but I feel "on the verge of disaster" might be the more appropriate thing to say. It seems chaos is maybe not emminent, but certainly an easy step away if someone doesn't step in to assume responsibility and provide a mass of poverty-stricken, uneducated, and angry people with some direction.

The skills, the drive and the humanity are all here, as they are in most every human on earth. But there's a saltiness about people, a moodiness and bitterness directed at anyone and everyone, tourist or local, European or Asian, American or Venezualan. In talking to a Limeno friend I met the other day, I was able to understand the argument that "these people have been dumped on for years...", the popular and stock response to the "I have run into some bad situations here"-type responses in some countries. This is true and unfortunate...but also unfortunately true in many countries I've visited over the years - and there just doesn't seem to be this iminent "everyone can just go to hell" sort of attitude. In some cases, like Ghana, with it's stomach-churning violent past, things have been worse for citizens who never seem to catch a break. And certainly don't have the money and tourist draws of Inca Ruins to comfort them.

This is why I've sort of come to the conclusion that this is inherently political, and that there's just an attitude of understandable mistrust in the air. Unfortunately for those of us new to all this, though, there's a hint of rush-to-get-the-dollar in the air as well, again moreso than in other places I've recently visited. It's almost as if people feel their time is running out, and this will be the year to do anything possible to get as much out of people as they can. I, for example, wouldn't come here next year, since 2006 will be the next election year. If things continue the way they've been, with labor strikes, growing poverty, and police corruption and violence, it promises to be turbulent.

Do those in the tourist industry sense this too? Has this turned otherwise honest people into the few that we (and others) had some trouble with? It is a bit suspicious when the room-rate you're given at payment time is suddenly different than the rate that you were given when you first checked in, leaving you to have to argue with the management. And it's even worse when this seems to be a city-wide, bait-and-switch pattern rather than an isolated incident involving one opportunistic and crooked person. I cannot ever believe dishonesty and swindling to be a "cultural value", as some other understandably frustrated travelers have tagged it. So what gives? I'm thinking the election. I'm thinking the current state of hightened alert and near death-watch type of feeling for the industry. I'm thinking Toledo and the goverment have made some colossal mistakes over the last two years and then smartly looked the other way. I'm sorry, but the "they're angry oppressed people" never quite works for me. It's too simplistic.

That said, there's real passion here - even if at times it's passion about scamming people - and the country feels so alive. It would be an interesting place to live, I think, but after the year I had with things that went down - academic politics, friends wandering off into the deep end, never to return, and our own government going topsy-turvey and regressing into Victorian-era politics, I'd probably wind up in a home if I stayed. It's all a bit heavy. Peru is definitely a challenge, if you step off the tour-bussed Gringo Trail and get your head into it. But it's a worthwhile challenge, and presents some beautiful, though messy, human experiences.

The hostel is quiet tonight, as the gaggle of UK twenty somethings has departed for places elsewhere. Hence the computer all to myself, and the BBC news channel instead of another re-run of The Hulk over-dubbed in Spanish. We bought some great Tomatales from the mega-market, and are looking forward to a night of quiet dinner and Cuesquena beer. As corrupt as the company is that manufactures the drink, or maybe because of the corrupt company that manufactures the drink, I can't think of a better way to wind down our trip. I'll write again when home next week - I'm banning super slow internet cafes and waiting in line for hostel computers for the next few days.

xoxoxo