Posted by 011705
When morning rolled around I arose refreshed and ready to get on top of my day. I found a large bank a short stroll away and shunning (for now) the dozen or more currency exchangers who lingered on the sidewalk with the same flagrant black-market bravado as the hash dealers who lined up every day behind the McDonald’s near my high school I went in and battled a baffling string of inquiries and interactions before walking out with a pocket full of soles (Peruvian currency is the “sole”) and a confused case of mental whiplash.
I asked one of the sidewalk touts what their exchange rate was and promised myself I’d trade my money on the streets from now on. I was travelling with very, very little money (because I had in general very, very little money) and I was eager to stretch things as thinly as I could.
With that in mind, I killed the rest of the morning at the nearby Museo del Congreso y la inquisición, which doesn’t charge admission. Lest you think I am specifically creepy (and cheap) I should like to point out that the specifically creepy Inquisition museum (and its significantly less creepy Congress component) is the most popular in all of Lima.
And why not? It’s free! (And creepy.)
I had almost finished the full museum tour with a Spanish group when I noticed a small English tour just starting out so I hopped on that and actually learned a thing or two. (Despite doing well – on paper – in a full-credit Introduction to Spanish course during my second year of university I don’t speak or understand Spanish enough to, well, to say or understand much at all. This entire trip tended to prove this on a moment-by-moment basis.)
In short, the museum has some very unnerving exhibits and installations on display, all intended to offer the visitor a visualization of the otherwise unimaginable horrors that befell many of the nearly 1,500 innocent people who had the great misfortune of being “processed” through this, the headquarters of the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. (I shudder just typing such a horrid title).
Amazingly the inquisitors had plenty of rules around just how they could torture people, and a doctor was kept on hand during the more delicate procedures to ensure that the inquisitees didn’t die until the moment they were supposed to. These and other indignities were presented with the help of very realistic wax dummies placed in very unreal situations.
What an ugly, ugly world this was.
The English tour group included a couple with their young daughter in tow, a girl maybe four or five years old. As the tour approached the main and most graphic torture chamber I pulled the mother aside and suggested that the next room might freak out her little girl. She just laughed and said, “It’s all right, she’s a weird kid.” We filed into the room and were confronted with a dummy who had his hands tied behind his back and a tortured expression frozen onto his face. Two mannequins in the corner pulled on a rope, hoisting the wax prisoner to the ceiling by the binding around his hands, putting him in a very uncomfortable position to say the least. “Hee-hee!” squealed the little girl, pointing up at the horror. “Mommy, mommy! Look at what that funny man is doing!” Mom turns and gives me a raised eyebrow, like they visit torture chambers all the time. Odd kid, sure, but I think the mom might be a little endangered too.
In an irony that I can’t quite put my finger on, after a 251-year run that killed a surprisingly few thirty-two people (guess those torture-doctors were pretty good at their jobs), the Inquisition Headquarters closed in 1820 – just a year before Peru gained independence from the Spanish Empire – and the building became the home of Peru’s brand-new Congress and later their Senate. That part of the museum was much less horrible, and equally less interesting.
Back at the hotel I quickly caught up with Angel and Christian and got the lowdown on what I had thankfully missed from their continued hedonism the night before. We made quick and vague plans to meet up in Cuzco a week hence and I dashed to my room to grab my things before rushing to check out. I found the station in time to literally run for my bus and barely catch it. Four hours and a $3 fare later I was in Pisco, 250 kilometres south of Lima and namesake for Peru’s de facto national tipple (which is also called “pisco”, obviously).
I hustled around until I found a place that would let me haggle them down to $3 for a room and scoured the travel shops for the cheapest tour of the penguin-rich Ballestas Islands, booking myself a ticket for the following morning. Then I was left with nothing but to scope out a good cheap meal and find out what Pisco was like. I did indeed score a pile of good, hot food for almost no money at all but I allowed myself just the tiniest taste of Pisco.
Pisco the city, that is; I saved the city’s nom de plume shooter for another day. After dinner and a brief walkabout I opted for an early night of corner-store beers consumed alone in my room with my alarm set nice and early in anticipation of my upcoming boat tour. I wanted to be on time and awake for my first-ever penguin experience!
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Though I had with me on this trip a new-fangled point-and-shoot “digital” camera – one that could even afford short videos – the world was still a ways away from infinite photographic storage capacity. As such, you may find a relative dearth of photos throughout this narrative, and in this post in particular. I trust that the reader won’t find this overly disappointing, and in exchange promise that I will ultimately be including herewith virtually every photo and short video that I took on this journey.
And I think you’ll like ’em. So do stick around.
Todd Man Out 