Living in Peru : your everyday companion

Richard Nisbet

“Shit!” says Glen as he jams on the breaks.  “We’re blocked.”  He leaps out of the cab and strides up ahead to check things out.  There must be seven or eight trucks stopped.   The drivers and passengers are all outside, talking to each other and scratching their heads.    In a moment Glen comes back.  “It’s blocked solid.   They’re burning tires a hundred meters up the road.   Wanta go see what’s up?”

“Okay.”  I clamber down from the cab and we move on up the road past the trucks.  Ahead we can see the tires burning in the middle of the road, a crowd of people around, firelight flickering on brown faces in shabby clothes. 

One of the truck drivers tells us they’re not going to let anyone through until tomorrow morning.   A group of about eight people come up behind us, men and women and children.  Glen tells them that he has to get to La Paz by noon tomorrow.  Is there another way around?   No, they tell us, no other way around.  They also warn us not to go up to the crowd and the burning tires alone.  We might get hurt.  But if we go with them we should be safe.   So we integrate with these locals and move up to the scene of action.   The road here is a minefield of rocks and telephone  poles.   On the side of the road old tires are stacked, ready fuel for the fires.  

There are no police to be seen.  

There must be a hundred or more people.   It’s not exactly festive, but they seem to be having a pretty good time, except for a few angry ones who glare at us.   We approach some young boys sitting on the curb.

“Por que esso?” asks Glen.   What’s the reason?

“No passas  hasta mañana,” the boy informs us.
        
“Ya, ya, no passas, but why?   Por Que?”

The boy shakes his head.   “No passas hasta mañana.”

“Fuck!” says Glen.   “I’VE GOT TO GET TO LA PAZ BY NOON TOMORROW!   I’VE GOT A BUNCHA FUCKING TOURISTS WAITING FOR ME!”

It’s obvious that this ragged crowd couldn’t care less about his tourists.   We go back to the cluster of trucks and Glen is still raging.

“Well,” I say, if you can’t do anything about it, you might as well chill out.   We can sleep in the back of the truck until morning, then you can call.”

But then a teenage boy approaches us.  Dirty, torn clothes, muddy sandals.  He says he will show us a way around for una propina... a tip.  Without asking what the tip amount might be, Glen agrees.   No trucks have pulled up behind us so far, so we can still back up, turn around and take the other route.   The boy takes his bicycle to another truck and asks the driver to load it.   He is in a hurry, seems to sense danger for himself.   I can just imagine what might happen if the angry members of that crowd up ahead caught him helping gringos around their roadblock.   

Glen is already backing the truck and turning.    In a few moments the boy jumps into the cab with us and I am squeezed to the hump in the center, the engine cover.   He asks for a flashlight, his voice is frantic.   We head back a few yards and the boy has us turn into the streets of the town, then immediately shouts to Glen to turn off his headlights.

We hurtle through the town with the boy shouting repeated directions, “left, straight, right.”   From time to time it is impossible to see where we are going without headlights, but the moment they are on, the boy issues the order to shut them off and then leans out the cab window pointing the flashlight beam just ahead of us.   

The town, at least the outskirts we are careening through, is deserted.  There are few streetlights, the houses and tiendas are two story adobe, and the roads are dirt.   We get through the urban area and come to an open field where the road becomes deeply rutted and muddy.   Over to the right a half mile or so we can see the tires burning on the main road.   

We come to a turnoff that drops down and to the right.  A little Toyota is trying to back out of this turnoff.   We stop and the boy and Glen descend to check out the situation.   They start walking down the road and when my curiosity gets the best of me, I get out and start to follow them.   The Toyota is still sitting there with the engine shut down.   I slog through twenty or thirty yards and here come Glen and the boy.  

“What’s going on?”

“Little log bridge,” says Glen.   “Guy in the car was too chicken to try it.   We’re gonna show him.”

But we have to lead and we are blocking the Toyota.   We all remount the truck and Glen backs up to give the car room.   The car backs up, then pulls out of the way to give us room to plunge into the muddy road.   Then the car backs up and tentatively follows us.  The truck is slipping and sliding down the road and suddenly there is the bridge.  

The bridge!  I had expected logs laid transversely across beams.   Nothing nearly so sophisticated.   The bridge is six eucalyptus logs laid longitudinally across the water, two groups of three logs with a nice gap between them.   Glen guns the engine and aims the truck.   “Don’t slow down!” he shouts, presumably to both himself and the trailing car.

We make it across and fifty yards later come to more river, this time with no bridge.    It’s looks shallow enough to ford and we proceed to do just that, then leap up the opposite bank with a sickening lurch and bounce.    Then we climb with more slipping and sliding toward the highway that we have detoured.    If there is a road or a path beneath us, I cannot detect it.

Finally we are at the highway.   Behind us we can see the glow of the tire fires.

The boy, more nervous than ever, tells us that the road should be clear from here on.  We ask him about the amount of the propina.  He indicates that he only wants enough to buy some new clothes,  obviously a real need.  Glen reaches behind his seat and comes up with a South American Safaris T-shirt.   Obviously, this is inadequate so Glen also hands him a $10 bill.   But the boy keeps gesturing at his clothes, pulling on his raggedy collar and showing the holes in his pants.   Glen ends up giving him another ten, the boy gets out and waves goodbye.

Pavement under our wheels... finally.   We take a collective breath and aim for Bolivia.  Less than five minutes later our headlights pick up another barricade.  Rocks all over the road and a telephone pole that covers all but about three feet of roadway.   There are four or five kids standing amidst the barricade waving their arms for us to stop.