The Cuzco Streets at Night

The heavy liquor induced social atmosphere in the hostel was constricting; I needed space to think. So why not take a nice stroll up the hill? Firstly, it was not really a hill – it was a mountain in the Andes. Was this a mistake? I thought as I heaved in the thin 3,400m altitude air while climbing steps, and this was only 30 meters from the front door. No. I felt like some exercise all day and was just being lazy. I walked past a Peruvian couple as the husband patted the arse of his wife across the threshold and into the house. She seemed to enjoy the gesture, or at least find it amusing. A car then passed which had its hazard lights permanently on such that if it suddenly turned in any direction, technically I would have been warned. I then came across three men walking towards me from the other end of the dark street. As I thought about the greater prevalence of muggings in Peru, and my lack of escape routs, I wondered whether coming on this walk alone at night in Peru was a mistake. While I had almost nothing of value on me, I happened to have three coins of small denomination in my pocket, which all of a sudden I realized where making a terrible racket clinking together. I quickly and surreptitiously moved them into three separate pockets in my jeans before I approached the men, so that they would not longer bang together. I waked past the men without issue, who turned out to be totally harmless upon closer inspection. No it was not a mistake. I was being paranoid. I then passed the music of a man singing with his guitar waft over a fence. His singing was so bad and out of tune, almost to the point of cliché; like a drunk and heartbroken Japanese man at a karaoke bar at 3 am on a Tuesday morning. But there was still something beautiful about it, or at least amusing, so I paused to listen. I then turned alongside the steep part of the valley so that I could better admire the view below, and came across a huge dog. After a small hesitation as we both stared at each other, it started barking and charging towards me. As I though about the high risk of rabies in Peruvian dogs, and my travel doctors warnings that you must treat all dog bites as potentially carrying rabies, I though that maybe coming on this walk was a mistake. Then I noticed the fence around the garden that the dog was rapidly approaching. Phew! Everything was ok. Of course such a big and aggressive dog would not be left out without a fence or a leash to contain it. As the dog charged beneath a gap in the mesh fence I remembered that I was in Peru. I fled to the far side of the street, but not so quickly as to provoke the dog into chasing me. The great slobbering beast reduced its advance on me as I retreated, but maintained its vocal barrage and followed me at a frighteningly close distance for around 100 meters. And then it left me? No. it was joined by its smaller dog cronies who slipped under their respective fences and joined their master. Despite their closeness, I maintain my pace and refrained from breaking into a run, not wanting to provoke them into a chase. Fortunately this time the group only followed me for some 50 meters, before tiring of the pursuit, and returned to picking or sniffing at the street litter. Again, everything was ok. Coming on this adventure was not a mistake. Then, after no cars passing for several minutes, including throughout my whole dog chase ordeal, a continuous stream of cars, trucks, buses, vans and miscellaneous other vehicles that I can only assume were a convoy, passed by for 3-5 minutes. They were packed full of people and coming from over the next valley, and throughout the whole time not a single vehicle passed from the other direction. This was at 9:35 on a Monday night. Then, as quickly as they had come, they were gone; like phantoms of the night. Moments later, a solitary small car trundled up the hill in the opposite direction. I then serendipitously came across a construction site pressed upon the steep valley wall. I walked out onto the site which had uninterrupted views of the city below, assisted by the lack of completed walls. I looked out upon the amazing and unique environment that is the Cuzco streets at night. Was coming on this walk a mistake? No way.

The Other America

Earlier this year I was waiting for a bus in Florida, near Miami, on my way to catch a flight to South America. As I sat in the scorching summer heat I was mentally preparing myself for the transition from first world USA to third world Peru. I had been to India the previous year, and it was a confronting experience. Then this white trash guy with short hair and a whitely t-shirt came and sat beside me. ‘I’ve been looking for work,’ he told me. ‘Yeah, what are you looking for?’ I asked.

Apparently, he was recently out of work and after applying for work at a few more places he was going to make a drop of 100 pills, $4 each down from $5 due to slow business. The job he recently lost involved standing outside with temperatures in the high 30’s and humidity even higher shaking a sign to attract passing motorists to a jewelry porn shop for $7 an hour. He used to smuggle bags of pills across boarders in his stomach, he told me, ‘but now they can see it in you. Still gotta pay the bills somehow though.’

‘What do you do for work?’ he asked. ‘I work at a hospital doing pretty menial administrative stuff.’ ‘Wow. An office job. I bet it has air con and everything.’ It did, and I did not have the heart to tell him that it was a part-time job paying $24 an hour that I had while finishing off a Law degree at a good University.

We then steered the conversation to more safe topics for our demographic of young males – drinking beer and sleeping with women. He was doing more of the former, he lamented. Apparently, ‘Florida girls are frigid whores.’

‘What station are you going to?’ he asked. ‘Lake Worth, I think. Why?’ ‘Good,’ he replied, ‘cos the other one – where the blacks are – that place is dangerous. They’ll kill you for $2, which can get them a hit of crack.’ I didn’t know whether to feel relieved that I was not going there or deeply concerned that people were getting killed for a $2 crack hit. Shiiiiiiii. I watch The Wire, but this is pretty heavy.

‘I hate this f%!#*&* place. I gotta get out of this State, away from my family,’ he confided. ‘Just this morning my Mom tried to run me over.’ I asked him which State he would move to if he could go anywhere. After some thought he answered, ‘Orlando’. Orlando is in the same State. The furthest he could envisage himself from his own personal hell was only three exits down the Florida Turnpike, ‘maybe working at a restaurant,’ he added.

When he went to get off the bus to apply for another job involving standing outside in the heat shaking a board for minimum wage, I noticed deep scars up both his wrist. If I were in his shoes, maybe I would have done the job properly, I thought. ‘Good luck,’ I said earnestly. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to give up.’