25 - Mission Inca-Kola (Trujillo, Chiclayo)

Arica, CHILE to Lima, PERU - 26 february 2003

For the past two days in Arica, I had been considering if I should cross over to Peru as this was probably the closest I would get to Peru in a long time. I was there three years ago and had visited the southern bits of Peru.

Yesterday, I received an email from Fanny from France. She and her friends, Nathalie and Nadege, were with me in China on the 4-day horse-trek in Songpan way back in May last year. They had just completed their 1-year trip. However, during the last few weeks of their trip, in Ecuador and Peru, they all separately had their bags and cameras stolen.

It was so sad. Both countries have amazing cultures and tremendously interesting history. But security is always a problem. I had heard many, many, many stories from various travellers who either had bad things happened to them or knew someone who had bad things happened to them in Ecuador or Peru.

Three years ago in Peru, I was violently robbed as well, knocked unconscious and left lying on the pavement. It was horrible.

Sigh… when you are able to hold conversations, stating, “My first robbery happened in… And my second robbery happened in…”, you should really consider switching your interest from travelling to cross-stitching.

Well, tempting as it is, I am struggling now but… I think I will stick to travelling. You go, girl.

And so, I crossed over to Peru with a heavy heart.

Various Peruvians at the International Terminal in Arica harrassed me to take their colectivos [shared car]. After filling out the Immigration Form, I could not locate the driver whom I had originally agreed to, for the Peruvians still looked alike to me. So, I went with another who already had two passengers in his car.

At the Peru customs, the Customs Officer asked me how long I wanted to stay in Peru. Two weeks. He gave me two months, muttering that he did not want to see me married in Peru.

Hey, don’t worry. My betrothed is in Cafayate, Argentina, busy turning five.

And so, I was soon placed at the bus terminal in Tacna, Peru’s border town with Chile and I had scarcely filled my lungs with Peruvian air before I was harrassed by a tout who wanted to bring me to buy a bus-ticket although it was a task I could very well manage myself. ‘1:15pm’ means bus would leave at 1:15pm. ‘Arequipa’ means bus would leave for Arequipa.

He refused to leave me alone and remained unnecessarily earnest and helpful until I tipped him. Well, he performed one useful task – he informed me Peru was 2 hours behind Chile. Hence, I left my hotel in Chile at 12:30pm and arrived in Peru at 12:15pm.

With the robbery stories nagging in my head (all happened in bus terminals and buses), I paid for a relatively expensive bus to Lima. The price was comparable to those in Chile and Argentina.

The bus terminal was full of Peruvians with really, really huge bags of goods, stuffed with shoes, electronic products, toys, etc… These items were obviously bought in Arica, the duty-free port and consumer-goods heaven.

I did not think double-decker comfortable semi-cama [semi-bed] buses existed in Peru three years ago. Now, they do. The bus indeed felt secure and was very comfortable, with dinner, continuous movies on working TV sets and even a game of bingo. Didn’t win though.



Lima to Trujillo, PERU - 27 february 2003

Unbelievably, I actually slept very well on the bus last night.

Upon reaching Lima, I stayed put at the bus terminal to wait for my connection to Trujillo. I did not remember much about Lima from my last trip but, Lima is Lima. Hardly anyone I know who had been here liked it. I did not then and I do not particularly now. The sky was very Lima too, entirely and depressingly shrouded with clouds.

Really long day on the bus yesterday and today. Gosh, this was such a last minute decision. In Tacna, I had actually bought a ticket to Arequipa, a city at the southern end of Peru but half an hour before my bus left, I changed it to Trujillo, at the northern end of Peru. Up til the last minute, I was still unsure where I wanted to go. But I was CRAZY! For the further north I go in Peru, the longer the distance I would need to cover to back-track to Buenos Aires for my flight out of the continent.



Trujillo, PERU - 28 february 2003

Chan Chan ruin is the famous ruin near Trujillo which I set off to visit early in the morning. We were only able to visit Palacio [Palace] Tschudi for the rest were pretty much left in crumbles.

