“Okay, so my friend, he’s my friend, he’s a good friend, he’ll take care of you, hehe,” Louis said as Freddy and I hefted our backpacks with what little caffeinated energy the instant coffee could provide. We stood in front of our hostel owner, urgently tapping our feet and looking out the window for the approaching cab.
Louis was making our arrangements for the trip to Machu Picchu, giving us directions and names of all the people and places he’d prepare for us. Apparently he did such deals often enough he had a contact who would meet us at every stage.
“You ask for Bill, not Steve but Bill, when you get to the Cusco car stop,” Louis insisted, “You will not like Steve, hehe.”
“Bill’s a weird name for a Peruvian,” Freddy noted.
“Well so is Steve, but you will not like Steve. Ask for Bill. And when you get to the train station in Aguacaliente you ask for Lemon.”
“Not orange?” I asked.
“Who is orange?”
“Never mind.”
“You ask for lemon. Lemon will take you to a hostel where you ask for Jorge to be your guide. Avoid anyone not named Jorge. Jorge will be your guide on Machu Picchu. Be sure to give him a stick.”
“Okay, normally I would question everything you just said, but the cab’s here and we’re about ten minutes away from missing our flight,” I said, tossing back a too-hot cup of instant coffee, “Did you get all that Freddy?”
“Give him a stick…” Freddy said, jotting down the last of Louis’s instructions, “Got it.”
“And when you get to the bus!” Louis shouted after us as we ran to the door, “Be sure to look for Rita. Big mole on her face. Huge boobies, hehe.”
“Don’t ever change, Louis,” I said and shoved the door closed behind me.
The cab driver was just as suicidal as every other cab driver in the city of Lima. But this got us to the airport in good time. We’d purchased our tickets to the city of Cusco from the city of Lima a couple days earlier via the hostel’s computer, the first step in our very long journey to Machu Picchu, and quickly got our bags through security. Since this was a simple three day, two-night journey we were only taking carry-on bags.
Now, what I didn’t fully appreciate about a domestic flight in a second world country was that the security features are weakened almost to the point of hilarity. Freddy walked into the Lima airport security checkpoint along with me and we both walked through with no problem. It was only after we were sitting in the gate waiting for our plane to board that Freddy leaned over and said in a low voice, “Hey, don’t say anything. But they didn’t catch the can of mace in my bag.”
My first reaction was to laugh. “You what?” I asked.
“I don’t know what it’s going to be like where we’re going. I’d rather risk it being confiscated than go into a shady area without anything to defend myself.”
Mace cans are relatively cheap so this was actually pretty sound logic. I didn’t even know Freddy had a can of mace but he’d apparently put it in his US check baggage for protection around Lima. We’d already been to the shady parts of Lima, or as shady as we’d been willing to endure without being directly warned of a guaranteed mugging. I guess he had the mace with him at those times but I’d never asked. I’m surprised he didn’t mace that skinny tour guide in the catacombs.
“So,” I said, rubbing my face and feeling phantom pain from imaginary mace being sprayed in my eyes, “Remind me why we’re up before seven in the morning, again, and getting ready to travel a great distance, again, to see an ancient ruin, again.”
“It’s historical,” Freddy said, adjusting his mace-filled bag.
“Yeah, I get that with the whole ancient prefix to the title of it. But what makes it worth seeing?”
“Machu Picchu. It’s Machu Picchu. You’ve heard of it right?”
“Old cartoons and bits and pieces in history class about conquistadors and Animaniacs.”
“You’re getting cartoons and history mixed up again. Machu Picchu was the last city of the Inca empire.”
“That right?”
“I’ve studied hundreds of countries. I spent months studying up on Egypt before we left. Now that we’re going to Machu Picchu, I’m almost excited that I know so little about it.”
“You still didn’t explain why I should bother seeing it. I mean, I’m excited too. Mountainous city and all. But we spent a lot of money on these plane tickets and there’s a lot of random mountains we could get poorly-constructed directions to.”
