My first step into Latin America was an enormous one. It was my first experience of what we used to call the Third World, before every piece of real estate became a “developing country.” Since then, of course, I know a bit more about development but, back then, aged 23, I was as dumb as a newborn. To be sure, I had prepared myself by taking Introductory Spanish and knew to be careful, but no one could have predicted I would be robbed within days of my arrival.
I flew into Cali, Colombia, because I had heard visitors usually are robbed in the capital, Bogota. The second day in Cali, staying in a dried out, wooden colonial-era hotel, I decided to stop being shy with my camera. I had come to take photos. And so, I wandered into a nearby suburb of hillside slums, camera ready for action. I felt fairly safe for I was in the company of two guys I’d met just that morning: Carlos, son of a local engineer and Dan, a tall American who was high on weed. I reasoned the three of us would outmatch any potential thieves. How wrong I was. Within moments of starting to take photos of the hillsides, out of the corner of my eye, I noted a couple of figures hastily sliding down the hillside. Incautiously, I put them out of my mind. Next thing I know, they were surrounding me, one with a kitchen knife poked into my stomach, the other with a broken bottle jabbed into my back ribs. I was being robbed.
If this has never happened to you, let me tell you how it is. The brain quickly goes into hyper mode. It considers the situation the body finds itself in, thinking What if they stab me? I noted a hospital on the way here. I can get there. But what about the filth on that knife? In a flash, another part of the brain realizes that events need not go down badly. Resistance is possible. There are three of us, it says. The brain instructs the mouth to say: “Carlos. Dan. There are three of us. We can take these guys.” But then the brain directs the eyes to look sideways, and the eyes note Dan and Carlos leaving the scene, apparently deep in conversation. They are abandoning me to my fate, the brain realizes. Things have become urgent.
The brain races for a solution. Meanwhile, the thief behind you takes your camera bag off your shoulder, alleviating you of a burden that includes your passport, your traveller’s cheques, cash, rolls of film, camera, lenses – your entire future as a photo-journalist. The crook vanishes from view. The thief with the knife forces you to get into a concrete culvert, designed for the deluges of the rainy season. Then, the knife man comes close enough for you to smell his rotten breath. He puts a hand into one of your trouser pockets and withdraws US dollars you were (stupidly) keeping in reserve. One of the bills drops into a puddle in the culvert. The brain gets excited for this is an opportunity to save your face if not your ass. You point to the bill. The thief glances down, instinctively he bends to pick it up even as your foot launches to kick him (WHACK!) in the head. Which is what I did, fully expecting to be knifed thereafter. But he had gotten what he wanted, and his brain own said Let’s get outta here. Ahora! He ran up the steep hillside as I flung stones at him, missing each time. I ran uphill after him but, by the time I was at the top, he had vanished.
Enter Lucy. Columbian women are some of the planet’s most beautiful, at least in my estimation. There are mulattos with chestnut brown hair and blue eyes, voluptuously built. Others are blonde, dark-eyed, deeply mysterious and sexy. But Lucy was none of these. Instead, she was rather plain, with a mess of black hair, badly dressed and aggressive. She had been hanging around the hotel lobby and had struck up a conversation with me while visiting the desk clerk. Lucy offered to help me file a robbery complaint with the local police.
To do this, we went to see a magistrate whose secretary recorded my story, then asked me to sign it as a denuncia. This allowed the police to round up the usual suspects from the slums. A few days after the event, I was summoned to the police station to identify my attackers. Only the knife man was there. As soon as I saw him in the dirt-floored basement holding cell, anger gripped me. I wanted to smash his face in, but a police officer held me back. Carlos was there too, as a witness. But he claimed he wasn’t sure … hadn’t really seen the guy, etc. “Don’t be a chicken,” I said to him in English. (He had studied in the States.) “They may know where I live,” he muttered. But he cooperated. The thief was fingered.
