We have gone through four cities in whirlwind, four situations that couldn’t be more different from each other.
We left you in Chiclayo, Peru, where we stayed in a casino. It was probably the most depressing casino I’ve ever stayed in, which is saying a lot. A green waterfall in the lobby was turned off during the day, leaving a stagnant pool of water. The lights didn’t work in our hallway and, inexplicably, a tray of half-eaten breakfast remained in the stairwell throughout our stay. In the casino itself, unhappy-looking older Peruvians played slot machines and an automated roulette wheel. In the restaurant, the waiters walked as if weighted down by stones. The town itself was a puzzlement, a strange combination of dust, chaos, and nothing the kids wanted to eat. For these and other reasons, Sarah and I coined an unflattering nickname for Chiclayo which subtly (or not-so-subtly) changed the first syllable.
It would be unfair to Chiclayo not to mention the Museum of the Royal Tombs of Sipan, the reason for our stay in the city. This was the best archaeological museum I’ve even been to. It was followed by a visit to a strange restaurant that specialized in fatty duck stews, where a singer roamed the floor with a cordless microphone, serenading all the diners while accompanied by prerecorded music.
The next town was Huanchaco, a beach town near Trujillo and the ruins of the ancient city of Chan Chan.
Here we stayed in the house of a surfer named Francisco. To call it a house is maybe a stretch — most of it had no roof and was covered with tarps or plastic. Francisco was a warm Peruvian surfer dude who was great company, despite the bizarre breakfasts he served us every morning. For Cleo and Julian, this place was paradise because it came with two dogs, three puppies, and a number of cats we were never able to count. (Julian says there were four, but it seemed like more to me.)
The dogs were a hairless Peruvian breed that to me seemed like more bloated tick than dog. The puppies, however, were undeniably cute (and furry), and the kids fussed over them for hours.
We slept in small rooms that filled every night with crickets. The cats would come in and slaughter them all, a cricket Killing Field. A few days after we left, I was sitting on a bus when I had an intense itch on my ankle. I removed my shoe and sock to find a desiccated cricket corpse.
At first glance, Huanchaco seemed like a strangely desolate resort, like a town on the Jersey shore during winter. Most of the restaurants in our area were closed, and the windswept beach, two blocks away from our surfer house, was empty except for an ancient man selling ice cream. Probably because of his advanced age, he gave very small scoops, and we learned to avoid him. But we soon discovered more vital areas of the town, and learned to love it. Julian made a friend, the child of the owners of a pizza parlor, and we found a vegetarian restaurant/backpackers hangout that became our base of operations. We all took Spanish classes there from a brilliant English ex-pat named Sam, and the kids ordered numerous smoothies. Julian and I took a surfing lesson from Francisco. I surfed on a board the size of a small aircraft carrier and managed to stand up; Julian stood on his first try. Best of all (for me), we were surrounded by amazing ancient ruins, mostly from the Moche and Chimu civilizations that predated the Incas. The Temple of the Moon was a highlight, an unprepossessing mound next to a mountain in the desert filled with large open plazas and brilliantly colored friezes.
Next day, we said good-bye to Francisco and the Surf House…
…and rode a bus all day to Lima (ten hours, which translates into five unreleased-in-the-U.S. movies), then flew to Iquitos, a town in the heart of the Amazon rain forest. From there we took boats for three hours to the Muyuna Lodge, up a tributary of the Amazon. This was our home for six days. We slept in a room open to the jungle (except for the much-needed mosquito netting) and during the day, took trips, mostly on small boats, to see wildlife, including a dizzying array of birds (I was in bird heaven) and five species of monkeys (from tiny Pygmy Marmosets to thHowlers).
At night, we would walk the forest with flashlights to see tarantulas, snakes and sloths (which might have been our favorite animals of the trip). One day we fished for piranha and caught some small ones. Their little jaws, boasting rows of tiny sharp teeth, chomped at us like novelty wind-up vampire teeth. Another day, our guide Carlos took us down to the Amazon to swim with pink and grey dolphins. (In truth, we saw them from the boat and then they took off as soon as we jumped in. But drifting down the Amazon in itself was an amazing experience).
The sun and humidity were intense. Cleo and Julian liked to cool off between trips into the jungle by jumping into the river in front of our lodge. I enjoyed it as well until I felt a few nibbles on my legs and feet. Somehow, I couldn’t get the image of those little chomping piranha jaws out of my head.
When we flew back to Lima, a large, cold city about as removed from the jungle as you can imagine, our experience seemed like a technicolor dream. Had it really happened? Yes, it had. The blue and yellow macaws I saw on our first day in the rain forest are forever imprinted on my visual cortex. The humidity turned out to have left another permanent impression on my laptop; it stopped turning on. I took it to be serviced here in Lima. Fingers crossed. In the meantime, I’m typing on the Chrome book mostly used by Cleo.
In Lima, we’re staying in a modern apartment in the Miraflores district surrounded by wonderful restaurants and bakeries. It’s a Peru I haven’t experienced before — urbane, orderly, affluent — about as far from our cricket-covered room in the surfer house as you can imagine. We like to stroll along the Malecon, the walk along the cliffs overlooking the ocean. At Cleo’s urging, she, Julian and I leaped from the cliffs attached to parachutes (and paraglider pilots). I alternated between exhilaration and terror as my parachute climbed the air currents over the ocean and the sprawling city. The kids had no such mixed emotions: They experienced pure joy.
