Rusty’s Arequipa

The campground:

The hotel Las Mercedes was built in 1936 and is owned by the same family. Last year other members of the family took over the running of the hotel from the couple who had managed it. They sold the hotel to a company that owns several properties and split the money. The couple that were forced by their own family members left with tears in their eyes. 

The fear was that things were going to change but the only change so far is fewer staff but this weekend the hotel was doing lots of business. Herman the manager continues cheerful after forty years working there but he does a lot more manual labor than he used to. He cleans the showers for instance instead of delegating the job. 

Rusty usually drags me out of bed when the sun comes up hopefully after it’s warmed the ground a bit. A 50 degree night is pretty cold for me. 

We wander the garden together until I have to deploy my plastic bag. Herman the manager likes Rusty; he doesn’t bark and I clean up after him. He got mad at some French campers, two couples with noisy intrusive dogs and they didn’t pick up after their beasts. I hate seeing that because it makes me wonder how many campsites won’t want dogs after they’ve been through them. 

Rusty is 13 and he takes a glucosamine pill every day but he is still a lot slower than he was, just like me. He still likes to eat grass from time to time. 

I wander around with a phone and look. 

If he wants to go outside he’ll go and stand by the gate and look over his shoulder at me. 

Of course I get into the walk but after three blocks his internal radar says it’s time to go home. So we do. 

The sun’s out, it gets warm and we go back to Las Mercedes. 

A church waiting for the congregation: 

So if I want to get out Rusty has to stay in the van. It’s really not so bad for him as sleeping is his major activity but he sure tries to make me feel guilty. 

He spends his time when I’m around and not walking town sunbathing. 

When I’m not there I think he passes out on his bed.  GANNET2 is well insulated and I leave a few windows open which in this climate is all it takes for him to be comfortable. 

And when I’m with him in the campground he keeps an eye on me. When I come out of the shower there he is watching the door for me. 

When he lies in the grass I pull up my camp chair and my kindle. He watches me and naps. I read and watch him. 

When it gets dark he comes in and gets his dinner. He doesn’t eat in the morning but I always offer him something in case he’s peckish. Usually he looks at me like I should know better and I shouldn’t waste my time offering him cookies. 

He has his bed, he has my bed, he sometimes naps on the carpet. If I go and sit next to him and pet him he gets up and struts off. He is a complicated dog. 

But there again aren’t we all? And he still doesn’t know where Layne went. 

A Flag Day

A friend from Key West texted me last night and set me to thinking about how far I have come from normal. Going to work at dusk used to be normal and spending the night trying to stay awake or listening to people in agony used to be normal, and he said I seemed more relaxed now. Yes I guess I am.  The stress of answering 911 only becomes apparent from a distance. It used to be normal. Going for a walk in a totally alien environment, at dusk is normal now. 

I got distracted trying to decide if this picture was worth keeping with all its technical imperfections  and by the time I decided it was she had disappeared.

The Catholic side of the Plaza de Armas, the main square of Arequipa was saying the rosary last evening, in Latin, a formula I haven’t heard since I was an altar boy in the sixties. Across the square the evangelicals represented not by the hierarchy, but by a loudly praying indigenous woman backed by a band, was praying through a microphone.

The daily struggle continued between the cacophony of competing ideologies.

I noticed in the Uber driver’s resume he claimed to speak Italian. I had ordered a car a couple of days ago to go I can’t remember where, and he listed Italian as one of his skills.  I decided to ignore that as I get bored trying to explain my mixed up ancestry but he picked me out of the tourist line up instantly when I greeted him in my tainted Spanish. I had to admit I was Italian, once upon a time anyway.

But you know what? It was a memorable conversation, happily about him, not me. Emigrating from Italy to the United States is a biography backed by stereotype and it’s my shorthand, fall back explanation for why I speak Spanish (mangled) with an Italian accent. His story was much more interesting to me.

He had lived in Milan for five years with his Italian girlfriend making good money in the usual technological field which is work I don’t understand. He got tired of it though and I think the relationship went south too, because he didn’t mention her as he spoke of how happy he was to have chosen to return to Arequipa. The weather is nicer and he likes his family and friends even though the cost of living is higher he said. 

I asked him about that. He insisted he made better money in Arequipa I guess by driving Uber part time for extra cash on top of his tech work but he pays more here than in Italy for groceries and other daily expenses. He seemed genuine, but I’ve always thought of Italy as unconscionably expensive. And yet for this young man living in Peru costs him more but it’s worth it. 

And so it goes, another completely unexpected view of life in Peru. On Monday, tomorrow, I’m going to the transmission shop as I’ve been invited to watch my transmission start the process of reassembly. Exciting yes but I want to make sure I have enough cash to pay for the work. We’ve given him $1500 so far for the parts but I’m assuming he’ll want Soles for his labor so I collect some at the ATM from time to time. 

The little man in the machine pays out $190 in Soles (“so-lays” which means “suns”) and charges $5 to give me 700 Soles in blue 100 and pink 50 denominations. You have to break them down to buy things on the street. An empanada seller with $1.25 empanadas can’t easily change a $13 (50 Soles) bill. That’s the other Peruvian economy, that of the poor. 

On a whim I bought a book for my Kindle yesterday. $10 or 35 Soles, a day’s hard earned wages. It’s the story of the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo an offbeat subject I’ve never seen addressed. It is totally irrelevant to my current situation and is a mark of my retired gringo privilege.

Saturday was flag day in Peru. They mark the final defeat in the War of the Pacific in 1879. Peru and Bolivia wanted to snatch Chilean mines in the Atacama desert but Chile fought back and thrashed Bolivia into retreating and losing their access to the sea at Antofagasta and what was then the major port of Cobija. 

The cities of Iquique (“ee-key-kay”) and Arica were Peruvian but the Chileans marched up with 5500 seasoned soldiers and killed 500 of the 1500 defenders and captured  the city. Thus the border you see today where Peru ends just south of Tacna. 

Its all very heroic melodramatic stuff of which legends are made and of which young pupils are instilled, and the country gets a day off. 

Rusty doesn’t like to walk much around the city so he stays in the van when I make my sorties from the compound. I meandered down the hill to the river and went to the supermarket, just two blocks from Las Mercedes. PlazaVea is a modern national chain with all the usual stuff, not one of the indigenous street markets we’ve wandered in the Andes. 

It’s getting quite cold at night as winter sets in. The days are sunny and dry with warm sunshine and no variation. 

It gets dark at 5:30 on Central Time here. 

Past the skatepark carrying my groceries. 

Home sweet home; you buzz and they open. If you want to leave you pull the blue cord which rings a bell. 

The empty campground. We are parked beyond the bathrooms out of sight. 

Rusty in near darkness eating dinner wondering where Layne is and waiting to see what happens.