A few coordinates

are entered in red

for any geeks who

might want to look

places up on Google

Earth.

Day 15: Cuenca to Guayaquil

FOR DAY 15 PHOTOS, CLICK:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mkfmick/SouthAmerica2008Day15

I got up early at Hostal Macondo, ready for their breakfast offerings as soon as the kitchen opened at 7 a.m. The dining area was tiled, bright, and spotless. The following were offered and included in the price of my room: eggs, cereal, juice (today’s juice was watermelon [sandia]), fresh fruit (papaya), homemade cinnamon bread, tea, coffee, and milk. Very good.

I left my laundry at the desk and sat down for a minute in the lobby under a large old glass skylight. A woman of approximately my own age was also there, working on her laptop. We were soon engaged in a bit of conversation.

The woman’s name was Teresa. She was an American from Taos, New Mexico. She’d been staying at the hostal since January, teaching English as a Second Language at a school that was somehow affiliated with Hostal Macondo. (Later, I asked at the desk if the affiliated school needed English teachers: the answer was a resounding ‘yes.’ Just contact them via their website.) She provided me with some information on where I might walk this morning in order to see the city’s notable architecture. Cuenca, like Lima and Quito, has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in recognition of its cultural and architectural values.

Street scenes, Cuenca

I started walking south on Calle Tarqui, towards Rio Tomebamba. A couple of blocks from Hostal Macondo I saw the storefront of Casa del Sombrero (Tarqui 6-91), one of the makers of Panama hats for which Cuenca is renowned. An old man stood in the doorway of the shop gesturing for me to come across the street. No, I gestured, I didn’t want to buy a hat. He kept waving at me to cross the street. OK, I would come over, but only to take some pictures.

The old man’s hands were dusty white from something used in the hat-making process. I peeked into the shop where a younger man, perhaps 50 years old, his hands also white, was working to shape a sombrero (hat) to an ancient mold.
 
It didn’t matter that I still didn’t want to buy a hat. I was soon being guided into another doorway adjacent to the shop that led upstairs. The old man was as affable as he could be, but he did not seem to be able to speak. He could only make guttural sounds. Was this condition the result of years working with toxic materials? Who knows.
 
We went up the stairs, into a showroom of sorts above the shop down below at street level. Many women’s hats were displayed along with the typical men’s Panamas. Some of the men’s hats retailed for as much as $200. Others seemed to start out at $50 or less.

OK, even if I did want a hat, I wasn’t going to hassle with a wide-brimmed Panama hat all the way from Cuenca, Ecuador, to Wichita, Kansas, for crying out loud. As if he was reading my mind, the old man took a hat, rolled it up and folded it, then shook it out and put it on my head, showing me how the hat could stand up to the abuse of packing and travel and look none-the-worse for wear.
 
I had started to take a shine to this guy. I learned that the man’s name was Alberto Pulla. He showed me an old airline magazine, American Way, with a picture of himself on its cover. A framed newspaper article about him and his craft was on the wall.

Well, I began to think, let’s just try on a few of these hats. One of them felt just right. Maybe, if I could negotiate an acceptable price, maybe I would buy one. Amicably enough, he agreed to sell me a hat that was marked $50 for a price of $35.
 
I took a lot of photographs upstairs. Alberto was delighted when I showed them to him, and he indicated that I should send them to him at his e-mail address. Then we went downstairs where his son stopped working, shook my hand, posed with his father, and pointed with pleasure at the images on my camera’s display. Then the son took a picture of me and his father in the shop.

The perfect souvenir of my trip had found me. I left the shop wearing my new hat, feeling as though I had encountered an Ecuadoran treasure, like an ancient cigar maker in Havana.
 
You could not walk the streets of Cuenca and not be aware of the bakeries that abounded there. And I could not be aware of them and not try some of their delicious pastries. It was impossible to pass them by without pointing at something that looked good and giving it a try. Win-win, I’d say.
 
I continued down Calle Tarqui until I reached Rio Tomebamba, the river that separates the old city to the north from the rest of this thriving city of 340,000. The river is a rushing stream tumbling over a rocky bed. At least two other rivers of similar size and mountain-stream nature flow through Cuenca.
 
I turned east and walked past the bustling indoor Mercado 10 de Agusto. The products available there were similar to those in Belen, Peru; but in its size and sensory impact, it made perhaps one-tenth the impression of the great Mercado de Belen.
 
I stepped into an Internet site a block from Parque Abdon Calderon, the center of old Cuenca. I responded to some e-mail and chipped away at the intimidating backlog of journal entries that needed to be made.
 
I had allowed time to return to Hostal Macondo to shower and shave, do some semi-final packing, and return to centro Cuenca to catch a guided bus tour that would begin at 11:15 a.m. The tour, operated by a company called Cordova Cadillo Jaime Bolivar, cost $5.

Indigenous woman washing clothes, Rio Tomebamba, Cuenca, Ecuador

Two hours in length, conducted in a semblance of English on a modern, red, ride-on-top bus, the tour was well worth doing for its orientation value. On foot, I would have never gotten to the various rivers in the city, crossed into the new portion of Cuenca, or climbed the hill north of the old city where there was an old church and a fine view of the city spread out below.
 
Guess who I found riding the tour bus? Mark from Los Angeles, a solo traveler who had been seated next to me on the train ride from Riobamba yesterday. It turns out that he had been one of those passengers taken to a nearby town for medical attention after the train we rode atop hurtled through a fallen tree. Except for his torn jacket, I think Mark was fine, though not overwhelmed by the medical services available in rural Ecuador.

The Old Cathedral, Cuenca

After the bus tour I found that Cuenca’s old cathedral, La Iglesia Del Sagrario, begun in 1557, would not be open for tours or visiting in the afternoon. That presented me a gift of time that I could spend at Cafe Austria (Benigno Malo y Juan Jaramillo), a restaurant that had caught my eye earlier this morning. I had made a mental note to return for a snack if I had time before leaving Cuenca.
 
Cafe Austria is a great old bistro located a couple of blocks south of Ceuenca’s main square, Parque Calderon. Large windows provided views of the passing street scene. Inside, the impression is of polished wood floors, tables and bar. Muted jazz recordings played in the background, complementing the iconic Herman Leonard black-and-white photos of jazz greats that graced the walls. I was only snacking, but the guacamole and Tostitos—beautifully garnished with tomatoes and parsley—and limonada natural were terrific.

Inside Cafe Austria, Cuenca

I paid my check and started walking towards my hostal. Earlier I had seen some local promotional materials that gave an office address in Cuenca for Continental Airlines. I was dubious: why would Continental staff an office in a city at least 100 miles from the nearest airport that it served? It did, though, and it was staffed by Continental employees. I stepped into the office, only a couple of blocks from my hostal, to confirm that I was indeed listed for tonight’s flight from Guayaquil (GYE) to Houston (IAH), and then on to Wichita tomorrow.
 
