Peru: On The Rocky Road
By Eanet Fischer

I start the day by taking inventory of my surroundings. I am in Puno in a relatively warm, clean bed. The hotel has more of a resemblance to a generic western hotel than anywhere I have stayed in Peru. The walls are thick, painted concrete, and the floor is covered in short, dark, dusty industrial carpet. A small television is mounted on a bracket protruding from the top of the wall, across the room.

I reach across the bed to draw the curtains, but the cord is dangling hopelessly out of my reach. I inch over, still prostrate, half of my body hanging precariously off the side of the bed. Eventually I grasp the chord and yank open the curtains. The room floods with light. It must be at least eleven o’clock and in the distance I hear the muffled sounds of rhythmic chanting. I wonder what is being protested, but all I can see from my compromised vantage point is the top of a line of fruit stands.

Down on Calle Lima, Puno’s primary pedestrian thoroughfare, I walk past the throngs of students, shoe polishers and the occasional child beggar on my way to find breakfast. An empanada, egg sandwich and some pineapple juice later, I make my way through the Plaza de Armas and discover the source of the morning’s rhythmic chanting. The square has been overrun by children in pseudo military uniforms marching in formation.

“What’s going on here?” I ask an older gentleman in line at a bank.

“It’s Wednesday, so we are waiting in line to get change for our big bills,” he explains that most people are paid in bills too large to be accepted anywhere, and that banks only give change certain days of the week.

“I mean, what’s going on in the square?”

The old man thinks the children are practicing for a parade commemorating the anniversary of the founding of their school.

Today is slotted as a lazy travel day. I need to take a bus to Arequipa at some point in the afternoon. I am supposed to meet Katrin, in front of the cathedral in Arequipa’s Plaza de Armas at 10 AM the next day.

Arequipa is the second largest city in the country, and an intellectual and political hotbed to the extent that some of its citizens feel Arequipa should be an independent country. Some even carry fake Arequipan passports.

En route back to my hotel I stop into a travel agency to check on bus times.

“Well the blockage should probably be over at six, so I would say its fine to take the five o’clock bus. Usually they get tired around dinner time and go home,” A plump younger women with thick glasses informs me.

In talking to other travelers the past weeks I have heard numerous horror stories about transportation strikes around Arequipa. It’s politically charged culture lends itself to frequent but civil protests, much of which involves blocking all transportation access to and from the city. The reasons for protest are often varied. Several weeks earlier it was a raise in price of mandatory car insurance, stranding a Belgian couple I had met there for two weeks.

But this one is in Juliaca, an hour outside of Puno on the only road to Arequipa.

“You should go to the ground terminal around three and ask the bus companies if there will be any service earlier”

“What are they striking about?”

The travel agent doesn’t know, or seem especially interested, so I leave and kill some time in one of city’s ubiquitous Internet cafes. Anxious to get on the road, I check out of the hotel and head over to the bus terminal via a canopied motorcycle taxi and arrive with several hours to spare.

The bus terminal is an industrial, sparsely furnished building that reminds me of a starfish shaped greenhouse.

Only the two more expensive bus companies are daring to venture to Arequipa today, one of which promises a 5 PM departure, the other at 8 PM. The ticket agent assures me that there won’t be any blockade related problems. Relieved, I buy a ticket on the early bus, check my biggest bag and begin to wait.

Several hours of reading, consumption and travel yahtzee pass. It’s almost 4:30 and considering the bus is supposed to begin boarding in minutes, the waiting area is almost empty. I decide to check out what is going on.

“Is everything okay with the 5 PM bus to Arequipa?”

“The bus hasn’t arrived yet. It is stuck behind the blockade in the other direction. So we are going to wait an hour and if the bus still hasn’t arrived, it’s canceled.”

“When is the next bus?”

“5 PM tomorrow.”

“Will the blockade be over by then?”

“There is really no way of saying.”

So I wait for an hour to find the bus has been canceled. It takes some haggling, but eventually I get a refund and head over the next counter with hopes of a seat on the 8 PM bus. The only tickets available are “imperial” class, which while twice as expensive, are the most luxurious ground travel accommodations in Peru.

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