“It’s an ancient city the Spanish never touched. It’s preserved, like a time capsule to history.”
I smacked my lips, considering this explanation as I wondered if I had enough time before boarding to get a cup of coffee. “I like the cartoon version better,” I said and got some coffee.
I nearly regretted this decision, however, because after about three hours into the flight the plane suddenly made a nose-dive to the ground. Freddy and I were both worried about the quality of an airline that would ignore mace in the plane (seriously, that’s how the 9-11 hijackers subdued passengers!) so a sudden drop in altitude was met with more than the usual amount of discount airline tension.
As we both made our peace with God, Freddy a little more loudly than I, we quickly realized that there was nothing actually wrong with this rapid decent. The city of Cusco is literally surrounded by mountains. In order to land safely, the pilot had to hop over a mountain, dive into a valley, skip on top of a lower mountain, and finally swan dive onto a comically short landing strip that ended with a cliff face that was one bulls-eye short of being part of an episode of Animaniacs.
It was with much relief, then, that we exited the plane and the airport. Outside, we found a man holding a broken piece of glass with “Joe Stevens” and “Freddy Baxter” scratched onto its surface. My first thought was, “Wow, I’ve never had someone meet me at the airport with my name on a sign before.” Immediately following that was, “Holy crap he’s holding a sign made out of broken glass!”
“Hi,” Freddy said to the man with the glass sign, whose fingers, I just realized, were covered in bandages, “We’re Freddy and Joe.”
“I’ll take you into Cusco,” the man said with perfect English, tossing the glass aside. It shattered on the parking lot pavement behind him, “Follow me.”
“Couldn’t you have used cardboard or something?” I asked, not wanting to follow.
Glass sign man didn’t answer.
“Come on Joe,” Freddy insisted.
I only followed because I’d stolen Freddy’s mace out of his bag shortly after seeing my name spelled out in a piece of broken glass. “No one’s gonna stab me that’s for sure,” I said and followed, hand ready to reach for the mace.
Instead of stabbing us, the man with the glass sign simply drove us into the city of Cusco and dropped us off at a swanky hotel right in the middle of the town square. As we got out, I took a moment to appreciate the low-key grandeur that surrounded me.
The church that dominated the central square was a faded brown color but massive, with a sort of a fortress-like austerity in its straight and thick walls, twin towers flanking a central cross. Another church of smaller size, made of a redder brick, was held up by arches and domes of a lighter variety. I made a laughing note that one church looked the male, stout and strong, and the other the female, curved and beautiful, and wondered if this was intentional.
The other buildings were two-story and incredibly old, of brown brick and red clay roof. Into one of these we walked as the man who’d driven us sped away. This was not our hotel, but simply a respite in Louis’s travel package. The hotel manager, having had Louis call ahead, recognized us as the white people who’d be visiting him that day.
The hotel manager sat us down on couches that caught the afternoon sun from windows on the high ceiling. With speedy and practiced technique, the manager presented cups of some kind of tea.
“Coca tea. Drink. It’s good for altitude,” the tour agent informed
us as we inspected the thick green leaves in hot water, served in Styrofoam cups.
“What is it?” Freddy asked.
“He just said coca tea,” I replied.
“Is it made with…”
I reached into the tea and pulled out a thin leaf, completely undamaged and green. “Coca leaves.”
“Isn’t that what they use to make…”
“Cocaine. And Coca Cola.”
“I’m not drinking this,” Freddy said.
“You drink more Coke than I do,” I said and took a sip, “Mm. Tastes like green tea. I’m sure it’s fine, Freddy, just drink it.”
“I’m not drinking cocaine.”
“It’s unrefined cocaine.”
“That’s like saying opium is okay because it’s unrefined heroine.”
“If there were such a thing as opium-cola I’d say that’s a valid comparison. But there isn’t. Now drink. I don’t want you to pass out from altitude sickness.”
