Drenched, ripped-off and nearly washed away, Wee-Cheng braves the most grueling border crossing of his travels.
#15: Leaving Peru Into Ecuador: More Gold, More Bodies, More Sex & Lots of Rain and Misery
Inca symbol, at the Museo de la Nacion in Lima.
6 Mar 2002
After an exciting time in Iquitos and Leticia, I returned to Lima (capital of Peru), and stayed with Horacio and Isabel, friends of my London friend, Marianne. During the next few days, I had a wonderful time with this nice Peruvian-Spanish couple, both of whom I had never met until my arrival in Lima. I have also met some of their friends, all of whom were very interesting people. We have spent many hours exchanging views on issues, ranging from Peruvian relations with its neighbours to global development. I also had the good fortune to try Isabel’s kitchen skills, and they have introduced me to many aspects of Peruvian culture. Most of all, I am very touched by their hospitality and friendship, especially when we were only met for the first time. I had a wonderful time in Peru, and the memories will stay for many years to come.
Lima, the city of kings, was first built by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, on the ruins of an Inca city called Rimac and amidst the remains of many earlier civilisations that had flourished there even before the Incas. Even today, gigantic pyramids belonging to these ancient kingdoms rose high up above the skies of modern-day skyscrapers and buildings of this city of 8 million people.
Peru, like many Third World nations, is a country of uneven income distribution. Whilst one sees poverty in many parts of Peru, Lima – apart from the shantytowns surrounding it – has many oases of prosperity. The shopping malls of Miraflores; the Bohemian bars and Yuppie restaurants of Barranco; and the luxury apartments, international banking towers and the Lima Golf Club of San Isidro are all symbols of a different Lima. They are the ones idolised on primetime TV drama, one that has little to do with many of the masses who watch these programmes. Perhaps they serve as inspiration for a better life, desires of which had spurred off development and improvement in the standard of living in some of the shantytowns Horacio has described to me.
Lima is also a city of great colonial architecture. It used to be the capital of Spanish America, and grand buildings were built here. Some say this is one of the best examples of colonial architecture in the Americas. Of course, one has heard similar claims of Quito, Cusco, Cartagena, Bogota, etc. What I find most appealing is the fact that Lima is a city of great museums. For many years, wealthy Peruvians have been collecting artifacts of the many ancient civilisations that had flourished here. Some have opened private museums here for the public. I spent a few days visiting some of these wonderful collections. Two of the most unique ones are the Gold Museum and the Larco Hererra Museum.
The Gold Museum, as the name implies, is an amazing collection of gold and other precious artifacts of ancient Peru. Gold headdresses, sculptures, death masks, and jewelry of the past 3000 years grace its underground vault. I have never seen so much golden artifacts in any museums anywhere. Like other museums in Peru, there are also a couple of mummies here, but the difference being, over here you see rather gruesome-looking mummies with golden masks or headdresses, golden fillings over their teeth, or wearing well-preserved bright parrot feathers that are over 1500 years old. There is all this, not to mention the equally brightly coloured textiles from the Nazca and Paracas civilisations almost two millenniums ago.
The Larco Hererra Museum concentrates mainly on the Moche civilisation I mentioned in an earlier entry. What is very interesting is its collection of Moche erotic art, which takes up a separate building. As I have mentioned previously, the Moche seems to have an unusual appetite for erotic artifacts, which was further confirmed by this collection.
There were books and lots of studies into this aspect of Moche culture. In fact, I further read that 95% of Moche fertility art relates to anal sex! According to studies, these usually show an aggressive man with the woman showing pain and displeasure while in the act. Very seldom were women shown to display enjoyable looks. I am sure the archaeologists have an interesting field time. In addition, there were a few samples of homosexual sex and oral sex in the Gold Museum. It is interesting that the Moche were a lot more frank about sex and its varied reality 1500 years ago than later Judeo-Christian civilisations, which pretend that sex is nothing but an act of procreation.
After a few days in Lima, I left for Chiclayo, a large city on the northern Peruvian coast. While there I visited the famous artifacts of the Lord of Sipan, whose well preserved tomb has been featured in National Geographic magazine and documentaries. I wasn’t feeling very well in the hot deserts of the north, so I decided to skip the pyramids, as well as some famous local dishes such as lizard soup and fried cat (or rather, I had difficulty finding them in local restaurants even though I was told they should be available there).
I took an overnight bus to Tumbes, a city near the border with Ecuador. Here we entered the tropics, with all the accompanying chaotic greenery. The arid desert plains, which began just north of Santiago de Chile, finally end here, a few thousand miles later.
