Desert dreams in Huacachina & bird droppings on the Islas Ballestas (9-11 Sept 2012)

Penguins!
PENGUINS!!
PENGUUUUUUUUUUUUUUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINS!!!

And some sand and stuff...

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY

Arequipa was a pleasant refuge to recharge the courage banks but after a month of stasis we began to notice the atrophy of our nerve, so it was time to leave. We were being force-marched north, so much to do so little time since Charly's imposed deadline: in Hamburg by Christmas. For me it was difficult to push forward knowing that the end point was not some island in the Gulf stream but desolation near the goddamn arctic circle - roughly 5000km from my natural habitat. Never the less, we were again back on the backpacker trail with all the other drunks, pimps, skanks and weirdos, all in a mass migration north – although some going more north than others... 

A desert oasis called Huacachina was our first stop and in order to get there we had to plough 500km further north, deeper into the Peruvian desert. This desert was unlike the other deserts we had seen in Bolivia or Chile, which were both rocky and hostile - instead, this desert was just a carpet of gigantic-soft dunes rolling from horizon to horizon. The closest town to the oasis was Ica: a farming community that laid on a slither of fertile land which probably tapped into the same aquifer that made the oasis. Having never seen rain, this town was bone dry except for the sporadic florescent-green paddocks which was their life-blood. After another bumpy over-night bus ride we arrived in Ica and immediately caught a taxi out of town to Huacachina: a 20 minute drive on a road that twisted through the soft rolling hills of silicon and just like a picture on a post card, Huacachina appeared like a geographical anomaly only could - an oasis nestled in the a valley between two gigantic sand dunes. First, second and third glance of this place leaves you thinking that all avenues of tourism had been raped from this green puddle of water - hostels, hotels and restaurants hugged the shore all vying for precious real estate - as trashy as it was tragic…

We arrived at our hostel around 11am. Something catastrophic must have occurred the night earlier as lobster-red bodies laid limp and motionless everywhere under the beating sun: on deck chairs, couches and concrete. Eerily silent, I remember thinking when shuffling through the carnage, wondering what slayed all those goddamn people. We approached the bar which was also the office and manning that bar/office was a very sorry looking bar man/manager. The bar being the office lent a clue as to what type of place it was and the dusty-smudged chalk board with "Pisco Sour madness!" smeared on it suggested what might have levelled all the rotting corpses. Oh that goddamn drink, lucky Charly wasn't here, I reflected, after witnessing her dramatic first encounter with the liquor in Santiago.

Other than the green oasis there wasn't much else to do, which is why dozens of tourist companies swarm the various hostels offering all kinds of desert adventures, one being hooning around at top speed in a homemade Mad Max ultra-bus. This thing was nothing but welded tubes, 20 seats, four wheels, +/- brakes and a space shuttle engine that when pushed, caused the adjacent sand dunes to tremble and shift from the noise. We booked the next tour to go that afternoon, but in the mean time we scaled the sand dune behind the oasis. 

Sitting quietly on top of the dune looking west, forgetting about geography and time, just admiring the sheer expanse and shadows, you could really imagine T.E. Lawrence galloping out the front of a 200 strong marauding Bedouin army - charging over the dunes on their way to kick the shit out of Mr bad man Ottoman. Really quite spectacular...

Needless to say, going down was easier than going up...


Desert rats from Charly and Rich on Vimeo.

That afternoon, next to the Mad Max ultra-bus, we met all the other backpackers who wanted some desert fun. Once seated it was easy to hear the different accents: Brazilian, English, Italian and one American guy very interested in the engine. "Man this thing’s got balls," he stated loudly, "we're going to scare the shit out of all those rats." Rats? Ok man, you keep thinking that and I'll keep thinking about you – about how to defeat you when the time comes... The engine roared into action and dragged the semi-inflated tyres off the bitumen onto the sand and then ROAAAAARRR! The Mad Max ultra bus bolted up the big dune to then slow near the top giving a chance for the momentum to glide us over the edge. We all found this exciting, especially the American who kept yelling out things like FUCK YEH! and U.S.A! Seemed only fitting, given his Bon Jovi t-shirt and camouflaged pants.

After twenty minutes of hurling up and down the dunes we scaled what seemed to be the biggest dune of the neighbourhood. At the top, the Mad Max ultra-bus stopped, sunk into the sand and Mad Max said it was time to get out and slide down. The top of this dune had a definite edge when not disturbed: a few hundred silicon atoms wide and on one side of the dune you could see the deep scars the Mad Max ultra-bus left which followed the contour of the dunes from where we came. On the other side was a steep slope – so steep, that I wondered how it was able to support the other portion of the dune. Mad Max handed out wooden planks with rubber straps nailed at one end for grip with the instructions to lay on our stomachs, hang on and go head first only using our toes as anchors. 