If I’d had my passport and tickets with me, I could have checked-in for the flights and picked up my boarding passes. The agent told me that there were plenty of seats available for the flight out of GYE, so I saw no point in returning for an early check-in.
 
Back at Hostal Macondo I claimed my left luggage and laundry, and then changed into my traveling clothes. I stuffed my old traveling friend, a wheeled piece of luggage that can convert into a backpack, for what I feared would be its last journey. The zipper on a large exterior compartment had separated on this trip, and now a lengthy section was secured with a series of safety pins and two stout bungee cords that encircled the entire exterior of the bag. Patches from Patagonia (Chile), Peru (2), Bolivia, Argentina, and Italy attest to its international trips. It didn’t look like a new Ecuador patch would be joining the others on this bag.
 
I took a taxi from the hostal to Terminal Terrestre where I would catch a bus to Guayaquil. I arrived at the bus terminal at 3:10 p.m., found the office for the San Luis line, bought a ticket ($6), boarded the bus, and departed right on time at 3:30 p.m.
 
I had read that the trip from Cuenca to Guayaquil via Parque Nacional Caja was scenic. I had no idea!

Near Parque Nacional Caja on the highway, Cuenca to Guayaquil

The road climbs out of Cuenca in a northwesterly direction, following a stream at the base of a verdant valley. As we climbed, the terrain opened up, providing grand vistas with each turn of the road. I was reminded of the high country of Glacier National Park. It seemed that we climbed with every meter that we drove. Finally, at 4:40 p.m.—a little more than an hour after we departed Cuenca—we reached the top of the pass (GPS: 02 46.631S / 79 14.537W). My GPS indicated an altitude of 13,616 feet, almost exactly a mile higher than the city of Cuenca, and nearly as high as the highest point in the lower 48 of the United States. The city of Guayaquil, our destination, is situated at sea level and so, from the top of the pass, more than 2-1/2 miles of elevation had to be given back in a relatively short distance.
 
When we reached the top of the pass from the east, a cloud deck could be seen trapped against the western slope of the mountain range, nearly reaching to the top. We entered the dense fog shortly after beginning our descent. It was 30 minutes before we broke out of it, and we spent an additional 15 minutes in-and- out of clouds. For an hour, then, we were losing altitude, switchback after switchback, mostly in dense fog. None of these factors deterred our driver’s zeal for overtaking slower traffic despite his inability to see beyond his headlights.
 
The highway on the west side of the mountains was rough in spots. There was evidence of recent slides of mud and rock that must have closed the road for many hours, if not days.
 
Near the end of our descent the vegetation began to take on a more tropical character. At 6:10 p.m. we had been on the road for two hours 40 minutes. An hour-and-a-half ago we had been at an elevation of 13,616 feet; now we were essentially at sea level, with another hour and 20 minutes of perfectly flat terrain separating us from Guayaquil.
 
With only a short way to go to the bus terminal in Guayaquil, a young man sat down in the recently vacated seat next to me. We talked a bit. His name was Marcelo, he was from Cuenca, and he was on his way to Guayaquil to take an examination to assess his fluency in English. If he passed the six-hour exam, he would be one step closer to being accepted at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. He was traveling with a pretty young woman, a long-time friend of his named Vivi, who would also take the English fluency test and also hoped to study at Moody.
 
As we approached Guayaquil’s Terminal Terrestre, Marcelo asked me about my luggage. I thought he just wondered if I traveled light, or was simply making conversation, but he had a more relevant reason to ask: his mother was meeting him and Vivi at the bus terminal and would take me to the airport if I wanted...and if my bag would fit into the car.
 
Guayaquil’s Terminal Terrestre, by the way, was quite a surprise. It was new, modern and clean, lined with shops and restaurants, more like a suburban mall than a bus terminal, as different from the Quito terminal as night and day. There were actually two adjacent terminals in Guayaquil, one as nice as the other, to serve intra- and inter-city passengers.
 
Marcelo’s mother, Patricia, met her son and Vivi following a few cell phone calls to coordinate the pick-up. Marcelo’s sister and young nephew, Maria and Santi, were at the terminal as well, and so was a friend, Juan Pablo. There were now seven of us, counting me, and we all piled into Marcelo’s small Chevrolet—Marcelo and I in front, the other five in back.
 
Vivi was clearly considered one of the family. As with any Ecuadoran family, there was constant cheerful banter after being reunited even though the separation may have only been for a matter of days. We did not go straight to the airport, though. Marcelo had decided that he’d show me a bit of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, before dropping me off.
 
We drove up to Cerro del Carmen, parked, then walked several flights of stairs to the base of an imposing statue of Christ (Sagrado Corazón de Jesús). An impressive view of the lighted city spread out below rewarded all who—like our group—had climbed the steps.
 
I took photos of the various family members and friends, and they of me. We got back into the car and drove through downtown Guayaquil on our way to Malecon 2000, the pedestrian promenade along Rio Guayas. As we drove through central Guayaquil we were able to glimpse such prominent landmarks as Parque Bolivar, the Cathedral, and Palacio de Cristal. Marcelo, Vivi and I got out near a lighted monument—La Rotonda—on the malecon, walked over to the river, took some photos, and returned to the car.

Marcelo and Vivi at La Rotonda, Malecon 2000, Guayaquil, Ecuador

Then, and only then, did the group drive me to the airport and let me off with my bags. It was 9:15 p.m. by then, an hour and 45 minutes since the bus from Cuenca had arrived at the bus terminal. What a nice and unexpected experience! Muchas gracias!
 
I checked-in easily at the Continental ticket counter. There was no problem getting a seat for the flight to IAH. International passengers are required to pay a departure fee of $27.16, making the total cost of my transportation from GYE to ICT $129.48. I couldn’t secure a seat in Business Class, but I did get an exit row seat assignment with its extra legroom, and no one was seated on either side of me, giving me maximum space on the six-hour flight to IAH.
 
The flight departed right on time, just after midnight of Day 16 of my trip.

Day 16: Guayaquil, Ecuador, to Wichita

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

The overnight flight from Guayaquil to Houston was uneventful. Except for the discouraging sight of two planes departing Houston for Wichita full and without me, there's not so much to report on this last day of the trip. Having spent fully 10 hours in the George H. W. Bush International Airport after a sleepless night of travel, I finally got on a flight to Wichita, arriving to meet Barb and Madi on a beautiful spring evening at about 6 p.m.

