I snapped back to the sound of a slip-thump, the noise of Robert vaulting off the top bunk next to mine. My mind geared back up, reluctantly, reminding me that I was in Lima, that I spent the early morning on an overnight bus, that I had not brushed my teeth since I left Huaraz. Yecchh, I thought, and rolled over, making a face at the black taste in my mouth. A rustling sound came from behind my head, and I could tell Robert was rifling through his things. “Is it time for breakfast?” I asked, pawing numbly at my computer’s latch to get the time. “Yeah,” he answered, “I mean, we have a half-hour until the girls’ll be ready, but almost.” I smacked my lips, and rolled off my bed into my sandals, which lay warmly on the carpet. After a quick session with my toothbrush, which reminded my gums that I haven’t flossed since I left the States, I ducked back onto my bunk, and jotted a note to cover the last few weeks.
I was just wrapping up when Robert vaulted down again, and tossed his guidebook back up on his cover. Caro’s head poked around the corner of our door, her dark wet hair hanging limply across the doorjamb. “Ready for Lima?” she asked, eyebrows raised. I nodded, and slipped my computer back into its case. With a soft noise, like toothpicks snapping, the tumbler clicked, and we slipped off into the late Lima morning.
*
When Robinson Crusoe (and his man Friday, and his parrot) were finally picked up by Spanish traders, what do you suppose he asked for? Fine Madiera port wine? A silk shirt? A hot bath? He had been out of touch for almost longer than he could stand, but I wonder if his sudden re-introduction to everything a pound could buy was startling; could coming home be stranger than leaving?
We certainly weren’t stranded on the Gold Coast, but we were a bit out of touch. We’d gotten used to cold showers and scrounging for toilet paper without much complaint -- we were, after all, on a sort of vacation. And with funding, at that. Still, the sharp snap between Chavin and Lima was impossible to ignore. It was a breakfast when we started to [dare I say the phrase?] culture shock.
*
Stephanie, our lovely grad student and temporary shepherd, had been in Lima before. Not much of a shock, seeing as she’s dug in Peru more times than I’ve flown on a plane. Bantam and famished, she led our group of gawking gringos up the concrete-studded strip to her favorite breakfast joint. We craned our necks about; the road was spangled with things we tied so strongly to home. What are McDonalds, and traffic lights, and Porsches doing here? Across from a gas station (which, by the way, sold Shell fuel) was the San Antonio restaurant.
Already mildly confused, we were sunk even deeper by the restaurant. The elegantly stuccoed building held a tight cluster of stylish wicker and steel chairs at the entrance, strewn across a marble patio. In clusters of three, smart-looking businessmen and -women leaned over double-foam half-caff machiattos, laughing and waving their jewelry expressively. Cell phones twittered quietly from Coach and Vuitton purses. After two months of being the de facto rural royalty, we were outclassed. And worse: underdressed.
We slid into a table a bit conspicuously, sneaking looks at the tables around us. The café was definitely upscale, and the clientele all probably worked day-jobs at their own desks. Every lady was zipped into something leather or linen, and the men all wore tailored suits. Their faces were pale enough to pass for white, and if you let the popping chatter wash against your ears, it could be English, spoken in a rush. Home away from home.
A waiter (a real waiter!) stepped snappily to our table, pen ready. We placed orders in Spanish, out of habit, but he spoke English just as fluidly. Though I ached all over for a milkshake, I kept myself in-budget, and got an empanada and an alfajore. The food came on porcelain, chased in gilt, and the silverware had the authoritative girth and edge of pure steel. We giggled embarrassingly over our printed (printed!) receipt, and, for one of the first times, left a tip.
*
After breakfast we had another walk about Miraflores (our neighborhood). Our destination, according to Stephanie, was some mall by the seaside cliffs, Larcomar, but we could have walked anywhere and been just as happy. The wide streets were well-paved, and bordered in familiar checker-board sidewalks. Churches stood in the noon sun, framed by gently waving palms. People walked dogs in studded collars along the road, yapping into cell phones and tugging at leashes. Parks bloomed between high-rises, and municipality information-givers and money-changers stood helpfully on every corner.
The west-coasters in the group greeted the Pacific like a long-lost friend, gibbering excitedly about the long foggy coast. Each talked about the last time they had been to their beaches, and Becca clutched at the rail, caught up with this shadow of her Big Sur. As we looked down from the park on whose cliff we stood, we saw a long coastal highway snaking off up the coast, threaded with cars and taxis. Across the road and on the beach, you could just make out a game of soccer being played on a concrete court, pitched on the rough, black-pebbled beach.
The mall was another five minutes along the cliff, an outdoor behemoth that cut into the top of cliff. What else can we say? There were escalators, glass store-fronts, fast food, and a movie theater. There were steakhouses and KFCs and Billabong sweatshirts and it was as though we never left California. People paid in dollars for overpriced trinkets, clutching at their Starbucks. That Starbucks, by the way, had only one change to the menu -- the addition of the manjar blanco frappuccino.