It didn’t end there. Over the next four weeks, I had to identify the culprit again in a large, dusty prison yard. There were hundreds of men standing around talking and smoking as I followed a guard into a corridor of cells. Again, there was a lineup, viewed through a slit in a door. I identified the thief. To my surprise, that was all it took to convict him. There was no trial. I was told he’d get a fitting sentence but was later assured he would be freed once I left the country. There were just too many prisoners to house everyone. Besides, he was a father of two children, desperate to make a living. I softened at that, offering to withdraw the charges if he coughed up my camera and passport. He could keep the money. I was getting my travellers’ cheques reimbursed by American Express. But I was told the thief claimed he had sold the camera and didn’t know what happened to the passport. I would have to go to the capital to get new travel documents.
Meanwhile, Lucy got the idea that she and I were “engaged,” we were novios. This hadn’t occurred to me. She would meet me at my hotel, and we would go out to eat. There was no intimacy between us at all. However, one day she asked me to accompany her to a town in the south. She wanted to visit her uncle, out in the jungle. This was a trick.
We got there in the back of a dump truck, arriving in a poor village of mud houses and tin roofs, encircled by heavy vegetation and banana trees. She introduced me to her uncle and brother, an electrician who seemed to be under the impression I would give him the money to buy a piece of land to build a house on. At least this is what I gleaned of a short conversation he had with me. I began to grow suspicious. My inklings were confirmed that night when Lucy, a young cousin (acting as chaperone), and I were bedded in a room together. In the dark, I heard Lucy say she couldn’t sleep, and then she came into my bed, stark naked.
Oh, Oh, I thought. I had heard of Latin shotgun weddings. I tried to push her out of the bed, but she hung on tenaciously. Finally, the weakness of the flesh kicked in and the inevitable happened. But then the brain came to the rescue. What are you doing, you moron? it said. I managed to eject Lucy before something critical happened. She slithered back to her bed. In the morning she complained of feeling sore, but I assured her this was no cause for concern. It would soon pass. Reassured, we headed back to Cali.
Lucy continued to visit me in the hotel. She would arrive unannounced to make herself at home as though we were a pair. She would try to kiss me. But by now I was wise to her intentions, and I had decided that she couldn’t help me further. It was time to go. Once I had a new passport, I decided to take the bus to Ecuador.
On one of our last nights together, we went to a club, appropriately called Club Obscuro, located in a basement of a row of shops. You descended a flight of stairs and found yourself in total darkness until a waiter came with a flashlight to escort you to a table. There were buzzers on the wall but no lights whatsoever. We ordered a bottle of aguardiente, a killer of a drink.
As we talked quietly, I head whisperings of people in the dark. I guessed what was going on, why it had to be totally obscuro. There were short groans and sighs, here and there. Another trap. But I assured myself that I couldn’t be roped in again. We downed shot glass after shot glass of diente until it was time to go. I had paid upon getting the bottle, so we were free to leave. As I attempted to get to my feet, the drinks hit me. I leaned too heavily on the table, and it collapsed. We laughed and felt our way along a wall to the stairway, to escape before the waiter arrived.
That night, while waiting for Lucy’s bus, she asked if she could have a lock of my hair, and would I give her a photo of myself? I had an old bus pass with a picture, so I gave her that. Surprisingly, she had scissors, which should have told me something, but I was too drunk to think. Months later, back home, one disaster after another visited me. I counted them. There were thirteen in all – things like my car’s motor seizing up; getting hit in the head by a softball; falling asleep at the wheel and nearly crashing; falling ill with dysentery – many more calamities which I won’t go into. Lucy had hexed me. But at the time, eager to get away, I had promised to return; not to worry, I had to come back to Cali to get my flight home, etc., etc. She seemed to believe me, but that was wishful thinking on my part. In short, it took years before the curse wore off but eventually it did.
As for Carlos, el Pollo, as I referred to him, he was a typical male Latino. When I had no money after being robbed, he took me to a bordello. The place was accessed by pressing a bell to open a steel gate which led to a long flight of stairs going upwards. At the top, there was a doorman who would allow you entry if you seemed legit. The bar was all lit up in red. Totally kitsch. At the bar, a girl or two sat on a stool, looking bored. Along the walls, there was a long bench with girls seated, their faces indifferent. One caught my eye – a petite lady wearing cowboy boots and a modest, plain-white dress. She also caught Carlos’ eye. He invited her over for a drink. Apparently, she was a secretary by day and hooker by night in order to feed a mother and several young brothers. Carlos offered her a ride home at the end of her stint.
