the ride

21/5/2009

I live at about 2,200 meters (a little over 7,000 feet, I think), basically at the top of the mountain that several other Alto Piura volunteers´ sites lead to. Needless to say, I take a lot of pride in my position atop the rest, and never lose an opportunity to remind the others that I literally look down on all of them. Or could if I were so inclined. But living in Chalaco also means I´m about as far away from my regional capital as it gets for volunteers in Peru. Now that the rains have slowed down a bit, the trip up has been cut to five - seven hours, down from the eight-plus it took a month or two ago, but it´s still a pretty long haul. And the trip is never without a couple unexpected twists and turns (both literal and non); it truly is an adventure every time.

It´s pretty standard for Peace Corps volunteers in Peru to head to their capital city once every two weeks or so, to stock up on whatever they need, enjoy relatively dependable internet/phone service, and just relax and speak some English for a change. (See the entry on Piura for more on that. But I do need to specifically mention one more very important element of the Piura experience, and that is the Mercado, or sprawling outdoor market that seems big enough for its own zip code. If you´ve ever seen any movie set in Latin America, you´ve probably got some sort of picture of that I´m talking about. I went there the other day with a shopping list that included the following: cowboy hat, yonqui sandals made from old tires (in a freakish size 43, no less), “wife-beater” undershirts, Season Three of The Sopranos, new guitar strings, seeds for the garden, and all the necessary vaccinations for my new puppy in Chalaco. That all took me about an hour, plus I got all three Godfather movies on the same disc, a couple pomegranates, and I swung by to thank the woman who sold me my bed and mattress a couple months ago. I spent the equivalent of maybe 50 dollars, tops. The place is unbelievable.)

In any case, in order to take advantage of all that your gleaming capital city has to offer, you have to get there first, and then get home afterwards. I´m gonna take you through the return trip, which for some reason always seems slightly more eventful than the trip down (which is pretty much the same really, it just takes a couple hours less and I´m generally asleep for it anyway, being as it is that the bus for Piura leaves Chalaco at 2AM).

The trip up the mountain starts at our go-to hostel in Piura, the Costa Bella, where you pay your bill for the last couple nights and step out the front door to hail a cab or mototaxi to take you to the bus terminal on the other side of the river. You can usually haggle them down to about two soles for the five-minute trip, but if you´ve got a ton of luggage with you (or, say, a bike or bed or other large piece of furniture, which you very well might), it can make even this part a little complicated. Personally I´m a fan of the mototaxis…I mean what´s not to love about a converted dirtbike with a little plastic-covered wagon attached to it in back? Plus the breeze helps in the stifling heat that Piura is never lacking, no matter the season. Piura´s the kind of town where you always feel like the beach is right around the corner. But it isn´t. It´s just really, really hot.

So you get to the Terminal “Castilla” and hop on the Turpa, bound for Chalaco. By now I know all the operators and their sidekicks, and the girl at the desk hooks me up with Seat 3, which is right at the front and pretty much the only spot that allows me to stretch at least one leg out at a time. I´ve been stuck in a regular seat farther back, and it just sucks. These buses are made to just about the exact specifications of the average Peruvian adult – which would be nice, if I were the size of the average Peruvian adult. The bus leaves at 7AM and 2PM every day, but you usually sit in the lot for at least another 20 minutes. This is prime time for the vendors. The variety of goods sold here doesn´t quite compare to the Mercado, but it´s definitely impressive just how much one guy can carry draped over his shoulder. They charge onto the bus, one after another, advertising everything from fruits and cakes (or keké, as it´s shouted out), to bootlegged Van Damme DVDs, to batteries, to soy milk in reused water bottles, to wallets, to hair combs, and so on. Then there are the straight-up beggars, each of whom is pretty well-known to anyone who´s been on the bus once or twice. They come on, address their trapped congregation with all the over-the-top blessings and well-wishings that precede pretty much any public address in Peru, tell the story of their life (at least two of them are blind), and then cruise the aisle, hand outstretched. This is about when it begins to feel like someone just turned the heat on inside the bus, with the lack of ventilation and high concentration of people squeezing by (the aisle is also fitted perfectly for one person, about 5´5” and chubby, to walk down…not three of them at once). The bus usually pulls away with a couple of them still aboard, trying to make that last sale, but they always seem to find their way off before we get too far (which makes me wonder about the “blind” ones.) Eventually you pull out of the terminal, the breeze picks up, the radio starts playing some tinny huayno or sanjuanito tune, and you´re headed east out of the city.