It is a fascinating Chimu ruin, rather well-restored. There are motifs artistically representing sea-lions, fish, pelicans, etc… The diamond-shaped adobe structures represent nets used for fishing, which was very important to the Chimu culture. Everything was related to some aspect of their lives. A better understanding can be attained when one employs a guide and is able to UNDERSTAND the guide. My guide was very kind to speak slowly for my benefit.

Chan Chan was the most important city from the Chimu culture which existed around 1200 to 1400 AD, before the Incas conquered them. Unlike the Incas where the sun was the most important god, the Chimus worshipped the god of the moon, the sea, the land and the stars.

I later caught the colectivo to Huanchaco, a nearby fishing village where the locals used totora reeds to mould and tie into boats with one pointy end and a hollowed-end at the other side for a person to sit in. They paddled the tiny boats in the sea in the early morning to fish. They are called caballitos [little horses].

The totora reed boats in Lago Titicaca way down south, on the other hand, are shaped differently, very much bigger with two pointy ends and with a hollow-centre for a whole family to sit in.

During my forays around the centre of Trujillo, I spotted many rather well-preserved colonial houses. The Plaza de Armas of Trujillo is truly one of the most beautiful I had seen in a while. The houses surrounding it were all colourfully painted. The windows had white-painted grilles with the top bit shaped like the top half of a tear-drop. Very charming. Many houses had wooden balcony boxes hanging out of the sides. Some of these colonial houses were open to the public for visit for free.



Trujillo to Chiclayo, PERU - 01 march 2003

I caught a bus to Chiclayo, a few hours north of Trujillo.

Gosh, Peru is so different. Really, every country has its own little distinctive flavours. Here in Peru, there were many more unfinished buildings, with bricks exposed, with the metal rods sticking out of beams on the top storey as the families ran out of money after constructing the bottom stories; there was a lot more rubbish on the streets; there were many more chifas; there was a lot more cumbia music, a personal ‘favourite’; there were many more street-vendors hawking sweets on trays, fly-swatters, cotton-buds, whatever; there were a lot more ‘¡China!!’, ‘¡Chinita!’, ‘¡Japonésa!’ hissed at me when I walked past people (which were alright until it came to ‘¡Jackie Chan!’); there were many more shoe-shiners and these were mainly young boys; there were many more money-changers-on-stools with huge stacks of cash clasped in one hand and a calculator on the other, sitting along the streets, calling out ‘Cambio Cambio’ [Money Changer]; there were many more taxis.

On the streets of Trujillo and Chiclayo, at one glance, it seemed 80% of the vehicles were yellow taxis and perhaps, 80% of these taxis were empty.

I remembered from my last trip here, that in Lima, Arequipa, Cuzco, anyone who owned a car and could print out ‘TAXI’ on fluorescent stickers could be a taxi driver. From what I saw out of the bus-window in Lima, it apparently was still like this. But in Trujillo and Chiclayo, there seemed to be more control: anyone who owned a car and could print out ‘TAXI’ on fluorescent stickers and PAINT their cars yellow could be a taxi driver.

They were tooting their horns all the time, whistling at you, beckoning you, enticing you. I was browsing in a shop and I kept hearing a insistent tooting and whistling amongst the mêlée of tootings and I happened to look up. Indeed, through the shop’s door, on the road, a taxi driver was gesturing to me and giving me the ‘you-want-taxi?’ look. What the…? I was shopping!

And not to forget, the Peruvian’s own brand of cola - the Inca-Kola, the sickly yellowish, urine-coloured, chemically-flavoured cola that they are so proud of. Adverts everywhere. Bottles on sale everywhere.

Ah, Peru… how I had missed you.



Chiclayo, PERU - 02 march 2003

The tourist office of Chiclayo had been closed yesterday for it was Saturday. The tourist police were right next door and I had popped in to ask when the tourist office would be opened.