A black hooker offered to take me upstairs. I told her about being robbed, not having a centavo left. She laughed till tears came to her eyes. “Proxima vez,” I assured her with a smile. Meanwhile, a drunk had arrived, totally out of control. The barkeeper steered him into a back room and sent a girl to keep him company. Otherwise, the place was deathly quiet as it was a weekday evening. We left shortly thereafter, the cowboy-booted girl between us in Carlos’ pickup truck. While driving her home, Carlos made a date with her, probably extending the prospect of an escape from poverty. Colombian men often found mistresses in brothels. I was a bit disgusted with Carlos but put him out of my mind as I would be leaving soon. I never returned to Colombia.
I don’t recall whether the Greyhound bus took us passengers right into Otavalo or left us at the Colombian border. In either case, I found an old hotel in the Ecuadorian town known for ponchos and blankets made by the Otavalo Indians. My hotel in a creaky state, floorboards that gave the impression they could fall in at any moment, and doors that were locked with little padlocks that could disintegrate with a swift kick. But, the rooms were spartan and clean.
A native girl, with long braided hair, would arrive daily with a fresh decanter of water, her eyes modestly lowered. I observed her in my shaving mirror as I lathered my face. She never said a word or smiled. Meanwhile, the boss of the place, a short, ugly Spaniard, stomped about the creaking boards, grunted and grumbled at the native servants, with never a friendly greeting to anyone. Perhaps business was going badly. There were hardly any gringos in town although Otavalo was well-recommended in the South American Handbook. Local people wore traditional costumes and hats once imposed on them by the Spanish. The natives were prosperous, relatively speaking. There were pullovers and ponchos for sale at the old market and cockfights to bet on in a hall nearby. As further distractions, you could watch Indian fathers playing with their children like innocents from a lost paradise.
It was Easter, time to attend a mass. The Otavalo cathedral’s interior was dark but with a sudden pool of light illuminating a priest at the altar, all in white, with his back to the congregation of native people. His voice echoed as men and women held Christian song books (some upside down) and chanted on cue. The priest, an old Español, conducted the mass in Latin. When the proceedings called for everyone to shake hands, I turned to the man next to me only to be met with a look of shock. He had realized I was white. I had my hand out, but he immediately pretended he had not seen me. I assumed that the Spaniards were still feared. I left the church a sadder man.
The days in Otavalo passed quickly. On preparing to leave, I decided to make my transistor radio a gift for the little chamber maid. As I explained to her, she’d need to get some new baterias for these had worn out. As I handed her the radio, her face broke into a huge smile. We made eye-contact, and I felt elated. I had done something good. It wasn’t till later that I learned that if you give a maid or servant something in such a poor country, you had better make sure her boss understands she did not steal it from you. My ignorance could have cost the girl her job, or worse. My action stemmed from ignorance, and I wondered about it for years.
During my time in the Andes, I witnessed incidents of abuse which troubled me. For instance, in Columbia I saw a group of presos working on road construction. Lucy explained to me that these were men the police rounded up essentially as slave labour for construction companies. They may or may not have done something illegal to warrant such treatment, but there was no one to challenge the status quo on their behalf. In another episode, two young Americans, most likely on drugs, threw handfuls of loose change onto a restaurant floor, calling the indigenous waiters derogatory names in Spanish. I felt embarrassed for us travelers but said nothing as I was too shocked to respond.
In Ecuador’s capital, Quito, I stayed in a pension recommended in my guidebook. It was February, the time the rains fall. From my pension, I could see the sloping streets of the old town with leading to distant cathedral spires. Sometimes, I would walk to a muddy little field where fish and vegetables were sold in deplorably filthy conditions. Nothing on the wooden carts looked edible to me, but the locals had no choice but to buy what was available. I spent days walking narrow colonial streets, sitting in little coffee shops, making notations in my journal.
A couple of times, I visited Maria, a woman I had met in Otavalo. She was getting heavy but had a pretty face and a teenage daughter, a real beauty with jet-black hair and coal-black eyes. She reminded me of “The girl from Ipanema.” Maria explained she had to get Mercedes out of Chicago where they’d been living because the girl was hanging out with neighbourhood gangsters. She would leave Mercedes with an aunt in Quito.
