Finally, after checking into the Hotel Caminante Class in Arequipa, I got the shower I had been waiting for. I think, on average, I get about four showers per week. 4.5 if I’m lucky! Suddenly I appreciate hot cascading water like never before. Because I’d spent the previous three days flinging myself north, north, north through Chile and Perú, I was aching for some non-bus station food.
I ventured towards the main plaza. As soon as I set foot on the sidewalks surrounding the square, I was inundated with offer after offer for breakfast. Every single restaurant on the stretch had a waitress standing outside trying to drag tourists up to the terrace. After ineffectually trying to deflect the offers, I finally gave into scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee at a table overlooking the plaza.
Since I had so recently crossed the border, my pockets were still devoid of the almighty dollar. However, I still needed to go through the budget planning routine before I could allow myself to swipe my card at the ATM. I sat for over an hour watching the parades(something very official going on – everyone dressed in business clothes), working out a route, and estimating cost of activities in Perú. When I arrived at the bank, I was disappointed to see that the machine wasn’t indoors like almost all are. Deep breath, and go.
After reading Lonely Planet’s suggestion that you take at least two ATM cards, lest one be swallowed up by a machine, I now have this fear that my only source of cash flow is going to leave me high and dry unexpectedly. Who has more than one ATM card? I punched OK after going through the rigmarole and to my horror, the machine started beeping like mad. “Oh, #@&%!” I thought. “This is how I’ll meet my end. Standing here on Avenida Santa Clarita on a Sunday in Perú. Just great.” No message appeared on the screen, so I just started hitting “cancel” like mad. I think an angel from the beautiful cathedral down the street must have passed my way, as the machine miraculously spit my card out. Strike one. I hoisted my guide book out of its holster searching for bank number two. Do or die! Thankfully, my relationship with this machine was all sorts of mundane and I was back in the black before my heart rate could return to normal.
As far as the planning bit goes, I’m really starting to get the hang of this. Because I’m going at a really fast pace compared to other tourists I meet, the lessons that all travellers have to learn have been coming at me at the speed of light. I’ve definitely been learning from the fatalities, so to speak. I’m glad I’ve finally arrived at this point; getting here has been awfully challenging. I appreciate all the benefits I get from being challenged (this, after all, is one of the main reasons I decided to come here in the first place), but sometimes it’s just so damn nice when life will just hand you the glass of lemonade instead.
Arequipa, the city itself, definitely has its own unique flavor. I reached a relieving revelation here. Walking down the street sometimes is a chore in itself because of all the cat calls and horn honking that it provokes. The horn honking especially gets on my nerves… I think a remnant of my childhood bicycling days. Well, I got so fed up that I finally turned to stare at one of the honkers and found myself eye-to-eye with a taxi driver. For all of three seconds I thought he was just your run-of-the-mill slime ball. That is until the next taxi did the same thing. And the next. And the next. Well, aren’t I the halfwit. Here I am getting all worked up over the exorbitant amount of attention being a solo gringa provokes only to find out that taxi drivers are just trying to get some business. Oops. Oh well. I’m getting used to feeling slightly incompetent all the time. Shopping is the worst. Buying fruit can be a chore, but it’s totally worth it. Fruit is dirt cheap here. I got an avocado, a banana, some oranges, a pound of grapes, and an apple for three Peruvian dollars, which is only one U.S. dollar. Awesome! I could really get used to this!
Arequipa also has something new to offer in terms of the travel culture. The ages of my co-travellers seems to be climbing the further north I go. In Argentina and Chile, I almost never met anyone over the age of thirty. However, walking around the city, I bump into several gringos who are sure to have grandchildren. It’s nice to see the mix changing a little. And speaking of older tourists, I’ve decided that I should give the older British guy a chance. Probably he’s really nice and was just having a terrible day or something, right? I really need to work on searching out the best in people instead of maintaining rock-bottom standards and expectations. It’s kind of funny the expectations tourists seem to have of one another. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve been in a dorm room with another person for some abominable amount of time before either of us were brave enough to venture an “hola” or “hello.” I think what happens is no one is all that confident in their Spanish, and you can never really be sure what someone’s first language (English? Swedish? French? Swahili?) is going to be. In effort to save face (i.e. not to end up in an “I-don’t-know-how-to-talk-to-you” situation), we just don’t talk at all. I’ve taken mental note and will now attempt to break the mold whenever possible.
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