There are a few thoughts to record before calling it quits on this journal. Over a period of more than two weeks, with the exception of a few hours spent in airports and on airplanes between Iquitos, Peru, and Quito, Ecuador, I never felt that supposed necessity--air conditioning. During that same two weeks, I never drank out water from a fountain or a tap; never read a newspaper; watched TV only once, three innings of baseball while eating in a bar/restaurant; and made exactly two phone calls. I don't consider that any of these represented a hardship.

I've had time to think about some of my trip's 'bests':

• Best Experience--
• Best Meal--
• Best Lodging--
• Best Value--
• Best Photograph--

A few coordinates

are entered in red

for any geeks who

might want to look

places up on Google

Earth.

´Hola´ de la Plaza Mayor, Lima, Peru

Day 1: Wichita to Lima  

It seems that I was particularly on edge before I embarked on this trip to South America. It was my sixth overall, the third to Peru, and I should have been more at ease. Perhaps knowing a little about what lay ahead contributed to a case of nerves: who is more sanguine, the man going in for his first transurethral resection or the man going in for his second?  

I had scheduled this trip months ago, and begun preparing in earnest a week or more ago. But I live on a precipice. I didn´t receive an acknowledgement from my lodging of choice--Hotel Espana (www.hotelespanaperu.com.pe , Jr. Azángaro 105, Lima) until literally five minutes before I pulled the plug on my laptop for the last time prior to leaving for the airport.  

At the airport I was held at the Continental Airlines gate until five standby passengers were accommodated and then, at 10:30 a.m., I was told that I would not get a seat. I turned immediately to rush to the far side of the airport where Delta Airlines had a flight to Atlanta that I knew I could get on if I could just get there before their 10:45 departure. As soon as I started, though, the Continental gate agent called me back: one passenger had not shown up at the gate and if he didn´t show up after one last paging over the airport intercom, I could have that last open seat. My luck held. I boarded the flight to a light round of applause a few of the other standby passengers who thought I´d been left behind.  

I would have made it to Lima, most likely, even if I´d had to depart Wichita on Delta rather than Continental, but there would have been an extra connection to make and my arrival in Lima would have been eight hours later after an overnight flight from Miami.  

I was seated next to a friendly young man (mid-to-late 30´s?) named Mike Jennings on the flight to Houston. He works for Frontier Oil Corporation out of Houston and was returning home after working (financial, not technical) at the company´s refinery in El Dorado.   Mike´s father had grown up in Hutchinson, studied medicine, and is an orthopedic surgeon in Great Falls, Montana. Mike graduated high school there, then went to college at Dartmouth (New Hampshire) and got an MBA at the University of Chicago. Not a lot of slacking going on in that family...  

We talked the whole trip, much of the conversation about the refining business. (Bet you didn´t know that the standard barrel of oil traces its 42-gallon volume to the days when oil was shipped out of Pennsylvania on carts in open 50-gallon drums. To account for spillage during transport of the oil over bumpy back roads, 42 gallons was settled upon as an equitable figure for accounting purposes that would be acceptable to both buyer and seller.) We talked about gas, of course, which was selling for the (up to then) unprecedented price of $3.49 per gallon. I learned a lot about what happens to a barrel of oil as it is refined into gas, diesel fuel, butane, and asphalt.  

Mike expressed undisguised disdain for our President´s energy policy that has little more than a few ethanol plants, and commensurate escalation in price of nearly everything in the food chain, to show for it. He feels that market forces will drive both conservation and technological advances. Don´t count on a Manhattan Project or paradigm shift to deliver us from our unholy dependence on oil.

I was in the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston for three hours. Still antsy, I couldn´t focus on writing, or even reading. I managed to get in touch with Lan Peru Airlines and get myself listed for a couple of flights within Peru. I had lunch and called some credit card issuers to advise them that I would be out of the country for a couple of weeks. Then, quickly enough, the Continental gate personnel began checking documents of those passenger going to Lima at 3:45 p.m. this afternoon on CO 590.

I got a seat assignment fairly readily. My ZED (Zonal Employee Discount) ticket, which I can purchase thanks to my airline employment, cost just over $80 including taxes and fees. I got to my seat and found myself immediately within the powerful energy field of the man in the adjoining seat, Dr. Carlos Zevallos.

We began our conversation immediately. I soon knew that this stocky man speaking in heavily accented English had left Peru in 1968 after completing medical school. He completed a residency in rheumatology at the Cleveland Clinic after which he was offered a staff position at the clinic. Though Carlos had intended to return to Peru to practice medicine, he accepted the clinic´s offer rather than return to the dicey political situation extant in Peru in the 1970´s. Besides his practice, he serves on the faculty of the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine. My luck: another overachiever for a seatmate!

Carlos is now a citizen of the United States, married nearly 40 years to Gladys, a nurse from Peru. Carlos and Gladys go back to Peru fairly regularly to visit family and friends. He´s proud of his Peruvian heritage and spent a good hour talking--and writing entries into my notebook-- about restaurants, cultural and historic sites, and Peruvian dishes that I absolutely couldn´t miss.

He outlined an itinerary that could take me days to accomplish, and I planned to be in Lima for only a day, maybe two. If I was to go to only one place it should be the Museo de la Nacion. I should certainly have ceviche (raw fish, lime juice, onions and peppers) while I´m in Peru, preferably made with sea bass (corbina), preferably eaten outside (afuera) at a fine seaside restaurant in Miraflores (a barrio, or suburb, of Lima) called La Rosa Nautica.  

Carlos gave his highest marks to a dish called cabrito con frijoles (baby goat with beans): that one earned three emphatic X´s as measures of his enthusiasm for the dish. Among his honorable mentions was chicharrones (pork), perhaps followed by a dessert of picarones. These are only a sampling from the information he provided. In the background the whole time, another seat over and next to the window, Gladys was there to weigh in with clarifications and additional background as necessary, but she generally kept to herself and a book of word games she brought along for the trip.

I think that Carlos really enjoyed recalling those things he loved growing up in Peru more than 40 years ago. He described the tastes and shapes of many varieties of potatoes (papas) and bananas (plantanas).

Oh yes, yes, I would have to go to a pastry shop near Plaza San Martin called Pasteleria San Martin and try their empanadas. While there, buy a kilo of a sweet specialty called Turrones de Dona Pepa to take home to my wife.

I should shop for turquoise and silver at the indigenous craft market along Av. Petit Thouars in Miraflores. But don´t pay the price marked! Bargain, bargain, bargain. It would be a source of shame to accept the list price as the true bottom line. And on we went...

Yes, yes, give me your notebook again, Carlos would say, and soon there would be another entry. One memory elicited another. I would have to try the lucuma ice cream, he said. It´s a little gritty, but oh it´s so delicious!