Instead, a guy, I was not even sure if he was a tourist police as he was not in uniform, very earnestly helped me with all my inquiries, even took the trouble to go out on the street to photocopy a map of Chiclayo for me. He pointed out all the places where I could take colectivos [shared taxis, a car or a van] to visit the museums and ruins around Chiclayo. Peruvians were really helpful.

I got into a colectivo and headed to Lambayeque, a small town near Chiclayo which had two reputable archaeological museums.

The first one I visited was Museo Arqueologico Nacional Bruning de Lambayeque. It was alright, not super impressive.

But the next one was amazing! Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipan is the museum that housed the entire collection of the treasures discovered in the tombs of a ‘Lord of Sipan’ from the Moche culture (around 100 BC to about 700 AD). The items uncovered were incredible. There were tiny, intricate, gold figurines that needed to be assembled (with dangling ear-rings and minuscule ornaments); many gold and turquoise round ear-rings; necklaces made from micro-sized shells; other gold and silver chunky jewellery shaped like peanuts, heads of men, spiders, etc; enough pottery to cook and feed Calcutta; many, many more. It held a stupendous collection!

Besides the treasure on display, the museum had very good representation of the tomb of the lord, buried with eight people, a few llamas and dog, and lots of pottery and treasures. There were wonderful replicas everywhere to present to us how life was like in that epoch.

This was truly one of the most impressive museums I had been to. Personally, I felt the treasures here were comparable to those unearthed in Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt. This made coming to northern Peru all worthwhile already. The rest would just be bonus.

After lunch, I went further north on another colectivo to Túcume. Here were 26 adobe pyramids from the Lambayeque culture (which was before the Chimu culture).

As these pyramids were made from adobe, or mud, unlike stone-pyramids in Egypt or Mexico, these did not last very long. It apparently did not rain that often in this region at that time, but occasionally, the El Niño phenomenon would arrive to wreck havoc with the weather. And so, these pyramids basically looked like muddy mountains, with signs of erosion caused by rivulets running off at the base.

I was perhaps the only tourist there and I was totally alone when I walked up to the mirador for a view around the pyramids. That was nice. Later, I saw many broken ceramics amongst the ruins too. No, I guess it was not possible to pick up everything and try and piece them together.

To go to these little towns, there were no set schedules for buses whatsoever. Anyone with a vehicle could supply the transportation. Usually, there would be an assistant hanging at the door, shouting out the locations they were heading. This was required because, while there were signs in front of the car or van, many people were illiterate or some, so old and blind, they could not read anything.

Usually, I did not know where to catch the colectivo-vans but people on the streets would point me to the place where the colectivo-cars waited. They would wait until five people show up and then, they were off.

The colectivo-vans were easier to catch back to the main town, like Chiclayo and they usually tried to pile as many people in as possible. I was standing with my back bowed for a good distance before someone got off and I could snuggle my butt between two locals.

The 1 Sol and 50 centavos coins I handed over were declared ‘falsos’ [counterfeits] and I had to fish out other coins for payment.

OK, I was warned about counterfeit coins on my first day in Peru. Every time I received change, I studied them closely. But I had no idea what to look out for. I was just pretending. Sometimes, I would mutter something and return a nearly smoothened-out coin to the shop-owners and they usually changed it without a word. Now, with a few days into Peru, I might have accumulated a handful of these falsies and it was time to study the differences.

I spread all my coins at the reception of my hotel for my receptionist to analyse. However, he passed the ‘rejected’ 1 Sol and 50 centavos. I pointed out the different fonts. He said, yeah, but these were the new ones issued from 2000 onwards. Some folks still had not caught on. Well, he detected a false 2 Soles coin. The font-size for the two ‘S’ in SOLES were larger than the other letters.

Hmmmm… I had worked in a credit-card centre for six years and I had seen MASTERCARD printed as MASTECARD on some counterfeit cards and seen a fax of a passport once, with PASSPORT spelled as PASPORT. What was wrong with these fraudsters with their mis-spellings and font-size mistakes? Were they not afraid of counterfeit laws but of copyright laws?

I spent my fake 2 Soles on a bus-ticket later.