For those not paying attention, they found it difficult to negotiate this new type of snowboarding technology – what the hell is this second strap for, I could see them calculating. Once the news hit them that we had to go down on our bellies head first, many found the slope too steep and decided not to do it. Mad Max was getting frustrated with the lack of willingness and singled me out to take initiative. “Hey you amigo! VAMOS!” he barked. Ok, I thought, but Jesus this is steep I can’t even see the bottom of this big bastard. And as I got on my knees I heard a shrieking noise, like that of cracking thunder, and booming out from the blind-spot at the bottom of the steep dune was Charly, with her feet at 90 degrees to the sand. Brakes are for pussies, I could picture her saying as her kinetic energy propelled her up the parallel dune - leaving behind a trail of perfectly smooth glass. Charly’s initiative sparked a cascade of courage, although in the case of the American he was too heavy to overcome the initial friction – terminally bogged. No screams of U.S.A this time…

We only stayed one night in Huacachina because it was boring as hell and we had other things to do like hit the high seas for full-tilt adventure. Yes indeed, Charles Darwin studied what crawled on it, Jacques Cousteau swam off it and David Attenborough filmed it... That's right, the Galapagos Islands are a unique working catalogue of biodiversity and natural selection, miraculously left undisturbed and will continue to be undisturbed by Charly and me because it was too goddamn expensive to get to… So, we had to settle for the “poor man's Galapagos”: the Ballestas Islands (Islas Ballestas). The only troubling aspect about the trip was the proximity to a town called Pisco. Sweet Jesus, I thought. If Charly gets anywhere near this town who knows what might happen to her liver… Even though the town Pisco shares nothing in common with the horrible eggwhite-ethanol drink Pisco Sour, I didn’t know how Charly would behave given her dirty addiction towards the sour booze. All of this in the end didn't matter because unfortunately for the residents of Pisco, a magnitude 8 earthquake exploded 2000 meters beneath the town or close to it in 2007 - destroying most of the city. So for lack of infrastructure, we planned to stay further down the road in Paracas.

Getting to Paracas from Huacachina was a relatively easy mission: a taxi – bus – taxi affair in the middle of the day to minimise an encounter with bandits or T.E. Lawrence and his wild boys. On the way there we eventually passed through Pisco which was still in a state of destruction – remnants of homes and businesses laid in piles of rubble where they crumbled. Around those parts, the poor parts, steel is an expensive luxury that some people can’t afford, so without reinforcement in the superstructure of the buildings it was no wonder that the town had turned to dust.

Our hostel in Paracus was basic in design, constructed mostly from fibreboard. I felt like the owner didn’t want to commit to any long-term construction given the recent seismic history, however, the two very brick and very concrete and very heavy buildings that rose 15 meters on either side did not bestow much faith in the fibreboards’ ability to hold back tons. Regardless, the man who ran the hostel was a lovely man who was more than willing to help with any query – so much so in fact, when he heard that we were travelling all the way up to Colombia he printed a bible-thick detailed itinerary of his own travels along the same route. He was also more than happy to book our tour to the islands the next day. I asked him about the conditions and whether he thought it was going to be rough - fearing I would have to bomb myself semi-lucid with valium. He said that the coldest part of the year is generally the best time to go because the seas are less moody but the problem is that it’s cold... really cold. “Rug up the best you can,” he said.

The next morning we woke early because all the boats needed to beat the change in direction of the current and the wind in the afternoon. On the way out the door, the nice man caught me and mentioned that he looked at the predicted conditions and said that they had deteriorated. “They might not even risk going,” he speculated. I looked at Charly and she immediately said with an assassins glare, “I’m still going!” But what I really heard was “coward”. Needless to say I ran back to get my bottle of steady stomach and nerves.

At the dock a crowd of tourists had amassed because several other tours were leaving at the same time from the same peer. Weaving in and out of the crowd and along the fringes were people, mostly old men, trying to sell various items – precariously all looking like they were 4 minutes away from an all out killing spree or suicide. An argument erupted between two of the roaming vendors – both claiming that they had talked to a willing customer first. The argument escalated into a scrap which forced the surrounding tourist to make a hole for the two men who were flailing their limbs around trying to strike each other. One of the men’s entire collection of trinkets spilled out from the display box he was carrying – all scattering within a three meter arc of his feet. The customer fled which proved the uselessness of the fight but also showed the necessity for both men to fight. The look on his face, all of his meager items on the ground, the scrap, the argument, the fact that a 65-year-old had to sell that shit to get by, was all serving many levels of desperation. Without hesitation, he knelt down on one knee which gave him pain and picked up his items one by one, meticulously placing them as they were back in the box. He again stood up with pain and stood quietly amongst the crowd which had again filled the space they had made earlier for the fight. He looked around and saw all the people doing their best to ignore him and then decided enough was enough and slowly left – making sure not to bump anyone. He shuffled past me with his head down and I stepped out of his way – probably a meaningless gesture, but as he passed I could see that he was crying a little. That man knew as well as I did the mess of his situation, but only he knew the true weight of his entire life.

We boarded the boat which was one of those open-top fibreglass darts that seated about 20 people. Hanging off the back of that very light hull were two 200 horse power outboard motors. I wondered if we were going to scare the shit out of those desert rats again… At the control of all that goddamn grunt and essentially in command of our souls was a very neat 19-year-old boy, in a pristinely white captains uniform – including the mandatory four chevrons on each shoulder. The boat was loaded with mostly young Peruvian families and their children, all eager and excited. The guide noticed that we were the only gringos on board and she asked if it was ok if the tour was in Spanish, “Si si, no hay problema,” Charly said proudly. I smiled and gave two thumbs up because for me it didn’t matter if it was in Spanish, Russian or Hindu because all that valium I ate was about to turn me into a potato. The boat slowly pulled away from the dock along with the several other boats and, almost in unison, all the captains of the boats put their captains’ hats at their feet and rammed the throttle full forward – digging the propellers into the water and tilting the long nose of the boat up 45 degrees. Within seconds the several roaring boats were at speed - a fast moving tourist armada spearing out of the cove and were soon motoring over deep water.