He laughed and recited a Peruvian adage about food: Lo que no mata, engorda (What doesn´t kill you will make you fat).

Carlos´ head would bob as he occasionally succombed to sleep, and then he´d be refreshed, excited to be going back home. And as we drew closer to it, we said goodbye on the plane and again in the back-and-forth queue we snaked through to clear Peruvian customs. Several planes seemed to have arrived at once, each spilling out 200 or more travelers who would have to be processed before entering the country.

The waiting area at Lima´s Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Chavez is chaotic, to say the least. Friends and family crowd along barriers inside the terminal, shouting out for attention to their arriving loved ones. Taxi drivers holding signs with the names of hotel guests they were sent to pick up join the fray.

I looked closely, but couldn´t find anyone brandishing a Hotel Espana sign with my name on it, so I approached a driver with a Hotel Espana sign with someone else´s name on it. After a bit of tentative explanation of my situation, the driver made a call back to the hotel, then took me on as a fare.

I was soon piling into a tiny yellow taxi and we were on our way. The drive from the airport to centro Lima takes you through alarmingly rundown areas of the city, but I´d been on this drive a year ago and was not concerned.

I tried out my halting Spanish on my driver, Cesar. He was delighted that I tried to speak in his native tongue, and he had a sprinkling of English to get us over any rough patches. He was a delight, and clearly proud of his country. He reminded me uncannily of an aggressive tout I met in Yurimaguas last year--also named Cesar.

At the end of a 30-minute drive I got checked-in at Hotel Espana, then went out to a small convience store--really just a hole in the wall with a wide variety of sundries for sale. A TV blared a Chinese-made, Spanish-dubbed show on the Cartoon Network. Coolers contained cold drinks, including beer. I had gone to the store solely to buy bottled water to brush my teeth and to wash down some vitamins, but the sight of some other Hotel Espana guests who had been on my plane from Houston--one of them a middle-aged woman who easily measure 6 feet 4 inches in height--enjoying a sweaty glass of cold beer was too much for me. So I took a seat and ordered up a cerveza which came in a 620-ml bottle (about 20 ounces compared to our normal 12-ounce bottles) and cost me perhaps $1.25.

It took little time to finish off the beer and return to my room with the 2-liter bottle of water. I´m sure it must have been 1 a.m.--the same time in Lima as it was in Wichita--when I turned on my MP3 player and turned off the lights.

Day 2--Lima

FOR PICTURES OF DAY 2, CLICK:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mkfmick/SouthAmerica2008Days1And2

I awoke before 7 a.m. in my small, clean room at Hotel Espana (GPS coordinates 12 02.773S / 77 01.625W). There is a good-size, tiled bathroom with shower and ample hot water. I availed myself of the amenities and then took to the streets of centro Lima.

I had seen the grand buildings surrounding the Plaza de Armas (also known as Plaza Mayor: GPS coordinates 12 02.756S / 77 01.867W) on the ride to the hotel last night. Though I had stayed here before, it was only to sleep and depart very early in the morning. Today I could walk around the area and enjoy the sights and sounds and tastes of Lima.

Hotel Espana is very centrally located, within a few blocks or less of the renowned Monasterio de San Francisco in one direction, and Plaza Mayor and its attractions in the other.

I wanted to walk towards Plaza San Martin (GPS coordinates 12 03.094S / 77 02.048W) and an eatery that was highly recommended by Carlos on the flight from Houston yesterday.  I couldn´t pass by Plaza Mayor with its cathedral (La Catedral de Lima) and government buildings without stopping for pictures.

Beyond Plaza Mayor there is a wonderful church (Iglesia San Augustin) that stopped me in my tracks with its intricate sculptured entrance. Colorfully clad schoolchildren were being let out of buses and vans into the bright sunshine. Their teachers and nuns marshalled their troops as best they could before entering the church behind standard-bearers.

I wandered further on, hopefully towards Plaza San Martin. I was approached by a clean-cut young man about 20 years in age. I had been warned to avoid changing money on the streets, and changing money (euros, dollars, soles) was obviously his trade. I was leery of anyone approaching me for any reason, and I had no need to change money in any case, so my initial response was to just keep going.

For some reason, though, I stopped and talked to the young man. He knew English pretty well. He asked, as everyone does, where I was from. He gave me his card that told me I was speaking with Fernando de los Santos. We talked about where I traveled last year and where I was going on this trip. It turns out that Fernando hailed from that part of Peru--the Department (or state) of Amazonas--that is in or adjacent to my recent trips.

When a call to his cell phone interrupted us, an idea occurred to me: perhaps he could help me call an acquaintance I had made in Peru last year and who I had arranged (via email) to meet on this trip. Not only did he make the call but, when I could not keep up with the conversation in rapid Spanish, he actually took the phone and made arrangements for me to meet my friend later today at a specified time and place.

Now I wanted to continue looking for Plaza San Martin and a cafe. When I told Fernando, he insisted on taking me about a half-block to a small but busy cafe whose owner he knew. He quickly introduced me and left, and soon I was enjoying a cheese omelette on a bed of rice, coffee, and a tumbler of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Cost? Eleven soles (less than $4).

After breakfast (desayuno) I walked the short way to Plaza San Martin. It´s a nice spot dominated by an imposing statue of the liberator General San Martin and, on one side, by the grand Hotel Bolivar.

I wandered around the plaza taking pictures, then sat down in the shade by one of the fountains that grace two of the corners of the park-like square. There were a few vendors active this morning, including a young man (perhaps 12 or 13?) who asked to shine my shoes.

Well, I didn´t really wish to be approached by anyone, and certainly not by a shoeshine boy. Not only did my brushed leather-and-fabric walking shoes not need any shining, but this enterprise is a favorite ruse for separating tourists from their belonging.

Like other incidents with people in Lima, I followed my first instinct of telling him that I didn´t need or want his services. Thats not likely to deter any entrepreneur worth his salt, and certainly not a street vendor in the city of Lima. He perched himself right in front of me and engaged me in conversation as I looked furtively left and right.

Plaza San Martin, like most of the heavily trafficed tourist areas of Lima, is pretty secure. There are police and military of every stripe, some with machine guns, some sitting atop attack vehicles. I think it would be unlikely that a tourist would be physically assaulted under these circumstances, but that doesn´t mean there are not legions of grifters out to get your goods or money by more subtle methods.

I soon knew the young man as Michael, a name he provided before he knew mine. He asked for my email address, which I wrote down for him. He wants to contact me. He would like to go to the United States. He was undoubtedly poor, but he said he went to school in the afternoons and would graduate in a couple of years. He may have been essentially an orphan, or perhaps lives with extended family in Lima. In any case, his mother is ill and lives in Cusco; his father is dead.

