MEANWHILE, BACK IN LIMA. . .
pt. 1
Ahhhhhhhh.
This is it. High up. Floating in the traffic-light cloud cover while perched on a double-decker tour bus built like a giant red tank.The semi-sane way to deal with Lima’s gridlock.
The first dozen or so rides here are like being stuck in an absurd virtual reality game, where ‘Frogger’ meets ‘Grand Theft Auto’, except you only get one life with no power-ups and the video game’s boss comes at you from every direction, even falling from the sky.
But, in a few days, the mind acclimates. Pretty soon, even bloodcurdling visions of your vital organs smeared on the back bumper of a water truck start to seem blasé.
And after a few weeks in Lima traffic, forget about it. Something you first dreaded — say being impaled by a school bus crammed with kids after forcibly merging across three lanes in front of a traffic cop is child’s play. Whew. Stay relaxed and tuck ’n’ roll. What the fuck?
Recent brushes with death aside, Auntie M and I are actually enjoying this particular jaunt. The tour bus lumbers through lane changes like an elephant on four wheels, ready to punish any motorist foolish enough to hold its ground.
The bus is filled with loud tourists enjoying the three-hundred-sixty-degree spectacle of watching the world’s largest demolition derby competition from the safety of a comfy seat slicing through the playing field.
Our tour guide, Julio, is a slight, taciturn young Peruvian whose ponytail juts from his baseball cap. We recoil at the feedback hiss as he taps the microphone and begins narrating our ride from tonier places like Miraflores and San Isidro juxtaposed with barrios of striking poverty on the way to the city center, the ‘City of Kings.’
All gazes veer left as Julio points at a large stagger-stepped adobe structure seemingly plunked down at random, out of place in Lima’s cityscape.
Technical difficulties. “This is Huaca Pucllana. It served as an important. . . Asu. . .”
The guide tries his best to fix the situation by jabbing the head of the microphone into his open palm, recreating the concussive sounds of mini-shotguns blasting out our eardrums.
That’s too much for my cringy tourist brethren. Yells and murmurs. A spastic shout of “Oh my God! Make it stop!”
Julio sheepishly whistles into the mic, then laughs, satisfied the problem is behind him.
“It (inaudible)rved as an impor(inaudible) ceremonial (inaudible) advancement. . .”
“Dios mio.” Auntie M holds back a chuckle.
Not an entirely bad act. He strains a smile, pushing through his doomed performance like a deflated ventriloquist ready to bolt the stage. “. . . of the Li(inaudible) Culture, a soc(inaudible) which (inaudible) in the (inaudible) Coast between (inaudible) 700 (inaudible) D.”
A voice screeches. “Could you repeat all that?”
Dark humor. More laughing.
Julio turns away from us and looks down. “(inaudible)aca Pucl(inaudible). Mierda.”
He slumps into his seat, frustrated in defeat as the tourists start blathering back and forth.
“Acapulco? Where the hell is that?”
“Is he talking about that, uh, pyramid-looking thing behind us?”
“That’s Mexico, darling.”
“But we passed that five minutes ago. I think he’s talking about that Chifa restaurant over here.”
“Well, I can’t see anything, anyway, with this fog.”
“Yeah, what’s it called again?”
“I wonder if the people riding downstairs can hear any better. Maybe we could switch seats?”
“What’s a Chifa? Looks Chinese to me.”
“Ah, dammit. I just googled it, yesterday. I know what it is.”
“I thought this was summer?”
“The locals call it, uh, gout or something. Something with a G?”
Tough crowd. Especially the loud couple seated kitty-corner from us from Las Vegas with their baby, Lil’ Ray Ray, Jr. They seem friendly enough, at first. With the audio production thrown into chaos, however, Ray Ray Sr. has taken it upon himself to try his hand at stand-up comedy. Some things are best left to the professionals.
I turn to Auntie M as she looks up from her phone. “What do you call the fog down here?”
“Garua.”
That was fast. “Guaru-ah?”
She goes full turtle mode. “Ga-ru-a. Es because the ocean is cold. You knows Herman Melville?”
I blink.
She smiles. “He calls Lima the strangest and saddest city no one can see.” Then, with a firm nod, she stares back at her phone.
“Where do you get all this stuff?”
“Oh, silly Dougito. There is still a lots you don’t know about me. I es an international woman of mystery.”
I was on that same tour :)
There were so many good traffic-related lines at the start, but this one especially stuck out:
“The tour bus lumbers through lane changes like an elephant on four wheels, ready to punish any motorist foolish enough to hold its ground.”
Great piece.