After a week on the coastal deserts of Peru, I encountered rain for the first time, and it took the form of a massive thunderstorm. I arrived in a flooded Tumbes at 4:30 am. I was immediately mobbed by taxi drivers wanting to bring me to the border some 40 km away. I couldn’t see the wisdom in crossing the border in the dark and was pissed off by the huge sums the infamous Tumbes taxi mafia demanded. With my pathetic Spanish, I convinced the bus driver in allowing me to stay on the bus till daylight, lest I get robbed in this notoriously unsafe border town.
The next few hours were a most miserable episode for me. It was impossible to sleep as I was afraid of muggers coming up to the bus or people stealing my luggage. The rain got heavier, and I suddenly woke up realising that the bus had a leaking roof, which formed a huge puddle of water round my backpack. My backpack was completely wet! I have always packed my clothing in plastic bags but have recently lost that discipline. What’s worse, the rain didn’t get lighter and by 7:30am, the bus driver made it clear that his hospitality was about to end. So I left the bus in heavy rain for the place where collectivos ( a kind of mini-bus) were supposed to gather.
Unfortunately, I waited for a while and none appeared. I decided to flag for a cab, and when it did stop, a teenager appeared from nowhere to open the door and said something quick to the driver. For a silly moment, I thought he was trying to be helpful but found the driver surprisingly unreceptive to any bargaining for the price. Desperate by then and totally drenched, I accepted the ridiculous US$10 demanded, and as I stepped into the cab, watched with amazement the driver throwing a few coins into the teenager’s open palms. The latter had been paid a commission for doing nothing except for rushing to speak to the driver before I did, and I was the one who paid for his commission in the form of higher taxi fares. And guess what, a collectivo followed shortly, but too late now!
After 30 minutes, we reached the Peruvian border checkpoint, where I got my passport examined by an official. Again I was surrounded by the usual crowd of money changers and self-appointed “nice guys” who gave you unsolicited advice which you wouldn’t need in the first place, for the sake of an equally unsolicited commission. Totally paranoid and equally frustrated with the rain, I shouted at all of them to f–k off. When I returned to my taxi with my stamped passport, one of these idiots actually invited himself onto the front seat to volunteer to “help me” to cross over to the Ecuadorian side. I had to force him out by threatening to call the police. How mad I was!
The actual border river was supposedly 5 km away, and after a few minutes of driving towards there, we encountered a traffic jam. The taxi driver now claimed that beyond that wall 100 meters away was the border itself, and I should walk there since it could take ages to clear this jam. I was conned again. I got off the taxi, with my luggage, in the rain – and soon found that the border was nowhere near. What was beyond that wall were 200 meters of muddy track which ended at a bridge which was in the process of being washed away by a flooded river.
As I approached the bridge, I was mobbed by people either volunteering to help me carry my backpack for a fee or row me across on a canoe. Fired with pure anger and frustrations, I simply brushed everybody aside and shouted at these sticky touts.
I had already changed into sandals, and now I was rolling up my pants as well. Wow! The fast flowing water was at least one-foot high on the bridge! The entire bridge could be washed away at any moment, yet there were dozens of people crossing it at any time.
The rain got heavier and I was completely drenched by then, not to mention that my pants got really dirty from the muddy water as well. Another 300 meters through the streets of Agua Verde, the Peruvian border town, I was finally on the actual border with Ecuador. By the time I walked into the Ecuadorian border town of Huaquillas on the other side of the border river, I looked dirtier, wetter and more miserable than I had at any point of my journey, or indeed of all my past journeys. When people from a bus company told the obvious lie that their bus to Guayaquil (Ecuador’s largest city) was air-conditioned and wouldn’t stop along the way, I paid for the ticket anyway, as I no longer had the energy to contest the sales gimmick. The price was OK and I knew none of the buses have real air condition anyway. I just wanted to get out of there!
And so, that was how I got into Ecuador. I have since gotten myself cleaned and sorted, did some sightseeing in Guayaquil, and then went on to Quito, the capital, though not before a 7-hour delay in the supposedly 8-hour bus journey due to congestion caused by an accident in the mountain highway.
Today I booked myself on an 8-day cruise in the Galapagos Islands, famous for its unusual wildlife which inspired Charles Darwin’s evolution theories. For 8 days from 11th March, I shall be uncontactable while on the Pacific Ocean. Until then, wish me luck and send me your emails. I love hearing from you guys, even though I hardly have the time to reply.