“I’m not...” Freddy said, rising to challenge my criticism before falling back into the cushion of his chair, dizzy from the high elevation. He sat thinking for a second, staring at me and perhaps wondering if I’d flip out and shoot people, start quoting Al Pacino movies, or maybe turn into an iguana after drinking a tea made with coca leaves.
At any rate, I didn’t turn into an iguana for drinking the coca tea so Freddy took a speculative sip of his own. “There isn’t all that much coca in Coca Cola,” Freddy said, as if it mattered in the scheme of things, and drank his tea.
Cusco was over a mile above sea level so we were happy to have a little respite to let our bodies adjust. We knew we had a long climb the next day so a day of getting used to the thin air was a great idea.
“All ready?” the hotel manager asked after we’d finished our tea. He then listed the price and we paid him for the full package, once more hearing the name-based instructions Louis had given. Once more I made the joke about orange and not Lemon and once more it earned no humor. I was amazed that they were the exact same names Louis had provided, and that Freddy wrote them down a second time.
“Remember, ask for Bill. Do not ask for Steve. Bill is a better driver. Steve is crazy,” the hotel manager said, “Go to the car station at two o’clock. Turn behind the domed church to get there. Here is the address.”
Thanking the manager, and wondering what exactly Steve had done that was so bad, we had lunch at a quaint café and made our way to the car stop. This was basically like a bus stop, except with cars. The cars were all lined up and ready to travel in a gravel-lined alley where to-be passengers and drivers milled about waiting for the appropriate time to hit the highway. While I was worried that they were heading in all directions, it turns out that Cusco really only has one use.
Cusco is the closest airport to Machu Picchu. This has transformed a frontier heirloom from the Inca days to a tourist relay zone that only serves one main attraction. Kind of like Orlando but they speak better English.
I approached the person who looked like the car stop’s manager and said, “We’d like to see Bill.”
The manager laughed at me, and said, “Bill,” to the drivers around him. They all laughed in turn.
“Don’t ask for Steve,” Freddy whispered.
“Jim. You take Jim,” the manager said, shouting to a driver behind us in Spanish.
“Wait. What is Jim? Who’s Jim?”
Apparently Jim was the bearded man, fat and short, who waved at the manager and got in his car.
“Jim, you ride with Jim,” the manager insisted.
“We were supposed to ask for Bill. Ask for Bill. Joe, ask for Bill!”
“Where is Bill?” I asked.
“Bill,” the manager said, then repeated his laughter, “You ride with Jim. You take Jim, or you can take Steve.”
“We’ll take Jim!”
“But what does Jim mean?” Freddy asked, not moving, “We know what Bill means but what does Jim mean?”
“I don’t care but we know not to get Steve,” I said and grabbed Freddy, pulling him inside the car.
And then we had a flashback of the previous evening. Save this time it was with early nineties pop music.
The driver spat gravel out his spinning tires as he tore out of the car stop and onto the narrow Cusco roads. Honking his horn like it was a tambourine, the driver cleared paths of tourists and local pedestrians and came within inches of several thousand points in the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise.
With a twist and turn that drove Freddy and I on top of each other, we entered the one-lane highway set against the sheer green cliff face outside the city, barreling up and down the clefts and valleys of the mountainous road.
I yawned and asked Freddy if he knew how long the drive would take.
“About two hours, I think Louis said,” Freddy explained, checking his written notes. The notebook flew out of his hands when the car went on two wheels and screeched around a ninety-degree turn at the precipice of a half-mile fall. With no more than an annoyed grunt, Freddy retrieved his notebook and double-checked the time, nodding that he’d gotten it correct.
If you’re wondering why we weren’t screaming for our lives, read the previous chapter again. Freddy and I actually looked at each other a moment, silently observing that we were both completely calm in the car that had just crossed the edge of the road and sent bits of loose gravel into free fall for several hundred feet.
We both sort of came to the same conclusion, and said, “At least he’s not playing Ra-ra-Rasputin.”