After my initial rejection of Miguel´s services, he never seemed to be actively soliciting any of my money. He just talked, and asked me to take his photo. By this time, of course, I wanted to give him a little something, but not like you´d drop money in a beggar´s cup. So I asked him to go ahead and do my shoes. Well, with a little piece of sandpaper to freshen up the nap of the leather, and a sponge and cleaner to work on the sides of the soles, a good shoeshine boy can really improve the looks of your zapatas.

I left Miguel a couple of small coins and left him to continue walking around the plaza to search out a place recommended by Carlos on the plane, Pasteleria San Martin, and to try a house specialty, a sweet pastry called Turron Especial de Dona Pepa. I found the shop and bought some of the turrones, which are sold by weight. It consists of paper-thin layers of pastry topped with a sort of carmel sauce and decorated with small, thin pieces of hard candy. The confection has a definite taste of honey, and I seemed to detect a hint of anise, I think.

Perhaps it´s an acquired taste, but I did not feel compelled to purchase a kilo of the turrones to bring back home. On the other hand, when a baker came out of the kitchen with a heaping tray of sesame seeded crescent-shaped rolls that were still almost too hot to touch, I could not resist adding to my order.

My appointment with my friend was at 1 p.m. I had met Madelaine last year st the airport in Tarapoto. I was waiting on a delayed flight to Lima, bantering in broken Spanish with a couple of clerks in the gift shop. (It didn´t hurt that they were pouring complimentary samples of a variety of locally produced beverages.) Made (MAH-day) was carrying a beginning English workbook with her, and she asked if she could join us and practice her English a little.

As with virtually everyone I met and talked with for more than five minutes in Peru,

we exchanged email addresses. Since then we have sent each other occasional messages and pictures of our families.

And so, a year later, I didn´t even know if I would recognize Ms. Madelaine Margot Gonzalez Silva when I saw her. Dark hair, late 30´s, perhaps just over 5-feet tall, olive skin: many Peruvian women would fit that description. Pretty, thin, glasses, business-like in appearance: that narrows it down a little. Still I wondered if I would know her when she walked in.

I waited in the lobby of Hotel Espana and she arrived right on time at 1 o´clock. Recognition was not a problem. We talked awhile and then went to lunch at a cafe on Pasaje Olaya just off Plaza Mayor. I ordered a dish recommended to me by Carlos, the Cleveland osteopath and Peruvian native with whom I rode to Lima, a dish called aji de gallina.

Made had come to meet me at my hotel directly from her work. As nearly as I can determine, she is a mid-level government employee at the federal level, working for an agency similar to our Social Security Administration. I asked when she would have to return to work and she told me that she would have the afternoon free. (I guess it´s good to be a bureaucrat no matter the government you serve.)

I wanted to get to one or more of the sites recommended by Carlos and my guidebooks. With Made hailing and negotiating fares with taxi drivers, we went first to the Museo de la Nacion. My guidebooks said it would be open this afternoon, and Lonely Planet Peru said it was ¨the best museum in the ountry for getting your head around Peru´s myriad prehistoric civilizations.¨

As we popped out of our flimsy taxi, the forbidding, Soviet-style architecture of the museum was hardly softened by the presence of dozens of armed police and military. When I stopped to take a photo at the entrance, I was firmly told that I could not do that. Then we were told that the museum was closed for the remainder of this day. Asked why, the officials told us that a meeting of high government officials from several countries was to take place at the museum later today. And so I would not be ¨getting my head around¨ ancient civilizations or anything else at this site.

We chose to go to Miraflores next. It´s one of the tony barrios of Lima, upscale in every way: great shopping, fine restaurants, high-class hotels. Think of Miraflores as the Peruvian answer to La Jolla, California, and you´ll have a pretty good handle on it.

• Permit me to digress and to attempt to describe a taxi ride in Lima. The vehicles themselves are generally small, sometimes tiny, and often rundown to a seemingly dangerous extent. Have you ever seen a flock of blackbirds in the late fall, perhaps tens of thousands in some flocks, all the individual birds heading to the same place at breakneck speed. Somehow the birds negotiate abrupt changes in direction without injury or, apparently, even contact of any kind. Whatever mystical hand guides such flocks must also cast a protective aura about the legions of taxis on the streets of Lima. I never saw a collision though traffic merging onto a busy thoroughfare reminded me of the old high school science films showing blood cells squeezing into a capillary.

Oh yes, Miraflores. Made and I got out of the taxi in an area of shops a couple of blocks from Parque Kennedy. As we approached the park we saw numerous artists and vendors selling framed and unframed pictures along the Malecon Oscar Benavides. In the trees, raucous flocks of small, parrot-like birds (loras?) flew in and out.

I saw signs advertising an exhibit of photographic art to be on display in Parque Kennedy until June 15. And what an exhibit it was! La Tierra Vista Desde El Cielo is an exhibit of photographs--each measuring perhaps four feet by six feet in size--taken by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. The title of the exhibit translates as ¨The Earth From Above.¨ As a fortunate recipient of the opulent book as a gift, I was familiar with the artist and many of the displayed works. To see some of these photos, go to www.yannarthusbertrand.org. This outdoor exhibit may easily have had 100 high quality images displayed in an outdoor environment. Very, very impressive.

It was late afternoon, 5 o´clock or later, when we began to walk the half-mile or so from Parque Kennedy to the promenade atop the cliffs several hundred feet above the Pacific Ocean. Parasailers drifted left and right directly in front of us, seemingly close enough to conduct a conversation with the pilots.

There is a park along the promenade called Parque del Amor (GPS coordinates 12 07.630S / 77 02.189W). Sure enough, there was a bride and groom and their photographer capturing the couple´s youth and beauty and commitment. Elevated on a platform 10 feet above the ground was a sculpture of two lovers locked in a somewhat alarming embrace.

Far below was a long causeway buil out into the Pacific, a huge old restaurant occupying the entire structure. Made said that it was La Rosa Nautica, the Miraflores restaurant so enthusiastically recommended to me by Carlos, land by guidebooks. But La Rosa Nautica was far below us and the sun had already set.

Made wanted to be home by 7 p.m., and so we began to walk back to central Miraflores where we caught a taxi to centro Lima and my hotel. Made continued on from there to her home, catching one of the packed buses that ply the streets of Lima in great numbers and with a bewildering assortment of routes.

It was only 7 p.m., so I could hardly retire for the evening. I went to an Internet business around the corner from Hotel Espana and spent a couple of hours checking email and working on my blog. Then I decided to search out some ice cream before going to bed.