To our left was a headland which was Caracus National Park, although no trees were in this park but rather a carpet of arid-compacted sand dunes that had faced the ocean winds forever. Peru is famous for the Nazca lines, which are ancient large-scale geoglyphs of snakes and humming birds -carved out of the compacted earth on a scale really only visible from a plane. But these huge geoglyphs are scattered all over Peru and on the north-facing slope of the Caracus National Park. On the slope where the headland rises from the sea was a gigantic carving of what looked like Neptune’s trident or a candle holder- seemingly a warning or a welcome to ocean faring folk. The guide said that the geoglyph wouldn’t have stood a chance had it been carved on the south-facing slope because all the winds that buffet the headland slam onto the south side.

The boat skimmed effortlessly over the relatively calm seas. I was starting to curse the nice old man back at the hostel for filling me with fear about the conditions because the seas were tame, almost smooth. But it was impossible to be mad at anything because all that valium was hitting its medicinal peak - suppressing even the mildest adrenal response. He’s a good man, I quietly reflected, he’s got principals. I’m sure he knows what he’s doing with the fibreboard huts… Trotting along at an honest pace the cool head-on wind created an unexpected phenomenon with my beard. Having my face perpendicular to the direction of the wind was fine but if I tilted my head only a few degrees in either direction, my beard would act like a rudder – catching the wind and snapping my head around on its axis. Yes, yes, I know. You obviously think this is a pathetic issue - you are that shallow… it’s not your fault, but with a head full of benzos the idle commands of muscles are harder than you think.

My head was bobbing around, totally at the will of the elements and the rocking boat. I tilted it back and rested it on the head-rest of the seat and being somewhat paralysed I could only stare at the dry-velvet blue sky, so the occurrence of a lone seagull stood out and signalled that we were getting close to our destination. Because of all the different types of beasts calling Islas Ballestas home, the place was a little unruly. The guide pointed out that it was fortunate that we were approaching the islands from the south-side, with the wind, because the combined stench of walruses, sea lions, penguins and a few million sea birds all shitting their arses out made for a terrible perfume. The major contributor of this smell was seagulls - which had dominated the highlands for thousands of years and had laid down a putrid rug of crap, called guano – a few meters deep.

The jagged form of the approaching islands broke the horizon plane and even with the wind on our backs, we could start to smell the terrible guano and it was as bad as I had imagined. The Islas Ballestas consist of two individual islands separated by narrow channel of turbulent water. As we got closer the psychotic screams of sea lions and seals could be heard over the general noise of the sea - a most unsettling welcome as if we were approaching some kind of insane asylum. The sea over time had eroded intricate forms into the stone: tunnels, beaches and natural bridges which were mainly occupied by sea-faring animals: grumpy sea lions, sleek seals and the odd mega cute penguin. 

The captain navigated the boat within meters of the jagged rocks so that we could get a closer look at all the beasts. Charly was highly-active, surveying the landscape and water trying to get a glimpse of her favourite flight-less bird, but apart from the occasional fluffy infant there wasn’t too many around – apparently wrong time of year. 

The closer we got to the sea lions the more they got pissed – screaming their lungs out like hallucinating mad men and bravely charging the boat, which wasn’t too threatening. The boat drifted around the bend, close to the channel entrance, and from there we could see buildings that had been built on the top of the cliff and a platform resembling something like a bridge bolted to the cliff-face where hundreds seagulls perched themselves silently like sentries guarding the guano. The buildings were built to house the men who annually harvest the nitrogen-rich guano from all the surfaces of the islands by hand - which then is subsequently sold as a high-end fertilizer.

After a few hours of wadding around the islands investigating this and that the sun was reaching its burning zenith and it was time to head back to port. Charly was bitterly upset not to see more penguins, especially after I promised the little buggers in order to peel her away from the orphanage. Ah to hell with it, I can’t control the migratory patterns of birds…yet. Leaving the islands was ok for me because I was struggling to hold a rigid frame with all that goddamn valium swooshing around – in and out of consciousness and babbling something about those goddamn birds! A potentially unsettling aspect about large doses of valium, if it doesn’t kill you of course, is that the few moments before sleep, almost complete paralysis occurs leaving the neocortex and thalamus in total control – taking imagination to an ethereal level. For five vivid minutes on that speeding boat, I had David Attenborough sitting next to me walking me through the various stages of a the Monarch Butterflies flight from Canada to Mexico. My god, it takes one generation to get to Canada from Mexico but three generations to get back!… That cannot be! Nothing makes sense anymore. Sleep...

Some more photos of Huacachina: https://picasaweb.google.com/109362659982164453049/Huacachina?authuser=0&feat=directlink

And more photos of the Ballestas: https://picasaweb.google.com/109362659982164453049/IslasBallestas?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Nappies and other dirt bags in Arequipa (17 Aug - 8 Sept 2012)

Finally we (Rich) found some time to write about one of the most memorable parts of our trip. My humble opinion about our time in Arequipa: I LOVED it and I will never forget the 19 happy little kids, who managed to make you feel incredibly content even right after they puked all over you three times in a row, and the 4 most amazing women I've ever met, who have dedicated their lives to looking after abandoned children.