It takes all of about seven minutes to get out of Piura, at which point you pass into a long stretch of flat, arid “dry-forest” or bosque seco, which is basically sand dunes and sparse, low shrubbery. It always makes me feel like I´m in Africa. Now, I´ve never been to Africa, and it´s a giant continent, so to say that it “feels like Africa” is blatantly ignorant on two counts. But that´s what I think, every time, without fail. (And, I mean, I´m sure there are places in Africa that do look like this.) Anyway, after an hour or so, the desert suddenly collides with lush farmland, with banana trees, sugar cane, and flooded rice paddies lining the winding two-lane highway. At this point the vendors are still ubiquitous – a couple jump on every time you stop, now selling fruit mostly: sweet lemons that you eat like an orange; ciruelas or tart, little, red citrus fruits that are unlike anything in the States, mangos, and more. These guys, I like. Don´t know why, they just always seem to be having a grand old time, sitting by the road all day, drinking chicha corn beer with their buddies and waiting for the bus to come by. They´re masters of the Peruvian art of pulling your sweat-drenched shirt up over your gut and proudly showing the world your belly-button. I´ve always been a little skeptical of how much that can possibly cool someone off. But I´ve never really tried it, so who knows. And it does look pretty rad, you gotta give ´em that. A lot of times they´ll flag the bus down, hop on as it´s still moving, and ride for a couple kilometers, where they´ll get off and (presumably) wait for the next bus coming the other direction. What a way to spend your day (or life). There´s gotta be a metaphor in there somewhere.

About an hour and a half into the trip, the bus stops in Morropon, the capital of the Province, which I´ve come to think of as sort-of like St. Louis back when the West was still wild. Except that it´s super hot, and poor, and in Peru, but you get the idea…a kind-of last stop before you head out into the unknown. Here you stop for a few minutes to drop off and pick up passengers, and make whatever last minute purchases or bathroom visits you may need. Almost immediately after passing through Morropon, the pavement abruptly gives way t o a dirt – or mud, depending on the month – road, and you start heading up. The first major landmark after Morropon is the unnamed bridge you cross, with the Rio Piura flowing along a few stories below. The crossing is notable not only because the wooden bridge is rickety in appearance and barely wide enough for the bus, but even more so because of the other, brand-new and far sturdier-looking bridge directly upriver of it. I guess there was some problem with the design and they´re waiting to finish it…but there´s something very ironic about crossing a questionable old bridge while looking at its replacement out the window. I´m undecided on which of the two I would actually trust more.

From here on you basically hug the side of the mountain as you rise from sea level to over 2,000 meters in a matter of hours; to get to Chalaco you pass the towns of Paltashaco, Pambarumbe, Santiago, San Miguel, Ñoma, and Cabuyal, not to mention countless goats, cows, donkeys, and old barefoot women carrying oversize bundles of firewood on their backs, who always remind me of the woman on that one Led Zeppelin album cover. I´m not gonna lie, when the rains were really bad, I didn´t make this trip any more than I absolutely had to. The time factor combined with the constant threat of landslides made for a situation where, in my mind, the juice just wasn´t worth the squeeze, as it were. Now that the road is drying out, it´s a little quicker and slightly less nerve-racking, except that now instead of mud, the road is all potholes, some of which could swallow a Volkswagon. To call the ride “bumpy” would be a gross understatement; it´s like a slow, sketchy roller coaster with no guardrails or seatbelts. That lasts all day. Pieces of luggage are frequently falling out of the overhead compartments and decking unsuspecting passengers. Fortunately I´ve never had a problem with car sickness, but there are always at least a couple babies who are yakking the whole way up or down the mountain. The seats of the Turpa have marinated over the years in a truly unique blend of puke, feet, and body odor –not a smell I´ll soon forget.

Like I said, there are always a few highlights to break up the monotony. Flat tires and stopping for a busted corona (still not sure what that is, exactly) are standard. Sometimes everyone has to get out and walk a couple hundred meters ahead of the bus to avoid a particularly ugly spot, or help throw rocks on a spot in the road where the road has ceased to be. I still have yet to witness up close a large animal getting roasted by the Turpa´s fenderless front end, but I´m sure it´s only a matter of time. A couple months ago on the trip down, we were literally in the middle of a stampede for a good five minutes, coasting downhill amidst some of the largest livestock I´d ever seen. I really regret not taking a video of it, ´cause it was some serious adrenaline-pumping action.

Having left Piura at 2PM, by the time you near Chalaco it´s usually well past dinnertime. Sometime after Santiago you´ve entered the giant cloud that still envelops the higher altitudes almost every afternoon – that is, if it isn´t raining. If you´re lucky you might emerge just about the time you get to Chalaco, and as the sky clears the stars can be spectacular: the inverted Big Dipper indicating north, Orion laying flat on the western horizon, and the iconic Southern Cross shining brilliantly off to the south, with the Milky Way or Via Lactea slashing across the sky like a giant highway for the shooting stars, now falling every few seconds. It´s been a long day, but all´s well that ends well. And that´s is a pretty good ending, in my book.