Perulog II: Day One Part Two

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Having spent my first morning in Lima, Peru drinking and touring the nearby catacombs, I spent my first afternoon in Lima, Peru sleeping like a drunken corpse.  I somehow managed to interrupt my slumber before day fully succumbed to night and I found my way to a small, nondescript restaurant to break my fast.  I asked for a menu and was instead inexplicably served a stew-like plate of meat and vegetables.  It was too early to argue so I shrugged and dug in.  

After brupper I did some legwork enquiring about getting a bus to Pisco the following day before making my way back to my hotel/hostel.  Along the way I was touted by touts trying to sell this as-yet untanned* touristo any number of illicit delicacies designed to derail my evening, from eager chiquitas, cocaine and marijuana to…well, I don’t really know what that last guy was trying to sell me but whatever it was it was definitely illegal, and no doubt it would have been fun.

But with the day already beginning to wane I figured that I could make do with whatever fun I could find back where my day had begun; at the bar on the top floor of my hostel.  But lo, when I got up there I was befuddled to behold a general lack of beer.  Funny, there had been plenty of beer in the fridge when I was there earlier in the day.

No problem, I figured it wouldn’t take much wandering to find a cold beer or three and so out I went.  And what do you know, the first spot I find who’s there but Christian, the Congolese/Belgian/Peruvian guy I had met when I’d arrived at the airport that morning.  He was there with his best buddy Angel – who had arrived in Peru the day before – and they were loaded.  Turns out they had drank all the beer at the hostel’s cafeteria before migrating to this tiny hole-in-the-wall and not only that, by the time I arrived they had already cleaned out the small fridge at the bar.  So we dug into several rounds of warm beer and traded drunken travel stories.  Those two guys had travelled to more than forty countries together, they had plenty of stories to tell and they all seemed best when told loudly.  

Angel and Christian (I just now noticed the Biblical leanings of their names) didn’t need the service of touts – it seems that Angel had literally had his hands full when he had crossed the border at the airport – and as he crumbled a corner off of a delicious Nepalese temple balI into double-wide Rizla I started to glean that they were both a few caps and stems into their evening already.  A handful of beers later a couple of young chicas walked by and Christian stumbled out of his chair to give chase.  Given his state I was quite amazed that he was able to lure them back but he did, and soon the four of them were flagging a cab to go to a disco.  

I suspect everyone was relieved when I opted to not join them.  Instead, I spent every remaining sole in my pocket on beers and brought them back up to the hostel cafeteria.  I met a friendly couple from Gatineau up there as well as a French guy named Bruno.  Though he outdistanced my French by kilometres, he didn’t speak much English but no matter: we had a good time hanging out.  Bruno was a rather interesting dude.  When I pointed out how easily we were conversing he said, “We do not speak the same language but we can share the same dreams.”  My jaw gaped a bit at the beauty of his statement, and when he saw this he quickly clarified: “I did not say that.”  Just as I was expecting him to disclose the author of such a fine quote he instead doubled down on the poetics: 

“It is The Earth that has told me this.”  Wow Bruno, just: Wow.

I finally drank enough beer to call it a night and headed to my new room.  I say “new” because while I was out drinking with Angel and Christian the hotel staff had decided that they needed the four-bed room I was sharing with a Belgian stranger named Pascal so they simply moved all of our stuff to another room!  Well, almost all our stuff.  Actually, none of my stuff.  I knocked on the door of my old room and to the astonishment of the family of Germans staying there I walked up to the kids bed, reached underneath it and pulled out my bag.  It was encouraging to note that my subtle hiding place had worked, but it was still weird that those people had had unfettered access to my undies ‘n stuff.

That said, our new rooftop room was much, much nicer.  Sure there were a lot of stairs to climb but the view of the San Francisco Cathedral from up there was divine.  Pascal the Belgian was pissed off at me because he thought I had moved all our stuff to the new room without telling him.  I think I managed to make him believe the truth, but he was still being weird.  I’m glad I shook him.

*I’ve long-convinced myself that touts and scallywags in tropical climates seek out the whitest tourists, expecting those without tans to be freshly off the boat, as it were.