And here is Ritchie's side of the story:

self-right·eous [self-rahy-chuhs, self-]   
adjective 
confident of one's own righteousness, especially when smugly moralistic and intolerant of the opinions and behavior of others.

charly [cha-rr-lee, not self-]

adjective, verb 
beauty, empathic, benevolent, caring, brave, German, drunk, antithesis of the self-righteous, feller of bitches.

ritchie [per-sch-un-ru-g, inanimate-] 
noun

carpet

Traveling takes its terrible toll quickly when you’re constantly on the run. The most tiring aspect is being unfamiliar with everything, so we decided to plant some shallow roots for a few weeks in Arequipa, to regain some kind of normality and also to take a break from chronically being on the edge of crisis. We had met some girls in Bolivia who had volunteered at a local orphanage in Arequipa - enthusiastically explaining the situation and the conditions: I knew instantly from the humming energy riding on the back of Charly's frantic questioning, that our journey would take an honest detour, probably in Arequipa…But, for how long, I didn’t know.

Since the Bolivian job, Charly’s maternal instinct had switched gears – sweating out estrogen by the liter, swooshing most of her thoughts and influencing her judgment. This process on any usual day is a force to be reckoned with but with the added jolt of altruism made it almost a chapter in the bible. 

I became emotional with Charly's abrupt need for an answer and deflected the situation by saying that I'll decide while we were at Machu Picchu. Well, several days evaporated and in a heartbeat we were back in Arequipa with the same pressing matter: do you want to volunteer? Shit man, I don't know! I never considered being confronted with such pressure while on this trip after working to the ends of my chromosomes on my masters, trying to blast that ugly bastard into outer space. I figured I had made enough commitment for one life time. At every opportunity Charly would, not so subtlety, point out that I was more fortunate than others, maybe not in appearance but more in opportunities - especially in this town. Especially in this continent, I thought but my opinion weighed nothing facing an anxiously motivated Charly who was frothing at the mouth to help something... “Okay, let’s go and talk to these people,” I said. Charly squeaked rapidly and off we went.

On the way to the office of the organisation Traveller not Tourist, I had developed a righteous sweat because of what I might commit to, or what I might donate. In the past, several multinational charity organisations had planned their business models around the philosophy of hunting me down, because they knew that I had no natural defences to their frontal assault on street corners or the foyers of shopping malls. "Excused me sir, did you know...", "Jesus Christ, of course I know about the rubella kids of Nicaragua or the bile bears of China or the plummeting literacy rates in sub-Saharan Afric! Just tell me what I need to do to remove this damp feeling of guilt!"  Their tactics especially potent if they were attractive.  We went to the local office and were met by a white jail-like door, with some of the paint chipped off exposing the grey metal underneath. We peered through and softly sounded, "olah" into the disserted room. A woman came from behind a partition, still chewing on her breakfast. We introduced ourselves and Charly announced her desire for information. The woman introduced herself as Daisy, she unlocked the heavy lock, opened the door and offered us a seat.  There was only one seat, forcing me to kneel on the ground - 30cm below the others. It's OK man. Feeling inferior is logical right now, I thought. Your answer is still your answer and, for shit sake, keep your goddamn guard up. 

The options were either working in the orphanage or volunteering as a teacher at an English school. Charly knew already what she wanted. Hell, she knew in Bolivia, probably even before we left Australia, maybe even before puberty but I sure as hell didn't. By my judgement, it seemed incompatible for me to contribute to anything socially - given my toilette paper-like immune system and my incessant allergies  towards peoples’ personalities. "Suck it up, princess", Charly snapped. He'll volunteer in the English school. So that was that… Never before had my throne on the passenger seat felt so uncomfortably comfortable. 

The only two obligations for joining Traveller not Tourist was that it was mandatory to show up to work when you are asked to and to attend the weekly meeting. Simple enough... The weekly meeting was held every Wednesday, in the volunteer’s house where accommodation was cheap. Charly wanted to stay there but I had my usual suspicions about things I don't know, so I vehemently opposed the idea (not so passive now) – and luckily they didn’t have space for us anyway. We walked through a hilly neighbourhood, a sort of gated community with a random security guard every 200m, armed to the teeth and casually swinging a billy club around. We arrived at a house/compound not too dissimilar to one in Pakistan – in the Abbottabad district where Bin Laden met his grim end – a high wall, with broken shards of glass mortared into the top bricks surrounded by thick trees. A lonely street light shone its meagre 15w orange light to illuminate the heavy welding on the door. The buzzer on the door to the compound was jammed and it took your whole shoulder to push that little bastard and when it popped a goddamn tuning fork slammed rapidly against some kind of hollow-metal vessel alarming anything with ears from Buenos Aires to Moscow. A gruff buzzer followed shortly after and the heavy door was remotely opened. We entered and were met by Daisy, who was at this stage the personification of exhaustion - the kind of exhaustion you only see on the faces of parents of ADHD demons or in the arguments of pro-embryonic stem cell lobbyists. 

Entering the house, the mean age of the people (21) slapped us in the face and it was obvious that they had lived together for some time. The atmosphere was on the precipice of nuclear fission where each witty remark was the catalyst for the next- all of which was driven by one wayfarer-spectacles wearing, ironic, witty referencing malformed hybrid between human and hyena – talking in code, communicating by referencing TV shows or movies. Oh Jesus! I can't stand that. Irony and witty referencing is the lowest common denominator when it comes to humour and intelligence -especially when it replaces all other avenues of expression. I don't do it, I'm not into it, I'm not encouraging it. If anything, I'm trying to eradicate this personality surrogacy. Superficially tunning into the conversations, I could already tell that rough seas lay ahead between me and the mob. 