Lord, I think I was channeling Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond when he went out and couldn´t seem to find his way home to a ploace he´d known for decades. I had a map (but not my GPS) and still could not seem to get myself the few short blocks from Plaza Mayor to Hotel Espana.

I would re-trace my steps, carefully counting the blocks: let´s see, hmmm, start at the corner by La Catedral, go two blocks, turn right, it should be there. No? Let´s go back and do it again. This got frustrating, the streets seemed to empty after 11 o´clock, and seeing a block ahead of me with only another pedestrian or two had me thinking about my own safety.

Finally, something clicked and I was able to make sense of the map. I got back without incident and wasted little time getting into bed. If someone told me that I had walked 10 miles today, I would not be surprised.

THIS NARRATIVE CONTINUES ON A SEPARATE ENTRY,

SOUTH AMERICA 2008--Days 3 - 4 (Lima, Tarapoto and Yurimaguas, Peru)

A few coordinates

are entered in red

for any geeks who

might want to look

places up on Google

Earth.

Day 3--Lima, and on to Tarapoto  

FOR PICTURES OF DAY 3, CLICK:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mkfmick/SouthAmerica2008Days3And4

It was noon before I actually got out and about in Lima today, having rather leisurely gotten up, cleaned up, packed for today´s departure, eaten a light breakfast at a corner cafe, and spent a couple of hours on the Internet (this blog doesn´t write itself!). Centro Lima is a UNESCO World Heritage Site recognized primarily for its architectural significance. (A traveler could do worse than to consult UNESCO´s website to see if there are any designated sites--which may be natural, historic, or cultural in nature--near their route or destination: http://whc.unesco.org/.)

My goal for this day was to see a bit of the city´s historic side.   Carlos--you must know him by now as the physician and Peru native who sat beside me on the way to Lima--suggested that I watch the ceremonial changing of the guard at the Palacio de Gobierno, an ornate building that is similar in function to our White House.  

The ceremony is well worth attending. Mounted riders, a military band, marching riflemen, and colorful uniforms all added up to a memorable 45 minutes on the Plaza Mayor. After the ceremony is completed behind the fenced Palacio, the entire contingent exits the grounds and parades completely around the four sides of the plaza. Interestingly, squadrons of vultures circled above, some of them lighting upon, the two towers of La Catedral on another side of the plaza. Hopefully there was nothing significant associated their presence.  

Made had told me last night that she wanted to bring a present by the hotel after she completed her English examination this afternoon. That was fine, in fact it would give me more time to explore centro Lima, but I would have to change my flight listing with Lan Peru.  

Lan Peru does not have a downtown Lima office, so I had to call them. I went into one of the ubiquitous call centers and asked for help. I didn´t (and don´t) have a clue regarding how to make a phone call. The man running the business spoke no English, but he soon had me dialing the local number for the airline, and they had a touch-tone option to access an English-speaking agent. Voila! My flight for today was changed, and another was added that I would need next week when I´ll fly from Lima to Quito, Ecuador.  

That chore accomplished, I decided to go to another site that Carlos had recommended, Museo Banco Central Reserva de Peru. I found it easily enough, but I found it closed on Saturdays at 1 p.m. (exactly as my Lonely Planet guidebook said).  

What could be worse than reading about someone else´s meal? Well, either strap it on or hit the ESC button because here we go...  

L´Eau Vive is a restaurant in Lima that I had read about more than once. It is located in an old mansion at Ucayali 370 and is operated by nuns of Donum Dei (Gift of God), a French-founded order now affiliated with the Carmelites. Donum Dei now operates around two dozen L´Eau Vive restaurants in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, and Oceania.  

You need only step into this oasis, just a block or two from Plaza Mayor, to totally escape the hubbub outside its doors. If you prefer to dine to the sounds of Michael Jackson´s Thriller blasting out of tinny speakers, there are plenty of other Lima restaurants to meet your needs. At L´Eau Vive, though, New Age-y music plays softly in the background.  

Subtle colors, hushed conversation, ancient tiled floors and ancient wooden pillars, a skylight above the main dining room, and an exotic mix of European and South American and African ´waitresses´all contribute to an unforgettable atmosphere for a late lunch.  

I have not said that L´Eau Vive is on the rota of cheap eats in Lima. If that´s a problem, I say scrimp a few other days and go for it. Which I did. Close your eyes and enjoy these with me:  

• Salade dávocat (avocado salad)  Thin slices of perfect, butter-soft avocado served over a bit of lettuce and garnished with deep red tomato slices. A (dare I say?) divine sauce amply drizzled over the salad completed the masterpiece. If it takes only two verified miracles to be eligible for sainthood, the creator of the sauce on my salad is halfway home.
• Tournedos au beurre...Bercy et coeur dártichaut (fillet of beef, shallots, lemon, butter, with rice)  This main course was both artfully presented and delicious. Small diamond-shaped pieces of cooked artichoke adorned the plate along with bright red slices of tomato and the requisite rice. The beef, cooked perfectly, was a bit tough by American steak standards. But tasty? Oh, yeah! The butter-based sauce, while very good, didn´t merit canonization consideration for its orginator.
• I could have passed on dessert, bit didn´t seem right. I chose the Creme carmel, something we might know better as flan. This chilled, jiggling concoction was a perfect blend of a little sugary graininess, a sauce with just a hint of butter and salt, and a tender creamy centerpiece--altogether, a delight to be savored and remembered. Il Papa, get your investigators ready: there may be a second miracle on the holy grounds of L´Eau Vive right here in Lima.

OK, so I´ve exceeded my budget on this meal. But, for less than $20 USD, I´ve added an experience that easily falls within the five best restaurant that I´ve been to in South America. And don´t forget: all profits go to assist the sisters´ work with the poor of Lima.  

I have read that the nuns of Donum Dei join to sing ´Ave Maria´at closing time of their evening seating. The next time that I´m in Lima, I´ll go to L´Eau Vive for a great meal and an unusual post-dinner performance.  

I left that singular restaurant and walked a few blocks to that grand edifice, the Monasterio de San Francisco, which was completed in 1687. A pamphlet describes the ¨...monumental set of buildings of San Francisco (as the) jewel of viceregal architecture of Peru.´ On its own merits, this complex was a UNESCO World Heritage Site prior to its inclusion in the broader ´Historic Centre of Lima´ designation.  