I was glad to have someone with whom to speak English. On one occasion, I was invited to sleep on the couch as we had consumed too much wine with dinner, and it was a long walk to my pension. It must have been about midnight when I heard a soft voice singing. At first I thought it was a radio, but then Maria came into the room to open the shutters. She beckoned me to the window. On the sidewalk, visible by streetlight, was a young man with a guitar, serenading a girl next door. “It happened all the time when I was young,” Maria said with a smile. “It happened so often my father got upset.” I could imagine Maria at seventeen and believed her.
My colonial-era pension was curious in that it had glass floors. You could look up and see the soles of slippers making their way across the ceiling. At the very top of the building was a skylight that provided three storeys with sunshine. One day, at lunch that was usually attended by military officers, some priests, doctors, and lawyers, I met a woman in her early 40s. She was a stereotypical schoolteacher – a bit frumpy in Victorian lace and long skirts, with sweaters that smelled faintly of wear, and thick, unattractive stockings, planted in clumpy shoes. She had her hair in a bun, held in place with pins. I tried to imagine her transformed with a bit of makeup, but I couldn’t. I recall getting into a conversation. She talked about the Plaza family, a kind of mafia, as she put it, that held all the best land in Ecuador. “I would gladly leave this country,” she confided with a glance at the officers at a table nearby, adding: “But for me it’s too late.”
The pension was well-known for its lunch; hence it was patronized by a variety of the city’s professionals. The house was run by two elderly sisters who cooked everything themselves. One day, I was digging into my meal when there was a timid knock on the door. At first, I thought I was the only person who had heard it but Luiz, the dimwitted servant, went to see who it was. When he opened it, I could see a native woman with a baby strapped to her back, sitting on the top stair. She held out her hand, eyes downcast, asking for food. Luiz looked over his shoulder at the mistresses of the house who had come out of the kitchen. He was asking what to do. “Shut the door!” the order came, and he slammed the door in the Indian woman’s face. The one who had given the directive was the elder of the sisters, the one with a Christian cross hung around her neck.
In those days, Ecuador was more impoverished and (probably) more racist than it is today. There were beggars languishing in the shadows of the doorways of the cathedral, exposing legs rotten with leprosy. Others were missing eyes, ears, or limbs. When I ate in restaurants, the menus often promised things that were No hay! Not available. There was scarcity. I once walked out of a place because there seemed not to be anything that the menu promised, only to be followed by the owner telling me the waiter had not understood. There was bean soup that day.
Children lingered around the restaurants that were open to the streets. On one occasion, a native boy arrived at my table, his sad eyes fixed on mine. I took him for the busboy who would clear the table once I had finished. He did. But he took the leftovers from my plate and unceremoniously shoveled them into his mouth, then went on to another table. I could see the rest of his family on the sidewalk, waiting their turn. The humiliation of having to live like this escaped me. But – and I hate to say this – I eventually got used to it.
Back in Cali, I had noticed a white spot on Lucy’s cornea that would spread until she was blind. In the Andes, I often saw this in the eyes of children. I was told it was a cataract (glaucoma) that could easily be removed, but doctors were scarce in the Andes. They did not want to live there, or they were busy in the cities, or were awaiting visas for the United States. In one small town, circled by Andean peaks, I found a hole-in-the-wall “pharmacy” attended by a young fellow in a white doctor’s coat. I asked to see his medicines and was shown a single shelf holding a couple of boxes of Bayer antibiotics, probably outdated.
As I had contracted some kind of dysentery and was losing weight, I wondered if I could tolerate the humidity of a lower altitude. My initial intent had been to go into the Amazon basin, catch a river boat, and float down the Amazon into Brazil. The bus brought me to a rain-soaked, steamy village in the jungle where the Colorado Indians lived. The walls in the old hotel where I stayed were sweating with rivulets of condensed moisture. My bed’s mattress was soggy. After a brief rainstorm, the street puddles were steaming.