Daisy screamed over the general noise to corral everyone into a room to initiate the meeting so that she could get home to her six year old boy. We sat next to Daisy while the others sleuthed their way in. The noise in the big room was now the noise in the smaller room - which was sadistically designed like an amphitheatre, acoustically funnelling the hyena banter directly to a focal point… my right ear. 

Daisy asked us to introduce ourselves with where we came from and where we were helping out. "Hello, I'm Rich from Australia and I'll be helping at the English school." "Hi, I'm Charly from Germany and I'll be helping at the orphanage." We realised as did Daisy that the group wasn't paying attention and continued to cackle like a congregation of speed freaks. "SHHHHH!!!!" Daisy hissed. The room went silent but not for king-pin hyena man, who had to finish his Sheldon quote or some other obscure pop-culture reference I'm barely familiar with or interested in. The first two people to introduce themselves were an Irish couple, Luke and Sophie. I found Sophie particularly interesting because she was of Chinese decent - barely 155cm tall but had one of these thick-foggy Irish accents that can only be found in the farming districts of Cork or Drogheda, but after a while, it seemed to suit her. The next to introduce themselves were five 19 y/o girls from England who were giggling hysterically to a point where the intervention of a priest seemed warranted. The giggling seemed to have its origins in an event that took place the night before which king-pin hyena kept pointing out in a roundabout non-descript way. I somehow figured at least two of them were unaware they were pregnant. With what, I didn't know... Human? Hyena? Peruvian? I will never know. But what was certain was that the more I heard hyena man and the five easy girls from England cackling, the more I wanted to turn that place into a blood bath - blasting a corpse through the window and fleeing with Charly and Daisy through the void. The last to introduce themselves were the reference spitting Hyena from New York (where ever the hell that is), a 19 year old girl from Wyoming (where ever that is), a 22 year old girl from Gloucester U.K and a very pleasant young lady from New Zealand: Annabel who was also experiencing her first meeting in shock. 

The meeting was never not interrupted by giggles or banter and Daisy looked like she had either had come to grips with exhaustion and was in survival mode or dying - she ploughed straight through the rudeness and headed for freedom. Towards the end of the meeting it came time for formalities, to say thanks and goodbye to those who were leaving. And on this night it was the ironic, reference spitting Hyena from New York (where ever that is). Daisy corralled everyone for a group picture and the hyena was yelling at the tops of his lung for everyone to pose like James Bond… I wonder how he would have felt if he knew my inherent reaction to forced posture in photos is wholesale violence. The group was going out that night to celebrate his departure and asked us if we wanted to join. I fundamentally objected to the idea as did Charly, so we made our excuses and fled. 

The next day it all began...

The orphanage offered a home to 19 kids between the age of 4 months and 9 years with half of them being under 18 months young. All of these little souls not really being orphans but either abandoned by their parents or taken away from them due to abuse or worse.  Four amazing young women from Peru and Argentina worked at the orphanage full-time, two of them 24/7. Their whole life revolved around the orphanage and the children. 

Volunteers helped out in two shifts, one beginning at 7am and the other at 1pm - both shifts lasted five hours with vastly different responsibilities and duties. Charly's first day started early and when I woke she had been at work for at least four hours. Because of its name, 'orphanage', it is endowed with certain realities - one being the tight margin of everything: money, material, people resources, against the staggering excess of human tragedy.   

However, in comparison, working at the English school only had one shift which started at 3pm and went for three hours and as I found out, had a different relationship with fortune - four volunteers for three students who were in their early twenties and had never been abandoned. The classes were held in a catholic school in one of the back dungeons, presumably behind the mead-vault, where they taught science or mathematics for one hour a week - just enough to keep rationality under the carpet. This room was dark as hell, cold as hell, dank as hell and the acoustics would challenge every big bastard empty cathedral on the planet for amplifying sound... or sinful thought. The walls of this goddamn (literally) room had a hide on it - 1cm thick paper-mache: 20 years of successive generations of religious paraphernalia - doing its best to indoctrinate whoever had to spend time in that dungeon? A most uncomfortable room where no amount of adjusting or manoeuvring will negotiate a truce with the awkwardness - only repenting, flagellation and 2000 hail Mary's, prescribed by the local witch doctor/pastors will give relief. At one stage, Traveller not Tourist asked the school if it was possible to move the English class into one of the rooms which had more sunlight. The answer was, "Oh ha ha, of course not my child. The warmth is reserved for studies of the truth. It won't be wasted on faithless sciences or your lessons of tongues..."

The Irish couple, Luke and Sophie were running the English programme and when I arrived, Sophie already had full command of the class.  She attempted to introduce me to the class and it was easy to see the brewing confusion in the three students’ eyes. My beard posed a deep metaphysical question because the only other white man to ever be seen with a beard like mine in Peru was plastered all over the walls in that cold hollow room and probably many other rooms just like it. A rift was swiftly developing within their conscience and I was afraid of the responsibility and the consequences of it, so I jumped on the front foot. "Hi, my name is Rich," I stated. The three faces were blank. What's a Rich, I could see them wondering...Sophie interjected and prompted a few questions - she knew their capabilities. One of the girls stood up bravely and hooked her hands together near her sternum like an opera singer and roared, "what do you like to do!" Yikes, I thought, the truth will have me combusting in this room - better not be too honest. "I like to travel", I replied. All three girls quietly looked at each other and then nodded with some sort of acceptance, then silence. Feeing that momentum need to be carried I replied with, "what do you like to do?" A pencil dropped, tinging an echo around the room before the three girls erupted into cackles. "Oh, I'm afraid that's too complex at the moment", Sophie explained. She went on to describe how poor the program was working, due to its sheer dependency on volunteers who seemed to be always leaving - making it hard for the 'curriculum' to snare a footing. "When we got here, six weeks ago, they couldn't even count and they've been coming to these classes for six months, but watch this", Sophie said excitedly. She ordered the three girls, each to a separate corner and asked them to start counting to 50. With their excited faces they rushed to the corners and began counting: one, two, tree...wait what? Eleven, twelve, terrteen... Again what? Twenty tree, terty tree, fortie tree...Fifteh!