• I joined an English-language tour of the site that commenced within minutes of my entering it. Our leader was game, but her English was only a little better than my Spanish. Nevertheless, our small group saw everything that is open to the public, including:  
• A library containing 25,000 volumes
• A large, Moorish-style dome of carved cedar
• The choir which is carved cedar throughout. There are individual spaces--room for 100 or more friars--each space a unique architectural treasure.
• The main cloister with its wide covered walkways surrounding the four sides of the outdoor garden. Seemingly every square inch is lined with fine Sevillan glazed tiles, dated 1620, depicting the life of Saint Francis and other events important to the order.
• The catacombs with the bones of tens of thousands of the dead. Many are artfully displayed--a circle laid out in skulls, a rose of femurs, vaults of random bones piled 15-feet or more deep.

I was to meet Made at the hotel, just across the street from Monasterio de San Francisco, at 5:30. I was packed and ready to go, so I just kept an eye on the place while continuing to soak up the atmosphere along the adjacent streets. She arrived on time with her daughter, Angela Pamela, and some gifts for me in tow. The two ladies presented me with a hammock to use on my river trip, a box of some fine toffees, and a hand-made woven picture from the highlands that were Made´s home before she moved to Lima.  

Angela is nine years old and a beauty already. Clearly, she and her mother share a close bond. She would try a little English on me; I would try a little Spanish on her. When I asked if they´d like to get something to eat or drink, I was met with an enthusiastic response from the youngster. The three of us were soon threading our way through the busy streets to Plaza Mayor and a fast food restaurant specializing in...hamburgers.   I had to be on my way to the airport by around 6:30 so we had little time for dawdling. After finishing our sandwiches, we bought ice cream to eat on our walk back to Hotel Espana. I reclaimed my baggage and Made hailed a taxi. She and Angela accompanied me to the airport, no doubt saving me money on my fare which was less than 1/2 what I paid to ride in the other direction on the night I arrived.  

I got a seat assignment from Lan Peru for the flight to Tarapoto, then went up a level to pay the 17-soles (less than $6 USD) fee imposed on domestic flights. With that included, my ZED ticket cost less than $35. I said goodbye and thanks to my two Peruvian friends, passed through security, and down to the gate. The flight left on time at 8:20 p.m. As usual, Lan Peru´s equipment and service was of a higher order than what we have accepted in our country.  

The flight was uneventful. I reclaimed my bag inside the Tarapoto airport, stepped right outside and engaged a driver to take me to Hotel la Mansion, a place I had stayed for two nights last year, by mototaxi (a 3-wheeled vehicle powered by a small engine that is akin to a motorized rickshaw).

After settling in my room, I went downstairs to the lobby for a beer, then got to bed in my tidy, warm room, seeking a bit of relief from the wall-mounted fan.  

Day 4--Tarapoto to Yurimaguas    

FOR PICTURES OF DAY 4, CLICK:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mkfmick/SouthAmerica2008Days3And4

I got up early and, of course, went down to Tarapoto´s Plaza de Armas (GPS coordinates 06 29.246S / 76 21.590W) and into an Internet site to catch up a bit on my mail and blog. It was a Sunday morning and churchgoers crowded the plaza. A military band marched around the square in their fine regalia. I had a nice breakfast inside Real Grill (Moyobamba 131), which is actually completely open to the outside with a fine view of the plaza. A pitcher of fresh-squeezed orange juice, enough for two water glass-portions, cost about $1. Enjoy!

I had engaged a mototaxi driver at Hotel la Mansion to take me to some nearby waterfalls and then on to Yurimaguas. It turns out that the driver, Segundo, drove me around cento Tarapoto when I was here last year. When I made my intentions clear to him, he decided that the drive to Yurimaguas was too ambitious for a mototaxi. I agreed, but would have gone had he chosen to do it that way. How could you turn down a nearly 100-mile ride over a difficult road on the edge of the jungle in a motorized rickshaw?

Arriving at the bottom line for this trip was difficult. Again and again I asked exactly how much the trip would cost. I didn´t get a response with actual figures for quite awhile. The negotiation was eventually joined in the hotel lobby by the taxi driver Segundo had called to take a gringo--me--to Yurimaguas.

Finally, I heard a figure for the trip. After thoughtful head-scratching, the two drivers thought that 120 soles ($40 USD) would be the figure. I would have to look to see what I paid last year, but I´m sure it wasn´t 120 soles. I countered with 80 soles, and finally settled on 100 soles (about $33 USD).

A really savvy traveler might shrink from this price like it was a ripe carp. On the other hand, there would be no waiting: last year I waited an hour or two while my driver searched out more riders, then charged me extra when I successfully encouraged him to leave sometime before the summer solstice. And we would be making a stop at some waterfalls on the road to Yurimaguas. Try to make economic sense of charging $33 USD for a trip of nearly 100 miles and 3-1/2 hours time. Gasoline out here is cheaper than in Lima, but it still costs over $3 per gallon.

I could see almost immediately after we started that the highway (autopista) was in much better shape than it was a year ago. Last year the route represented an almost incredible mix of huge rocks to be avoided, slides, single lanes of traffic, and every foot of the most difficult terrain was unpaved. Now I´d say that 85% of the road is paved. Some might feel that travel on it is dicey, especially in light of Peruvians´ penchant for relying more on divine intervention than common sense when overtaking traffic, but I´d not hesitate to drive it myself in a 4WD vehicle. Bear in mind, though, that there are actually mototaxis that make the trip, along with mammoth buses and tractor-trailer combinations. Interesting.

We stopped about an hour out of Tarapoto at the Cataratas de Ahuashiyacu. I paid the 2 soles each for my driver and I to enter the park, and we began our walk to look at the falls. The trail is through dense vegetation with a stream rushing alongside. Steep stone steps that allowed travel in one direction only had to be negotiated. These were wet, probably were always wet, and at least some care should be employed by the over-60 set.

The trail is no more than a half-mile, leading to a pool at the bottom of a several hundred-foot falls. There were plenty of people of all ages there, but it wasn´t overly crowded. A few kids were swimming in the natural pool, daring each other to swim out where they´d be under the pounding falls. Others took the trail where you could walk behind the falls under a protective rock outcrop.

I took some photos, enjoyed the scene, and seemingly was ready to start back down before my driver. Then on we went...

When we got close to the little town of Pongo (GPS coordinates 06 19.925S / 76 17.295W), I asked my driver if we could stop at a little roadside restaurant. When I was stuck for six hours in the town last year due to road construction, I had struck up a conversation with the Cuarto Angel Tang Ushinahua, the owner of Ristorante Don Chino Tang, and I wanted to stop and say ´hola!´. My driver acquiesced despite the fact that it would mean time lost for him.

I spotted Cuarto almost immediately when I walked into his bustling business. His was not an appearance you´d easily forget--squat, round-faced, jolly, a bit of Oriental ancestry showed in his features. I think that he recognized me right away. In any case, I introduced myself and my driver and we were invited to sit down. Soon, three pitchers of refresco--a regional fruity drink served chilled--were set down on the table. Of course, as is traditional, the refresco was compliments of the host.