*
We made plans to meet our old amigos, the Peruvian students, for lunch. After an astonishingly cheap taxi ride clear across Lima (and, by the way, the U.S. could do well with 50¢ taxis), we were dumped at an imposing gate that read, in all caps, “PONTIFICA UNIVERSIDAD CATOLICA DE LIMA.” Our lack of student I.D.s kept us from exploring the grounds, so we squatted at the entrance, waiting for our friends to come.
What ensued was the best people watching you can do (outside of an American theme park). As lunch hour broke over the campus, the entire student body traipsed out the gate to get lunch. We must have watched three thousand people come through the gate, three or four at a time. Though we were a hemisphere from home, these were our people; you knew from their walk and the swoop in their voices where they stood. There were stoners and slackers and curve-breakers and nerds and punk girls and jock dudes and outcasts and loners and everyone was so deliciously identifiable, deliciously knowable, that I couldn’t help but smile.
After a joyful reunion, full of hugging, and smiles, and rapid updates on how little work we had actually done in Chavín, we piled into cabs for lunch. With Marcela and Richie’s Peruvian Spanish riding shotgun, the drivers took us to a ceviche restaurant, tucked away down a back street. Ceviche, it turned out, is like Peruvian sushi: raw fish with interesting (or unspeakable) things done to it, to make it palatable. We chowed down on slices of I-don’t-ever-want-to-know-what, which usually tasted more like limes than slices of recently deceased wet thing. Most of the Americans ended up fishing some rice from Stephanie’s plate.
*
We left the afternoon in the Peruvian students’ capable hands. As strangers in a strange land, we hadn’t the slightest idea (aside from the dubious suggestions of our guidebooks) what to do for fun. Marcela, ever the eager archaeologist, suggested we visit a site in Lima (almost downtown) she had worked at for a summer. After multiple confirmations that the pyramid, Huaca, was actually in the city somewhere, we began a long walk to its gate.
I once went to Chichen Itza, in Valladolid, Mexico. Truthfully, I’ve been there twice. Both times, the sheer craftsmanship and magnitude of the construction put it easily in the same class as similar buildings in Giza; that is: pyramid. The pictures you take at both places can ill-compare to the scope of the structures, and are always unforgiving in your photo albums later. The only way I can describe Huaca, then, is that the pictures I took were overly generous. The place was an ancient, boring, dump.
I mean, it was sort of impressive as a technical feat. The mound (and that’s generous, too) is composed of baked clay bricks, stacked upon each other in seven large layers, and is now presided over by cranky quasi-English speaking tour guides. While they showcase the squalid splendor that is Huaca, noisy American tourists jostle to hear. One morbidly overweight girl, in a salmon shirt that wasn’t kind to her porky, pale features -- tapped me on the shoulder. I spun, surprised that she had broken the unspoken don’t-talk-to-strangers-overseas rule. “Speak English?” she demanded, popping her gum after the question mark. In as a disgruntled voice as I could muster, I said, “Mmm... yes.” “Great,” she said, popping her gum and thrusting a camera into my chest, “take our picture.”
She smiled and flounced back to her group of similarly-built McDonalds munchers, who linked flabby arms and squeezed out a smile for my [intentionally] mis-timed shot. The girl rolled over to seize her camera and returned to the safety of her fellow Americans. “I gotta tell you, Beth,” one of the mother hens said, in a thick country drawl, “you are doing so well” (she spent several seconds on ‘well’) “with this bein’ your first time outta Montana. I mean, your first air-plane (said as two syllables), and now talking to the foreigners...” she said, tilting her chins wobbily at me and beaming unabashedly. The girl from Montana blossomed under the praise.
*
We took a cab to Richie’s place. Students don’t live on his campus, he shares an apartment with his Dad downtown. With his Dad on a business trip, we had the run of the place, and shared a pizza and some pisco. At some point, Marcela corralled us all into a taxi to take us to a dance club. Incredibly tired by our long day (we hadn’t really slept since Huaraz), and not a little affected by libation, Robert and I broke off dancing early to lounge at a table. Above, on the wall, a poster some 3 yards long, thumbnail cut-out of pop culture icons teemed colorfully. We made a game of it -- good old I-Spy, played with Marilyn Monroe and Mr. Miyaki and the Millenium Falcon.
Around us, the young people of Lima, drunk off their asses, writhed in one familiar motion, bumping and grinding and sweating and thumping and throwing their heads back and screaming the words to an American song. “Twenty-twenty, twenty-four hours to go...” the Uggs and the polos yelled to the ceiling, “I want to be sedated. Nothing to see, nowhere to go... I want to be sedated.” We tried to sing along, but they knew our words better than we did.
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