Casma

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

Day 91 on The Big Trip. “Ruins on Bikes”

Two messy bikes charge 5k to a museum and 1600BC ruins. We are passed by trucks and motorized rickshaws that beep to let us know they’re there. I’m beginning to think horns are at least as necessary as headlights for driving in South America. The ruins aren’t what we hoped for, but it was nice to get some useful exercise in after all of the lazy traveling we’ve done! (See the Vlog entry for this trip by clicking THIS!) Sit on this bus. Sit in this taxi. Sit on this minibus. Sit down. Walk around town. It’s just not enough. Where are my mountains? Where’s Patagonia?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving this trip. I’ve never experienced such different cultures or this type of not belonging. Growing up I didn’t belong because I was in a different math class than everyone else. Or I didn’t belong because I didn’t like basketball like everyone else. But here I don’t belong because my hair is not black and my skin is not dark. It’s a very different kind of not belonging where instead of not being looked at, you’re looked at. Instead of not being talked to, you’re hollered at! It’s actually growing on me as a form of not belonging!

Back to Casma, though! In Casma, this small little town we met a man named Peter who enjoyed talking with us in English as much as his capacity would allow, and of course Español. He also helped us a lot. He drove us all over town to meet his friends and sister in order to find us any two shabby bikes that we could use for cheap to get to the ruins the next morning. Before we hop a 7-hour bus to Lima!

Thank you, Peter! That’s Casma in a nutshell. What else? We stayed at Hostel Gregori. Not expensive; not bad. The bus trip to Lima was, well, long. It featured a stop for lunch and stranding us in the dessert for an hour or so while they fixed a flat tire and we wished it was actually made of ice cream, rolling around and swimming in this lovely neopolitan! It also included a double feature of the horrible Steven Seagal movie “Belly of the Beast”. That means it played twice in a row. It was really frustrating to not be able to turn off the volume or the video. What a busride!

In Lima, we walk to find a place to eat, passing Pizza Hut? KFC? McDonald’s? Are we really in Peru? We ate at a restaurant named Beirut, which offered comida arabe (Arabic food) as well as your usual American restaurant dishes. Odd! The speakers there only blasted Britney Spears’ songs. To our dismay! And sense of humor!

At our hostel, like the hostel we tried before, we find that there are only dormitories available. Oh well! Nighty-night!