While skirting muddy puddles, I literally ran into a Colorado. I happened to turn around to see a huge, muscular fellow, naked except for a loincloth and rubber boots. Like most of his tribe, he had his hair cut Beatles-fashion, with a bright red streak down the middle. For a moment, we stared at each other as though we’d come from different planets. I think I managed to say “Wow!” before he passed me. I had never seen anyone more impressive. Sad to say, the Amazon River trip never happened.
Next on my magic mystery tour was Peru, a contrast to lusciously green Ecuador and Colombia. Along with several other passengers disgorged from the bus at the Ecuadorian border early in the morning, I waited for an appropriate hour to cross into Peru. There were two dogs coupling in the dusty street, apparently unable to let go of each other. Their yelping seemed an embarrassment to some of the locals who were just opening their stores. A shop owner came with a bucket of water, poured it over the animals and, success, they went on their separate ways, no doubt wiser for the experience.
Businesses were just opening when several young men with black briefcases appeared. They came around to us wielding calculators, asking how much we’d like to trade, US dollars to Peruvian soles. I hesitated. The guidebook had cautioned against resorting to money-traders, but others were trading so, after a time, I changed a hundred dollars. Then the border was opened.
On the bus, I had met a young social worker and his wife. In the Ecuadorian border town, they had traded currencies while I was heading to the frontier crossing. The Peruvian customs agent me down and found a knife concealed under my shirt. “What’s this for?” he asked. I replied: “It’s for ladrones – people who try to rob me.” He seemed satisfied at this and waved me through. Not so my companions. When it came their turn, he searched Roger’s pockets, drew out a wad of Peruvian currency, and confiscated the lot. Needless to say, Roger was livid.
From the border, Roger, Agi, and I caught a bus to a seaside town called Trujillo. There we rented a Volkswagen beetle and roared around the desert, returning to our hotel as at sunset. As we pulled in, the owner of the hotel was lovingly polishing his own vehicle, of which he seemed very proud. Seeing us with a car, he was a bit shocked, thinking we had just bought it. I explained it was a rental, at which he exhaled with relief. We were gringos but not that rich. There wasn’t much in Trujillo: a large warehouse of brown sugar, shoveled into a mountain by a bulldozer, and a rusty freighter waiting in port. We played soccer with some of the ship’s crew, all from India. The next day, we continued south by bus. I traveled with Roger and Agi for a week, then they tired of me and went their own way.
Lima was closed. There was a police strike in progress. The officers had barricaded themselves into their barracks, defying government orders to return to duty. I waited a few days before the city was opened. On arrival, I met a traveler whose hostel was across from the police barracks. He said ambulances had been coming and going all day in the final hours of the strike. The army had slaughtered dozens of cops. This was Peru, after all.
There was a rumour that, during the police strike, looters had broken into gold shops, stealing jewelry which had made its way into the tourist circuit. I had this in mind when a man showed up with a huge gold ring, going for a few US dollars. Fool that I was, I asked a fellow traveler to keep an eye on the man while I took the ring to my room to scrape it – to see if it was really gold. My mistake was that I had paid the fellow in advance. By the time I found it was fake, he had already disappeared. I was stuck with a ring that turned green on my finger within a day.
Peru was under the rule of a left-leaning military government dedicated to indigenizing the country. Consequently, Incan imagery was everywhere. Instead of Coca Cola, there was Inca Kola. Incan natives in full dress were on posters and billboards and on cigarette packets. The government had financed the creation of a new fishing fleet for Pesca Peru, as the agency was called. The boats were in a neat row along the coast, waiting be launched into the Pacific, while the fishermen and their families received new houses. At the time, I took it for granted that such programs were welcomed and would work out.
While in Lima, I met a Peruvian girl on the bus going to Miraflores, the famous beach resort. Her name was Raquel. She had long black hair, a slim figure, and a very Incan profile, by which I mean she had an Incan nose. Not unattractive, but definitely Incan. And she was as innocent as newly fallen snow. I asked if she would meet me next day at the beach, to which she agreed.
