Pativilca, Peru April 28, 1979

John, Sue and I started out from Trujillo with the intention of going to Huaraz.  From our maps, it looked pretty straight-forward.  South along the coast to Casma, and then  inland, across the Cordillera Negra or ‘black mountains’, to Huaraz, which sits in an area known as the altiplano (high plane).  The Cordillera Blanca or ‘white (snow-capped) mountains are to the east.  We left early, anticipating a long, all-day journey, hopefully arriving in Huaras by nightfall.  But the day had other plans for us... . 

 

Our first ride was in a monstrous truck carrying huge rolls of paper.  John in the back, Sue and I up front with the driver. For over four hours he had the joy of shifting gears, which he did as frequently as possible, around the lovely legs of first me, and then Sue, as we watched the desert of dunes roll by.  He dropped us in Casma, where we found out, after a half-hour trudge in the mid-day sun to the turn-off, and an hour or more’s wait in the dust and flies, that there was no through road to Huaraz.  So we decided to carry on south on the highway to Lima, keeping our eyes and ears open for possible routes inland to Huaraz – or thereabouts.  

 

After a quick road-side lunch of bread and cheese in Casma, we stuck our hands out again and were picked up by a couple of middle-aged men in a surprisingly snazzy Dodge pick-up.  This time John and I sat in the back and Sue sat up front.  After an agonizing 20 mph crawl up the rolling sandy dune-tains, our driver treated us to a breath-taking 70-80 mph race over the asphalt snake known as the ‘Pan-American Highway’.  This seems a somewhat glorious appellation for a rather dubious road, which, although at least paved here in Peru, is only about a lane and a half (or one American lane), wide.  For John and me, sitting in the open back of the truck, our furious flight, and the frequent sudden jolts as our driver swerved to the right to avoid oncoming trucks, buses, mules with carts, and people carrying large bundles of hay and firewood, was an uncomfortable and anxiety-ridden experience.  I kept wondering how Sue was faring with the two men in the cab.  She later told me they were remarkably well-behaved, and she was less affected by the swerves as she could see them coming.  Lucky her.

 

As we made our way across the northern Peruvian landscape, I drank in the changing colours and forms.  Green and pink sand-dunes, some as smooth and sensual as a woman’s body.  In places a cluster of crescent-shaped sand moons scooped out of the sand-sea and sculpted by wind-breeze.  Other places rough and barnacly, where rocks still resisted the forces that would have them become sand, or areas where patches of coarse grass or low brush interrupted the reign of sand texture, sand colour.  Rainbow ribbons of different coloured sands – golden-beige, rust, cream, green-beige, pink and grey-brown.  Occasional pure white domes of sand, glistening in the mid-day sun, startlingly beautiful against a perfect background of clear, pale blue sky.  A water-colour artist’s dream – and me without my paint-box.

At times we were so near the coast we could see the huge waves, breaking on vast stretches of fantastically desolate beach – a perfect, flat table of sand, without a tree or log or person or bird to break the ‘horizon’ between sand and sea – only the breaking of the waves, one after another, along the forever shore.  Once in a while this tableau would be interrupted by a rocky or pebbly patch of beach, or and island not far from the shore, scenes deceptively to the northwest Pacific coast-line of BC, but here not a twig, not a stick, not a blade of grass or a tree.  Just sand and more sand and more sand… .  Carpets, sheets, undulations, hills, mountains, rivers, glaciers of sand.  Sand on sand.  Even in the rock-sand, sand-rock mountains, rivers and glaciers of finer, whiter sand, pouring out from crevices, oozing out from between the interstices – all the nooks and crannies of the rocks themselves sand.  Sand.  Sand.  And, as in Huanchuco, not a bird to be seen – no life at all – just millions upon millions upon millions of grains, granules, specks, siftings, of sand… .

 

We arrived, finally, in Pativilca, a small oasis of corn and banana trees, sugar cane, fantastic banks of purple-flowered bushes, and all sorts of luxuriant growth.  Where does the water come from I wonder... .  More bamboo and rubble housing – reminders of the 1970 earthquake.

 

We dropped in at the local highway patrol office to ask about buses to Hauraz.  The two ‘officers’ eyes were glued to an old TV.  It was showing glimpses of a new movie release of Hair.  We chatted with them for a while about American and British police, who they were absolutely convinced just ‘shoot all the bad guys dead’.  That’s what they see in the movies – all B-rated or worse – that end up here, often shown on small TVs in open squares, a crowd of people gathered round, watching the dizzying montage of images and trying to hear a dialogue they anyway don’t understand. The officers were particularly interested in Sue and me.  They wanted to know why wouldn’t just stay here and have gringo-Peruvian babies…?  What could we say?  “Oh, we’d love to but...”   Once we’d dealt with those comments and questions the officers did tell us that there were regular buses from Pativilca to Huaraz, and where we could catch them.  And they warned us that the buses were usually crowded as so many gringos go to Huaraz to hike Mount Huascaran, the highest peak in Peru.

 

We had dinner at a local family-run eatery where we taught English to a group of three young boys, as their sisters, mothers, and grandmothers watched and listened in, too shy, too custom-bound, to join in.  The people here on the coast where the weather is warmer and drier than in the northern mountains are much friendlier – so open and hospitable.  They treat us to those light-up-your-whole face smiles when they greet us.  The kids are particularly charming, and uniformly curious about us, although the girls are much shyer, peeping from behind a door-frame or the skirts of their mother, aunt or granny, and offering just a little smile when we catch them looking.  So cute.