Sweet Jesus, this can't be! In a bizarre twist in the natural order of things, in this small room somewhere in Peru, three Peruvian girls were being taught the Irish derivative form of English... I stood there with a semi-aneurism gaze, forcing a smile, but I couldn't help but think of the broader consequences. For centuries the Irish dialect had been essentially marooned or quarantined on that cold-wind-swept island in fear that babbling in limericks or random useless pieces of advice would spread.  In the advent of the collapse of the Irish economy millions of Irishmen were forced out of their dank-dark pubs and into the further reaches of the globe. But what for? Potatoes probably – considering that the potato originated from Latin America and had some 200 more varieties – made it a likely hot spot for Irish migration and possible conquer. And here it was, in full flight, the initial stages of the second round of Latin American conquest, not in the usual form with pestilence and enslavement, but rather with more subversive measures like; St Patrick’s day, horrible black beer and the misnomers of red hair and luck. I could picture it already: bastardly drunk-red-headed-lucky bastards stooging every corner from Colombia to Tierra Del Fuego, overseeing the mass exportation of the potato-loot back to Ireland, leaving behind a culture of... well, let's face it, feudal-superstitious-drunks. "Well done", I cheered for their girl’s accomplishment, while thinking it could have been much more vicious... It could have been a South African accent. Since there were four volunteers for three students, my presence was not needed, so I sat up the back and thought about deeper things.

Later that night, back at the hostel, I arrived home to meet Charly who was exhausted and smelling funny. The type of funny where the smell computer inside your head wants a reboot. I asked her about her day and heard in great detail the reason why she smelt so strange. She asked me how mine went, but even if I exaggerated the details it still wouldn't have come close to what would be considered 'effort', so I just said, "tiering."   

For the next few weeks a groove of a routine was routed out in Arequipa, where Charly would wake up early and leave, work hard and come home smelling like something between watermelon and a Petri dish. And I would wake up late, do nothing and around three go to the school and do nothing there. The only notable event to occur in my time at the English school was one day another student appeared – sitting with others, although she was not like the other flock - not so God-fearing. The lesson went as usual: I sat up the back while Sophie and Luke instructed the class. Two hours in, Sophie and Luke were jonesing for some nicotine, so they asked if I could take over for 20 minutes. "Sure no problem", I replied and with a spring in my step I jumped to the front of the room to head my first class. Oh yeah! Wait till Charly hears about this, I thought, my time to shine! We could hear the heavy gate outside clanging behind Luke and Sophie as they left and just as I was about to write my first sentence on the blackboard, the new girl asked behind me, "What's fucking?" Now I don't have the same adrenal function as everyone else – it mostly works independently from the rest of my autonomic nervous system, and therefore reacts unpredictably in different situations. It seems lately, the stimuli for a response needn't be too different to evoke a reaction between a light sweat or all-out war. Regardless, those little fat bastards sitting on top of my kidneys pump elephant adrenalin through my veins too often and the initial stages are always the same: metallic taste and then there is the fear.  

The other girls were giggling vehemently in response to the new girl’s question - which echoed its insidious nature – knowing exactly what was at stake.  The new girl was biting her bottom lip, staring right at me and looking for a reaction. I had to fight back to establish that I was different from all the other sex-tourists – I was here to help not to be helped! I managed a stumbling cascade of vowels and responded with the equivalent word in Spanish but that wasn't enough for this harleton - hell-bent on the damnation of both of our soul. As she started to bite the nail of her index finger she replied with, "No entiendo, I don't understand." I paused momentarily to sample the air for searing flesh but I only could detect sinfully-sweet oestrogen. The giggling continued as did my adrenalin flow. This was a pissing contest. I didn't know who this young woman was or her motive, but the resolution of this situation needed to be tactfully driven because everyone knows, especially my high school science teacher Mr Rosendale; allegations stick like shit! Whether you’re innocent or guilty. And who knows how an evangelical Peruvian supreme court judge would react to a western-heathen, who was thought to be corrupting the spiritual innocence of anything – especially in a goddamn catholic school. I figured not well, especially after a public outcry and show of discontent – mass rallies burning horned-effigies in the street outside of our hostel – demanding my carcass slung onto a 3m rose wood cross and dragged through the streets. International attention to the matter would further dilute the willingness of both of my consulates to send legal defence, but rather renege on my citizenship and deny any knowledge of my existence. The nail on the coffin will be hammered in by the Vatican, announcing that they are cancelling Christmas and reinstating revised version of the Papal Inquisitions to evaluate the threat to catholic way of life.  Jesus, where the hell are those bastards Sophie and Luke? They've left me here to burn goddamn it! Yes indeed, tread carefully here and try not to flinch and whatever you do don't look at the gigantic 2m diameter image of this woman they call Mary who is cuddling a lama. Oh shit, those porcelain eyes are staring right at me...   

