A Ghost of Che

Tornado warnings. Severe weather warnings. Sirens. I was preparing for another delayed or canceled flight, another chapter in my love/hate relationship with airlines and airports. As much as I hate them, the airlines and airports love to have me over. A standard two-hour domestic flight turns into an all-night-long affair when I am on board. And this was an international flight. My itinerary had stops in Atlanta and Lima. No delays, please!

I dumped my backpack in the trunk, picked up Lonely Planet’s South America on a Shoestring and English-Spanish Phrase Book from a local bookstore, and got to the airport. The short good-bye phone calls to two buddies turned into half-hour conversations. “I hope you die somewhere in South America and never come back,” one of my buddies said. It got me thinking about the mission I was on. After all, I had been waiting for this day for three years. Even the director of The Motorcycle Diaries must have said “Damn, I wanna be that guy riding the motorcycle!” after the first screening of the movie.

Three countries in forty days. Armed with a tent, a sleeping bag, five shirts, two pairs of jeans, a jacket, fifteen power bars, a jar of Gatorade powder, a bottle of water, a cell phone, two credit cards, my passport, and sign language, I reached the airport. For a change, the flight was not delayed. Way to go!

I fastened the seatbelt and opened the Peru section in my Lonely Planet guide. It was my first trip to South America. I had no experience riding or fixing 400-cc motorcycles. My Spanish vocabulary consisted of ten words. A Chilean friend had repeatedly warned about the muggings, robberies, and lootings in South American countries. I'd learned that I was about to cross the driest desert on earth. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I hadn’t come back. But how many times do you get an opportunity like this?—no family obligations, no pending bills, a secure future. I was ready for the trial by fire.

I had planned the first two days of my trip, Cuzco to Puno, and Puno to Moquegua or Tacna. That was it. I had a motorcycle, a tent, and a sleeping bag for emergency. NOT having a plan was my plan. I just wanted the road to lead me. I thought about calling my brother from the Atlanta airport, but decided against it. I stuck to the original script, telling my family about my plan after I reached Peru. It was close to midnight when I reached Lima. I slept in the waiting room at the Lima airport and got on board the first flight from Lima to Cuzco. It was five in the morning.

I was in Cuzco by 6:30. Two guys from the motorcycle rental agency were at the airport to pick me up. We rode back to the rental agency on 250-cc motorcycles. I was riding a motorcycle after almost three years. And it was reassuring to find out that our brains don’t forget motorcycle-riding skills. The rental agency was in the heart of the city, near the Plaza de Armas. I filled out the paperwork and handed it over. I was waiting for the rental agency guy to get back from the notary’s office and hand me the border-crossing papers. In came the first piece of bad news! There was some kind of statewide strike in the Cuzco region. If I understood it right, and that was a big if, the Peruvian government had proposed to allow travel agents from Lima to book tours to Machu Picchu. The agents in the Cuzco region were obviously not happy with that. They figured the Lima agents were going to steal their business now. So they decided to express their anger by blocking all the roads out of Cuzco. They even forced all the government offices to close down. There was no way of getting the papers notarized that day. It didn’t sound like a very good start. The strike had shut the entire city down. All I could do that day was take pictures of the angry Cuzcoites and visit a nearby site called Saqsayhuamán, the site of the last battle between the Spanish and the Incans. It’s a beautiful site with walls of carefully crafted stones. It’s true that nothing, not even air, can pass through the gaps between two stones. The imposing walls, the hallways lined with well-crafted doors, the underground passageways—it’s impressive for a five to six hundred-year-old structure. And just when the intricate web of walls, hallways, doors, and stairs starts getting monotonous, one of the doors shows you the entire valley of Cuzco.

It’s an enormous city that was destroyed during the Spanish conquest. The Peruvians have rebuilt it. But it feels like it was rebuilt without any serious planning. It’s just blocks and blocks of concrete jungle dotted with grand old plazas. Lost in the suffocating concrete, you can almost hear the ancient plazas screaming, “Don’t touch me!”

As I started riding around town, I realized that most of the other roads were barricaded. I spent some time at the central plaza and went back to the rental agency. The young boy at the agency volunteered to walk me to a nearby hostal barato. As we were walking down, he started asking me all kinds of questions in Español. I opened the Español-Inglés translation section in my phrase book and handed it over to him. He just wanted to know the basics: my nationality, my age, my job. Nationality and age were easy. I had read that on the flight. But my job? How do you say Neuroscience in Spanish? My efforts lasted for about a minute, or two, maybe. I guess estudiante was good enough for him.

He was keen on learning English, and I wanted to learn how to ask simple questions in Español. So I started asking him questions about what he did, whether he went to college, and how to ask those questions in Español. He gave me the translations and started talking about himself. He told me that he could survive with the money he was making by fixing motorcycles, manning the desk, and helping the tourists out. A college degree wasn’t all that important to him. Was he really happy with what he was doing? Was he forced to work there out of financial compulsions? I wish I knew Español!

He left me at the hostel and disappeared in the small alleys of Cuzco. I unpacked, took a shower, and started cramming Spanish words into my non-cooperating brain. It had been a long journey. And the seats at the Lima airport were seats, not futons or beds. I wanted to take a nap, but my adrenalin was not going to let me do that. Millions of thoughts were racing through my mind. Every day was going to be a new adventure. I had no idea what to expect. Language was going to be a liability. My five, or maybe even six, senses were going to be more important than my ability to speak. It was going to be fun!

I gave up on my pathetic attempts at falling asleep. It was time for dinner, anyway. I walked into a nearby restaurant and asked the girl about Peruvian delicacies. “Guinea pig,” she said emphatically. The thought of eating a guinea pig made me uncomfortable. I had no intention of killing another one of those poor little souls. I had spent almost every day of my past year waking up and apologizing to those lab rats before sacrificing them for the sake of science. As a graduate student, you gotta do what you gotta do. But I didn’t want to kill another guinea pig for my dinner. Then again, why didn’t I feel uncomfortable ordering chicken?