I took out my MP3 player and showed Cuarto a picture I taken last year of him and his teen-age daughter, Dolly. I asked about her, thinking she was to go to New York this year, but she was in Chiclayo, Peru, in school I think. I met his wife, another daughter, and a niece, taking and showing pictures as we sat there.
 

Sooner than I would have liked, and in deference to my driver, we got back in the taxi for the final stretch into Yurimaguas. We stopped outside of town where I settled up, and I transferred from the auto to a mototaxi for the last couple of miles to my hotel.

Hotel El Naranjo (Calle Arica 318) is a nice, clean hotel where a room with private bath runs 40 soles ($13 USD) per night. I had stayed there last year and had no qualms about repeating the experience. In addition, there is a small, entirely unused as far as I could determine, pool and, more importantly, a nice dining room open to the street below and serving breakfast and lunch.

Morning scene outside Hotel el Naranjo

While checking-in, I asked if anyone had inquired about me or left a message. In both cases, no. While here in Yurimaguas I wanted to see three people I met last year--four if you count Cesar, the tout, who would likely be unavoidable. The three were:

• Anthony Zaraleta Maiceno, a student at the university here in Yurimaguas, with whom I have had frequent email communication throughout the past year.
• Mariela Paredes Rios who, like Anthony, is a university student here. I met her in Pongo where she was on weekend holiday and I was caught in a lengthy road closure. We´ve exchanged a few emails since meeting.
• Susan Holowecky who is a 40-ish American I met on a plane between Tarapoto and Lima last year. She works out of Yurimaguas as, it seemed to me, part missionary, part social worker. Some of her constituency includes indigenous people living in the jungle in locations accessible only by small boat or canoe.

I attempted to phone the young students at numbers they had provided, but could not reach them. And so I took a mototaxi to Hogar Materno, the facility Susan runs on the outskirts of Yurimaguas near the airport and a hospital.

I did not want to get out of the mototaxi until I determined if Susan was at the facility. The woman who appeared in the doorway of Hogar Materno seemed to indicate that Susan was indeed there. I got out of the vehicle, paid the driver, and waited at the door. Curious children inside the facility crowded around the door for a look at the tall man outside.

A woman soon appeared who was not Susan, did not speak English, but seemed to work here. Susan was in Lima, she told me, and she would be back tomorrow. Then she insisted that I come in and be seated. I had not counted on this, and was a bit uncomfortable with it. Man, I hadn´t seen anything yet.

Alone on a low wooden chair inside a facility for impoverished pregnant women, surrounded by close to a dozen children under the age of 9, I was able to make the most of this unique situation. I got my camera out and asked if I could take their pictures. When I could immediately show them the resulting images on the camera display, the race was on as, one after the other, they vied aggressively to be next to be photographed.

The kids all seemed to be great friends. Rather than being exclusive, they would gesture for others to join them, the whole group with their arms around each other. The very second the camera shutter clicked, they rushed me to see their pictures.

After five or ten minutes, a Peruvian woman who was clearly in charge of the operation in Susan´s absence entered the front reception area where I was seated. Jolando did not speak any English, but we were able to converse. She reiterated what I already knew: Susan, herself only a slight acquaintance, would not be back in Yurimaguas until tomorrow, probably late in the day.

Jolando invited me into the living quarters of Hogar Materno. There were small rooms where children slept, four or six to a room, dormitory-style on mosquito-netted beds.

We passed a woman sitting on the ground nursing a tiny, vacant-eyed child of indeterminant age. Judged solely by its size, it could almost have been an infant. Something about its gaunt appearance, the slack skin on its tiny arms, seemed to suggest that she might have been a year or more in age. The child was enferma (sick), Jolanda told me, and likely would not live.

I don´t think I was being shown anything simply for its shock value, but I was shaken. I was shown rooms for las mujeres embarazada (pregnant women). We entered one of the dark, close rooms in which a woman was quietly seated next to a bed. Jolando drew back the mosquito netting to show me the child. She was small, perhaps two years old, and clearly ill. She seemed to writhe slowly and quietly on the bed. I asked if she would recover, but she had a neurological disorder (cerebral palsy?) and would not improve.

A little girl, Lucy, more reticent than the others, tagged along with us as walked through the facility. Jolando beckoned Lucy to come closer and pulled up her shirt. Her midsection was extensively bandaged where she had been operated on recently in Lima.

By this time I was photographing everything in sight, and so I asked if I could take Lucy´s picture. She did not mind pulling up her shirt again for a photo. She was a favorite of mine, and of the other kids I think. And she was one of the lucky ones who would get better.

There was an outdoor area, covered but open on all sides, where a large (8-10 gallon?) open pot sat on a grill over a wood fire. Another staff person, perhaps the person who initially greeted me at the door, was tending the fire and the pot. Jesusa was an indigenous girl of about 20 who spoke her native tongue, not Spanish, but was gracious to me as I basically made myself at home in the outdoor cooking area. The pot over the fire was filled with a white liquid that seemed to be on the verge of boiling. I was told that it was leche (milk). I have no idea where it came from, whether it may have started as a dried milk product, but it was being carefully tended by Jesusa who stirred the liquid occasionally.

I had been at Hogar Materno at least an hour, I think, when Jolando and I started walking back towards the front. She asked me to stop and take a seat in the indoor kitchen. Then she asked if I would have a cup of the leche. I decided that it would likely be safe since it had been brought to a high temperature, and to refuse it was almost unthinkable.

So, sitting in a seat more appropriate for a first grader, I tasted the beverage. Actually, it was pretty good, sweetened I suppose in order to get some calories into these kids. I was also offered some bread (pan) and peanut butter, a combination I´m not sure the kids would receive. Some local produce, bananas (plantanas) or yucca was being cooked for tonight´s dinner.

I finally left, somewhat unnerved by the experience, after saying goodbye to Jolando and Jesusa and some of the kids. I had not committed to remaining in Yurimaguas an extra day in order to see Susan, but I knew that I would.

I took a mototaxi back to my hotel. You can go virtually anywhere in the city for a fare of $.50 USD. I checked at the hotel to see if Anthony or Mariela had been here looking for me. They hadn´t, so I walked to the Plaza de Armas (GPS coordinates 05 53.703S / 76 06.270W) where a guy can eat, drink, get on the Internet, make a call, and even gamble. Except for gambling, I did all of the above before going back to my hotel, taking a shower, and going to bed.

THIS NARRATIVE CONTINUES ON A SEPARATE ENTRY,

SOUTH AMERICA 2008--Days 5 - 6 (Yurimaguas, Peru, and Rio Huallaga)