Either we were resigned to the death that soon awaited us in the impossibly distant valley below, or we were confident in the driver’s skills. Most likely it was the former.
Freddy and I chatted while Jim played chicken with a semi truck at ten thousand feet. The semi truck lost, and nearly drove completely off the side of the unguarded embankment as we flew past.
Overall, the view was so picturesque I almost didn’t care if we died. Gone were the desert hills and sandy plains. Here was jungle green and lush mountains, impossibly tall and impossibly covered from foot to top in trees and vibrant vegetation.
Before we could perhaps begin to realize the danger we were in, the car drove up an insanely bumpy road to a small town set at the foot of one of the more impressively tall mountains.
The town reminded me of an English village, low homes and hostels and comfortable-looking inns made of wood and plaster, and Jim drove us right through the middle. More streams of tourists were headed the same direction, and Jim probably ran over a few of their toes, till we stopped at the train station.
The station was quaint, with only one rail and a row of waiting cars painted a Disney shade of green. It looked less a transport train and more an amusement park train. Perhaps with it being intended for tourists, this was intentional.
I thanked Jim for his near suicidal driving. He didn’t speak English but said, “Ciao,” and backed into the street, turning toward Cusco. Shortly after he left, I heard a scream and a screech of metal, followed by a little explosion and a puff of smoke. I’m sure it had nothing to do with Jim.
“Glad we didn’t get Steve,” I said.
Freddy agreed.
We had tickets at the train station waiting for us. Again, Louis’s contacts were coming through. And this time there was no broken glass to greet us.
With twilight quickly setting in, Freddy and I boarded the tourist-trap train and stared up in wonder at the passing landscape.
Darkness from tunnels and the setting sun turned the high hills into a shadowy dreamscape. The slow rhythm of the train and the complimentary coca tea served while we relaxed on very comfy seats and continued to adjust to the altitude all added to the fantasy of the experience.
“Aguacaliente,” I said as the train pulled through the sleepy darkness into the artificial lights of the resort town that was our destination, “Doesn’t that mean “hot water?”
“I think it does,” Freddy agreed.
�
��Kind of a weird name for a town.”
“Missouri means muddy water. Kind of a weird name for a state.”
“Is that true?”
“Some kind of Native American language, yeah.”
“Well that’s just ignorant white people using a decent sounding name.”
“Who’s to say this is any different?”
I didn’t have a solid comeback for that, so we gathered our backpacks and exited the station into the resort town of Aguacaliente.
“Okay,” Freddy said, “We’re supposed to look for a girl named Lemon.”
“How do you say, ‘Is your name Lemon’ in Spanish? Also, how do you say it without looking like an idiot?” I asked.
“I don’t know the answer to either of those questions.”
“You Joe and Freddy?” a short girl holding an apple asked us, tapping me on the shoulder as she took a bite of her red-skinned fruit.
I turned around and looked at the girl, perhaps four and a half feet tall, skinny and stiff as a roofing nail. She was obviously Peruvian, and her accent was hinted with reluctant traces of American English influence.
“Lemme guess…” I said, “Papaya.”
“It’s an apple.” The girl took another bite of the fruit, looking up at me and shifting her hips in a way that made me feel half her tiny height.
“So, your name isn’t Orange then?”
“Are you Lemon?” Freddy asked, giving me an annoyed look.
The girl with the apple didn’t respond, just chewed open-mouthed and glared up at us.
“Can we get some Lemon…aid?” I asked, hating myself but unable to refuse the lure of the pun.
The girl chewed at us some more. It wasn’t until she’d swallowed that she turned around and walked away. “Hostel’s this way. Yes, I’m Lemon, if you really want to know,” Lemon said.
“Come on Freddy. We don’t want her tomato fool out of us.”
“She’s gonna throw that apple at you and I’m not going to complain when she does,” Freddy said.
Joe Stevens Mocks a Llama Page 8