"Quiero saber, I want to know!" the floozy asked. I felt at this moment that naivety was the best offence and the easiest platform for deniability in any court, tribunal or pogrom. "I don't know, yo no sé," I replied while shrugging my shoulders. A stalemate silence broke where we just stared at each other - wondering what was going to happen next. The hinges of the rusty gate outside squeaked and the girls instantly reverted to how they were before Luke and Sophie left - with their heads in their books, in complete silence. These girl are pros, I remember thinking, not to be messed with. Is this why there are no 'old timers' at the English school? I didn't know... Luke and Sophie came back in after fifteen minutes and found me flustered. "What's wrong man?" Sophie asked, "You haven't written a sentence." The floozy concealed a giggle in a cough which made the other girls laugh. Well, no point in explaining this, I thought. It's too strange to be fully understood.     

Two weeks passed by fairly quickly and Charly would, as usual, come home with a strange funk and proudly displaying several pictures of the kids – explaining the cute things they did that day and the various aspects of their personalities. From the photos, the children seemed to be totally unaware of their appalling predicament – smiling away as if the little buggers had just won the lottery. I guessed they hadn’t learnt that potent adult emotion of bitterness yet, or they were in the process of practicing. And this is the core reason why I could never volunteer in an orphanage like Charly did. By not being involved I could remain emotionally detached and rationally involved. Being on the outside, not being there, I can accept that circumstance can be a valid reason for abandoning a child, because lets not forget, it is Peru we’re talking about here and the orphanage can legitimately provide a better life for these poor things in certain cases. But my rationality is boiled away when Charly explains the situation of one wee boy, whose parents decided they couldn't look after him, so they dumped him in the orphanage and wiped their hands clean only to then, several months later, want him back. Charly explained that after the boy’s parents would visit him at the orphanage, he would wet his pants. To me, his physical reaction somehow made his situation more vicious - a clear emotional scenario forcing its horrible effects onto the physical plane like a possessed daemon wanting to burst out of hell. As if his emotion was overflowing. This boy had done nothing wrong, this much is certain. He hadn’t had the chance to, yet he was being treated as if he had. So forever more, even if his life is returned to that of a normal boy, he will have to come to terms with his parent’s cryptic affection. And no amount of explaining from anyone will ever solve that goddamn riddle. 

It’s a good thing I’m not in charge of much because if I was, I would bring back, with all it’s terribleness, the efficiency of the middle ages for torture, the sadism of Stalin for fear and the pure-lucid -insanity of Pol Pot for all-out murder. The annihilation of these "parents" could only serve as a deep clean for the gene pool – a colon cleans perhaps for broader humanity. Why not?  Satisfy karma and balance the tills of injustice - especially in this orphanage, or any other for that matter.  But alas, I'm not in charge of mass sterilization or executions... for good reason I think. 

Another troubling issues that crept into Charly’s regular afternoon debrief was the problem of volunteers and their charity which came with their opinions. By design, an orphanage with 19 small kids gets messy and also by design, four adults aren’t enough to look after so many kids. Everything about an orphanage has an affinity for struggle and where they need resistance the least is from the people who come to "help". Charly had told me in great detail how the girl from Wyoming was banned from ever coming back  because she used industrial-strength disinfectant, that she had bought, to use in a poorly ventilated room where two 4 months old babies were laying – after being trice warned not to… 

“Well all hell broke loose,” Charly explained, “and now she’s banned.” As it turned out Miss Wyoming had raised some money in the U.S to donate to the orphanage – good for her, I raised nothing. Really, good for her. When she arrived, her sensibilities must have been slapped because all she did was complain about the filthy state the orphanage was in and then spend most of the money on cleaning products.  Lets get one thing straight, I was not there, so my opinion is somewhat grafted from Charly’s but considering the filth Charly has had to put up with while living with me, I really bank on her opinion that the orphanage was not that bad because her idea of filth has been well calibrated. Charly continued to explain that the tías, the women who live and work at the orphanage, the people who know what’s what, said that baby formula was always expensive and that they nearly run out of money each month to buy it and any money donated will be prioritised for food… Funny that food business, I remember thinking. It mustn’t seem that important to a highly evolved-worldly 22 year old from well-fed Wyoming or wherever the fuck, who is taking a break from her sociology degree to come and ruff it up for a few weeks. I could hear on the edge of every noun that Charly was fanging for confrontation and I feared she was going to get it at the weekly volunteers meeting which was that night – where the worldly 22 year old Miss Wyoming would have her day in court and Charly was her judge and executioner. 

On the long walk to the meeting I tried in vein to distract Charly from her thoughts of manslaughter. The stress on her face tightened as she explained that the girl from Gloucester had also been complaining about the standards of the orphanage and that they were probably going to raise the issue at that evenings meeting. Oh Christ, I thought, these people really don’t know what they’re faced with here. We reached the house and I heaved the jammed door bell which clanged away as if its life depended on it, a buzzer grinded and we were let in. We were entering our third week of volunteering, one week more than I was told, and the atmosphere inside the house had changed somewhat since our first meeting. The departure of the ironic-hyena and his harem of the five hysterical-impregnated British girls made things less critical and more rational for discussion. The mood was calm as we said our hellos but I could tell Charly was on the brink. For this night, out roles were reversed: I sat calmly as she marauded nervously in the background – her anxious energy, gone unnoticed by the others, was being registered loud and clear on all three of my radars. It’s strange when you are aware of something that others aren't – especially when it comes to combat. You almost reach a sense of pity or truce with the enemy for having such meagre defences - completely naive in the face of total annihilation. I wondered if this was how the Japanese pilots felt swooping their zero’s in, from out over the Pacific, on to Pearl Harbour. Probably not, I thought, but at that moment I could picture Charly piloting, open-canopy with her scarf flapping in the turbulence, a torpedo plane and  lining up the lumbering beast with the USS Arizona or Oklahoma and then plop. No remorse, zero guilt only maximum gratification. 