After our day at the beach, she invited me to her family home for dinner. Arriving by taxi, dressed in the black shirt I had been saving for a formal occasion, I was met at the door by her father, dressed exactly as I was – all in black. We looked like two Falangists. Maybe because of this, we got along immediately. He was an engineer working in the jungle, home for a holiday. Raquelita was his only daughter, a point he was keen to stress. Dinner went well. At one moment, the mother said I was from a “superior civilization,” to which I replied “differente, pero no superior,” which pleased her immensely. We had hit if off.
Then the parents retired, leaving Raquel and me alone on the couch. In no time, I had her giggling so loud we were afraid mother would come down to see what was going on. The next day, though, Raquel asked when we were getting married, and would we have to sleep together. She made a sour face when I nodded. The following day, I took off for Cuzco, the ancient Incan capital.
The bus from Lima to Cuzco takes twenty-seven hours through mountains. In those days, the roads were unpaved, with no railings to keep vehicles from tumbling into the abyss. Every week somewhere a busload went over the edge, killing or maiming passengers. But I realized this only later.
The bus snaked its way up and up, around potholed, narrow corners, until darkness fell. Then the motor quit, leaving us passengers and the two drivers in the dark. There was no traffic, so it was no problem to park high above a treacherous valley which we could not see, but we knew was there. Most of the passengers were indigenous folks transporting produce to markets in Cuzco. One man had a possum that shat on his back; another had chickens in a cage; others had loaded packages on top of the roof. While we tried to sleep, someone played an Andean lute, transforming the bus into a magic ship of humanity. Then came daybreak.
By the time the sun poked its head over the peaks, the motor had cooled enough to be touched. The problem was solved by our clever driver, a burly fellow who laughed as he worked, so proud was he of his role as captain of our motley crew. Off we went, but not for long. It had been raining for several hours and, sure enough, after descending around some winding turns, we hit a landslide. The road was blocked. But, the drivers produced shovels and the men got busy clearing the road. Passengers pushed the bus as one of the driver gave gas, bouncing the vehicle over the loose dirt onto more solid ground. We got in and were off for the next challenge.
The bus climbed onto an Altiplano. Maybe this is not its technical designation, but the land was without trees, so high it seemed you could touch the clouds. In the distance, over a vast, empty plain, there was a dark curtain of a shower. It was cold. I imagined historic battles having taken place on this top of the world, although this was probably more fanciful than real. The bus halted at the only dwelling in sight, a humble, stone-constructed way station for toilet breaks. Here, I had mate, a tea popular in Latin America. We continued for bumpy hours until Cuzco where the sun was just about to squeeze itself behind mountain peaks. At the end of our trip, I found the drivers devouring their dinner in the terminal restaurant. I went over to thank them for the safe journey.
At over 8,000 feet elevation, Cuzco sits as in a bowl surrounded by mountains. The elevation was hard on the lungs at first. You had to walk slower than normal and pause to catch your breath. The city is ancient, mostly of stonework, with red-tiled homes climbing the hillsides. At its center, there is a public square with a Catholic church perched on top an Incan foundation. As was their practice, the Spaniards leveled native temples to erect churches on the ruins. This was a manner of subjugating the locals, but with Incanization, the indigenous people appeared to be clawing back some of their pride.
I had met Lucy in Colombia, Maria in Ecuador and, as fate would have it, I met Leila in Cuzco. I first spotted her on a train returning from Aguascalientes, the springboard to Machu Pichu. I saw her in my rail car; we made eye-contact, and I was smitten immediately. Leila was in her 20s, full-figured, with a pretty face, short, black hair, and gobsmacking smile. We got to talking in Spanish. I gathered she was married to an officer in the national police force, a man she did not particularly like. She had two kids, one of whom was grasping onto her skirts as we talked. Leila offered to show me her city the next day.
We rendezvoused on the site of the ancient palace of the Inca. Leila showed me how to slither through narrow, polished tunnels cut into the rocks. These had been used by the Inca as escape routes. We examined some of the gigantic boulders stacked so that not even a razor blade could be inserted between them. Thereafter, we had lunch, during which she assured me her cooking beat the so-so meal we were eating. All the while, though, her daughter eyed me with suspicion, no doubt wondering if I would be replacing daddy. It was an uncomfortable situation.
