A Sad Story

The following post is a bit of a ramble, and I apologize.

As many of you who have followed our blogs know, Josh and I had plans to go to the jungle. Admitedly, this had been a slightly poorly planned excursion, and while our tickets fit perfectly into our logistical plans (a trip from Cusco to Puerto Maldonado to Lima), it turned out that the cost of staying in any of the rainforest lodges was prohibitively expensive. We had therefore resigned ourselves to several days listing on the side of the Amazon tributary, trying to find ways to get into the deep jungle without paying an arm and a leg. It was doable, but neither of us were particularly pumped within a few days of the actual time of departure.

That said, the real value added to these tickets was the flight to Lima, which would eliminate any additional overland travel, which can be fairly expensive if you include the cost of bus fare, food costs, the opportunity cost of time spent, and lodging. We were therefore determined to make our flight in Cusco. As I mentioned in our last post, this required overcoming a major strike of the stone throwing/fire blockading variety. No bus was leaving the city of Puno for Cusco that night, only for Arequipa (probably because the police in Arequipa, a town that has started basically every military coup in Peruvian history, cracked some skulls).

Luckily, an employee from a hotel that we had stayed at several nights ago made it his personal mission to make sure that we made our Cusco flight. He found us an agent (who, if in a cartoon, would certainly have dollar signs in his eyes) who was organizing a car full of people that was going to take local roads out of the city and make it to Cusco. The cost? A paltry $300 ($50 per person), a price which rose with each person who was part of the package. To give you a comparison, a bus ticket to the same destination would regularly cost $8. This deal was shady and a big rip off, but we both placed trust in our hotel operator and the family of Peruvian-born Swiss who were also trying to get to Cusco. The $50 was worth it to us, but not to the family apparently, and after much waffling, it became clear that enthusiasm for the car idea was faltering across the board.

Meanwhile, another option began to surface. Apparently we could take a bus into the jungle, and while it would take 12 hours, it would get us to Puerto Maldonado in time to spend three days there and still catch our flight to Lima. This plan gained traction for both of us, and while we felt bad for leaving the family in the lurch, their inaction on the car and the later time of their flight made us a little less sympathetic. Around 9 pm, we cast our chips with the jungle bus plan.

Our hotel operator told us that while we couldn't get a room at his place due to a huge presence of Argentines wanting to escape in the opposite direction, we could stay at another, nicer hotel nearby for the price of a room at the original. This apparently was part of an informal IOU network that is prevalent throughout Peru, a terrific system that has regularly allowed us receive small change, catch boats, and procure other extra services that we would not ordinarily be afforded in another incomplete economy (I'm looking at you, Argentina).

Both of us were exhausted, especially me, who had just undergone perhaps one of the most rigorous tests of Spanish in my life. With one final effort, however, I forced myself to complete one final errand while Josh got a bite to eat (and a much needed drink). A small doubt in the back of my head had began to materialize. What if LAN Airlines, our carrier to the jungle and back to Lima, gave up our tickets if we didn't make the first flight? The risk of that, while minute, was worth the effort of a call to inform them of our new plans.

If you hadn't caught the heavy premonition of failure early on, by now I expect that you know where this is going. LAN, while a terrific company in terms of service and overseas travel, apparently sold us our promotional fare under the condition that we make both flights. Lack of attendance at our first flight would result in a cancellation of the entire reservation. "But what if we were in fact at the Puerto Maldonado airport in time to catch our return flight?" "Sorry Sir, the policy is strict." "What if the company knew this to be the case and we owned those seats to Lima, damnit?" "Sorry, it is not my policy." "What if there is a nation-wide strike which prohibits movement by any other means throughout the country?" "Sorry, there's nothing I can do for you. There is no supervisor here tonight."

This lasted for several minutes. I hung up, told Josh the bad news, and returned and tried again. I was so livid that I was sick. The next conversation lasted for twenty minutes. Finally, I apologized to the poor woman on the other end. This, after all, was not her fault. It was the fault of a company determined to follow a strict, legalistic, and frigid capitalistic model in the midst of a country which follows Latin time and willingly shuts down the rest of the economy on a whim. In other words, we had been stabbed from behind. We had gamed the Random, had "embraced the chaos" as a friend of mine puts it, but had been totally screwed by the rigidity of modern enterprise. For anybody who knows Bob Shepherd, professor of Cultural Anthropology at GW, they know that he would be saying "I told you so."

All that aside, three days ago we were having a terrific time on the shore of Lake Titicaca. In two days, we will likely be exploring a beautiful, colonial town in the midst of the Andes on our slow road up to Lima. Travelling is a blast, except when it's painful, and it's a rush, except when it drags on late into the night in a Peruvian bus station. Even at the worst part of this trip, I have been taken aback by the pure decency of every single Peruvian I have met in the last few days. It's not just hospitality, but a desire to see things through, even if it means helping a couple of foreigners get to the next destination, however possible. I'm a major skeptic, and I've tried to be aware of all ways that we were being milked or scammed or whatever, but I simply cannot see our interactions with the people of Puno as anything other than kindness and purity.