Like every other meeting Daisy set up a Skype call with the lady who ran the U.K office of the organisation and as usual Daisy breezed through the relevant news and topics of the last week. Her tone was direct and purposeful as she pushed through each point unchallenged, yet becoming slightly rushed at the end as if she needed to address more pressing matters. To make a physical gesture of completing her mandatory tasks, Daisy placed her pen on the table and looked at Miss Wyoming and said the obvious, "I guess we need to talk about what happened today."  Miss Wyoming let out fake giggle, to release the tension, "Like yah, I have a few points!" Daisy went on to describe what she knew of the situation, which is what I knew, and she only got so far before Miss Wyoming interjected with her side of the story. As often with people who have a shaky story, theatrical band standing replaces fact and this was no different as Miss Wyoming started to roll her eyes and wave her right hand around as if swatting at flies. Daisy recognised the tension and backed off, which left an open forum for the lady from the UK.

"So, let me get this straight. You used the chemicals in the room, even though you were asked not to?" the crackly voice asked politely over Skype.  

"Yah! You don't know what it's like. Like the whole place is covered in like faeces...like," Miss Wyoming retorted.

I looked over at Charly who's eye balls were bulging from the breath she wouldn't let escape her tight lips until the pressure became too much, "PhfffffffffffffffffffffffffffT! It's not even that dirty," Charly testified with stiff resolve. "The shit you are talking about was a dirty nappy in the corner of the room - which you didn't pick up. You disinfected the whole room but didn't bother to pick up that nappy, so it would make more sense, if you found it so dirty, to pick up the goddamn nappy first!"

That's my girl...

Someone coughed but the rest of the room was silent from shock and Miss Wyoming didn't consider internal resistance on this night and could only muster a limp roll of her eyes and a 'whatever Charly!' To make matters worse for Miss Wyoming's case, the voice coming from Skype agreed with Charly as she put in simplistic terms, "You know it's easy to be confronted with the conditions coming from the U.S or Canada or the U.K. You have to remember that it is Peru and standards there are different."

Miss Gloucester, who had recently graduated as a high school teacher, leant in to offer her high level opinion on the matter by saying, "You know, also, when you offer advice to the tías or the manager of the orphanage, they get really upset and rude when they don't have to. We are there to help and some of us are highly trained and can offer our expertise. I mean I'm a teacher."

A teacher! Well Jesus fuck, I thought. I'm an expert at being useless, but all that means is that I know jack shit about how to run an orphanage. "Phffffffffft," hissed again from Charly's lips, "All they need from us is for us to show up when we're asked and do what we're told," Charly snapped. "The people that work there are there all day every day, it's a bit disrespectful to show up for a couple of weeks and to tell them that they are doing it wrong."

That's my girl...
 

The voice crackling over Skype, in a diplomatic manner, noted the objections and said she would follow it up, but I knew, as did everyone else she was on our side as she said, "You know it's easy to feel self-righteous when you first come to the orphanage, but you have to remember what the orphanage is facing every day. Sure it might not be the cleanest by western standards, but it's still feeding and washing the children, which unfortunately is their main priority." The crackly voice hammered home what was important and vindicated the truly righteous - leaving the room in pristine silence. The sound of victory! Daisy broke the awkwardness with some light chat and said she had to go home to her boy and then fled. I didn't blame her, because I too was making my preparations to leave.  

Well, there was no bloodshed on that night, not even a tear. Hopefully, with a little luck, Miss Wyoming and Miss Gloucester suffered just enough brain damage so that the scar tissue could form over their over-indulgent opinions of themselves. There would be little chance of them gloating about this encounter back in their native lands without altering the true course of events. Their parents would probably notice a slight change in their demeanour but initially cross it off as jet lag or the remnants of a cold  - never realizing the full potential of their little girls transformation. The girls’ friends would always wonder what happened to their friend while she was away. "She came back different," they will cry, "She's doesn't even come to bible studies or home coming anymore."

It's hard to measure the one overriding factor that forces a person to evolve or to grow. I would bet all the change and fluff in my pockets that Charly's two paragraph whoopin played a small role in their journey to enlightenment by giving them a perspective lobotomy...

That's my girl...

Well we’re at the end of this one, and if you made it this far you've shown true grit. Yes Sir, you are made of the right stuff. Just like the two Mossad agents we met who were, not so, undercover in our hostel. They claimed they were on the trail of a slack-baron called Ronnie Yair - onto his nasty sent. "This guy has gone AWOL, and we need to either take him down or bring him in before the Americans do... The wolves are closing in this son of a bitch and we have to get there first and drag his bones back to Israel dead or alive... I've already said too much...

 
More photos of Arequipa and it's little inhabitants can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/109362659982164453049/Arequipa?authuser=0&feat=directlink