Later, we stopped by a poor little café run by Leila’s father, an emaciated, sweet man in a crumpled suit and fogged up glasses. She introduced me to her step-mother, an elderly native woman, and several brothers and sisters, each of them genetically different; one was dark, another light and blonde, while others looked authentically Incan. This was the legacy of Spanish colonialism. Everyone found this mix amusing. For me it was a welcomed revelation. Momentarily, I imagined myself part of this happy crew. We could have made a go of the café using what capital I had. Of course, Leila would have to dump her cop husband, which could have been tricky, and I’d have to win over the hostile daughter. However, once back in my hotel room, contemplating my options, I thought better of it.
Machu Picchu was kept for last. En route to Cuzco, I had seen so many adverts for the place that I developed a loathing for the very thought of it. Gringos were hiking an Incan trail to the place, climbing up the side of the mountain to get to it – when there is a bus. Any and every path seemed to lead to the place that was supposed to be hidden and safe from prying eyes. Still, I went, taking the Indian train to Aguascalientes where I spent the night. I got up in the faint morning light to walk along the train tracks to the foot of the mountain on top of which the city waited. I was young and strong enough – despite being ill – to climb up to the very top where, surprisingly, I found a hotel.
Disappointed at first, I paid for an admissions ticket, went through a turn style and was in the lost city. The sun had appeared. The valley below, with the Urubamba river veining through it, was still obscured by a thick mist. But, as the sun gathered strength, moment by moment, the mist lifted like a veil, dramatically revealing a vista of mountain tops. Stone house walls without roofs appeared. There were stone pathways and wide terraces for growing corn. In close proximity was Winu Picchu, whose wet and dangerous stone stairs I climbed for a view of the entire canvass. (Today, you need a permit to climb Winu. Back then, I was one of a few travelers to be there at that time of day, for which I remain grateful.)
I recall attending a party in Lima but don’t remember how I’d been invited. (Things like that used to happen to me in those days.) It took place in a middle-class home, an elderly house with large, bare rooms and high ceilings. The guests were all teenagers. We drank, danced, and had a great time. At some point, I met the owner of the home. On hearing how I was travelling in South America, he offered to show me a special room down the hall. When he turned on the lights, I saw that the room had pages of popular magazines, like Life and Paris Match, pasted on the walls and ceiling so that no matter in which direction you turned, you’d see London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Tokyo, New York City – places he would have liked to visit if he had the means. He stood in the middle of an otherwise bare space, with arms out like the master of the world.
I also recall meeting an American adventurer who was kicking around Latin America as though he had nothing better to do, which was common of the travelers I encountered. Louis liked to drink. We went to a bar that happened to have a brothel in the basement, although I was unaware of it. As we were having beers, a young woman tapped me on the shoulder, asking me to dance. She was pretty, wearing a long, formal gown. “Don’t!” warned Louis. “She just wants your money.” But I took the woman in my arms and off we twirled around a small dance floor. I noticed another couple dancing, the man with his hands on the girl’s bottom, which surprised me. I suspected something was up when my dance partner inserted a leg between mine, contacting my groin. Oh. Oh, I thought. This was a clumsy attempt at seduction. When the music stopped, she me to buy her a drink.
“She’s going to order vodka, but there’ll be only water in the glass,” Louis said, apparently from experience. “Watch it.” The woman continued making eyes at me. I asked her for a price, which translated to thirty dollars, a lot at the time. When I tried to convince her to meet me the next day around the corner of the bar for half the price, she seemed to agree, but the bartender had been listening. When I came by the place the next day, the barman said she wasn’t there. However, I caught a glimpse of her in a diaphanous gown at the foot of the basement stairs – an angelic vison. I wanted to save her, but I felt like a fool and left, sadder but possibly a bit wiser.
Many years later, I returned to the Andes. I found Quito transformed – much cleaner, more prosperous, with people looking healthier than I had known them to be. There were many children, young parents, and elderly people enjoying the square in front of the national palace. Boot cleaners were still in force, as were ice cream sellers and hat vendors. There was a small student demonstration with a few police officers watching, otherwise no official force in sight. I did not go to Peru or Colombia, although I understood that life there had improved as well. You can’t re-experience what is past, so I might skip Peru, but then there still is Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil.
Scent of Time 