INTO THE YONDER A GYPSY’S DISCOVERY OF PERU

The second story of this journey, is from early January 1978 and tracks my transition from Canada to Peru. I was armed with a brief indoctrination about Peru, the job and what to expect. This from people in the Toronto office (that really had little knowledge or expertise in the subject). I was fully prepared for a journey that would change everything in my future. After two days of office debriefing, followed by bar debriefing and introduction to some of the players that were on leave at the time, from Peru. It was time to push on.

The period prior to departure was one of the coldest times in Toronto history. The temperatures were in the minus 30 range, the wind was blowing about 30 mph down Young Street. And because of the snow/ice buildup, ropes were tied between light standards on Young Street to assist pedestrians in walking along the street. I was fully prepared. I had a knee length lined leather overcoat, with a full raccoon collar and all the appropriate trimmings. Armed like this and my head buzzing with the last admonishments of the office people, to not drink the water, eat the food or leave any of my personal belongings alone for even one second, I boarded yet another plane for Lima Peru. It departed after midnight and arrived in Lima, Peru in the very early morning in January 1978.

I left the plane, and following the crowd, I entered a room to await immigration formalities. There I was, a big tall, long curly haired guy, resplendent in a long fur trimmed leather jacket, surrounded by my worldly possessions and coming to the realization that it was hot in Lima Peru! At the time of my arrival it was about 90 degree F and I started to sweat. Fresh with the knowledge not to let any of my possessions go unattended, I stood there fully clothed (to battle a Canadian winter) and sweating bullets. I must have been some kind of sight for any Peruvian standing in that line! A lot of people were eyeing me up and down. Maybe they had never seen a gringo before. I was partially correct, they had never seen one in that type of “get up” before, hovering around his goods and sweating a river of water!

Thank god our travel agent was there and rescued me very quickly. He introduced himself, grabbed my passport and $20 and disappeared into the crowd. Presently he emerged at the front, and vaulted over the immigration counter. He exchanged words with an agent, grabbed a stamp and pounded it onto a couple of pages in my passport. That finished he signalled me to follow him and we left. Geezus, I had never seen anything like that in my life.

Soon we were in a car and hurtling our way towards town. This was my first experience with Peruvian traffic rules. It appeared that there were none! Vehicles dodged in and out and around each other with horns blaring and little recognition of lanes, right of ways or any discernible rules. All the time I am still melting and in fear for my life from a Peruvian taxi driver. I have by this time, developed a raging thirst. We now passed into the biggest, most congested city that I had ever seen. The noises were extreme! Finally we arrived in the city centre at an old colonial style hotel called the Bolivar.

Not yet being a seasoned traveller I did not realize how beautiful the hotel was. It just looked like an old place to me. At this time in my life, I was fresh out of Alberta and really lacked any form of international experience, sense of history or any culture whatsoever. In any event the agent got me checked in and up to a room, where he deposited my stuff. Then, he said “rest now, I will be back for you later”. Before I could say anything, slam and he was gone. There I was in a room with a bed and a bathroom of sorts. Great, so I laid down and tried to rest. Yup you guessed it, wide awake. I was still in shock from my introduction to Peru, I had not understood anything that had transpired in the last few hours and I wanted my mommy!

On top of that I had a raging thirst. I looked around and found, what looked like a room service listing. However, it might as well have been in Chinese, I did not understand one word. I laid down again and all I could hear was this hammer like sound of a leaky bathroom faucet pounding in my brain. Drip, drip, drip. My mind was screaming the last words from our office “don’t drink the water, you gonna die!”. Yup you guessed it again, I mustered up all of my will power and lasted about 1 minute before I stuck my mouth under that faucet and drank about 1 gallon of warm Peruvian tap water, all the while my brain saying you gonna die! Well at least, I thought, I’m not dying of thirst. That was my introduction to Peru and my life of travel.