I knew today was going to be an important day. So I was especially stressed the day before. And right now, at 8PM, it is starting to get to me. I have this headache and my stomach’s not feeling too great, either.
I woke up at 6:20 AM to meet with John outside his internet shop at 6:45 AM. At first I thought I was late, but he was just at the grocery shop, and actually opening up his internet cafe at 7AM! Man, this guy sure works hard. The place closes at 10PM.
So John had told me to meet him outside his internet cafe, which is only a 2-3 minute walk away from my hostal, so that we can go to the mechanic together. He knows a particular one that works on diesel. How will you come back, though? I ask. He says he’ll take the bus back, which is only 70 cents (70 centimos = about 25 cents for 5 kilometers).
Getting the car out of the garage was quite a bit of work in of itself. We’re at 11000 feet altitude, so it’s hard to start with to begin with. But it’s also freezing. So it takes me a full 5 minutes to start the cold engine. Then the hard part: actually getting it out of the garage. It’s not too steep, but it’s steep enough at so early in the morning that my car can’t make it. John pushed the car the second time, and still no luck. The third time, we went all the way to the back of the garage where the ground was a bit more level to build up speed, and we finally got through with John pushing me out the gate. What a way to start the day!
It only gets better, of course. I notice that while going down the tiny cobbled streets of the cultural center of Cuzco that my brakes aren’t working. This was quite a shock. It just wouldn’t push at all after the first 2-3 inches. And the first 2-3 inches of push was barely allowing me to come to a stop from 20 miles an hour after about 15 feet or so. It was quite scary. How the hell am I supposed to get to the mechanic like this, much less down to sea level from 11000 feet?
But thankfully, it got better. I think after being in the cold night for so long, the brakes had quite simply froze and was slipping. So it went back to normal after 5 minutes of usage.
I get to the mechanic shop, and that’s when I realize why John wanted to come with me. The mechanic shop is actually right next to his parents’ house! There’s a man walking down the street, and he gleefully says, look, that’s my father! We pull in to the garage, where the short mechanic of 55 years old quickly diagnoses the problem. There was smoke coming under the air filter when the accident happened. And when I revved up the engine too much in any gear, I would hear this whizzing sound that increased and decreased with the rev. He says, “it’s the turbo.” No doubt about it. It makes sense. There is oil coming off the turbo gasket, which is right under the air filter. It would have been dangerous to have kept riding the car in this fashion.
So I’m somewhat relieved at all of this. This guy surely sounds like he knows what he’s doing, and I had become all too confident in him but hours pass and he’s still mingling around with the turbo. He got the air filter out easily enough, but the turbo was giving him trouble. We’re waiting and waiting, and finally, after 3 hours or so of messing around with everything around the turbo, he gets it out. He grabs a taxi and heads over to the turbo workshop, where they’ll have it fixed by 3 PM, he says. It will cost me 480 soles.
Meanwhile, John displays the face of Peruvian hospitality. He had gone over to the grocery store in the morning to buy bread and cheeze for breakfast for both of us today. I thoroughly enjoyed the cheeze and the bread, as well as the tea called Anis. He says it’s good for stomachache due to altitude sickness. I drink a bit of it, and surely enough, it immediately soothes the stomachache.
John asks me a bunch of questions, and I feel somewhat bad because I don’t know what to ask him, and I am also worried about the car. But he does talk to me about sex quite a bit for some reason. He says that the mechanic goes crazy if he hasn’t had sex for 2 days. He couldn’t possibly go to war. At one point, he had an 18 year old girlfriend. His father’s the same way at the age 77, where he has to have sex every few days. He says the village he was from was crazy with sex. They would do it between 7 to 10 times a night. Something in the corn, he says.
But he also talks about politics, about how expensive it is for a small shop at the center (plaza de las armas) at $2000 a month. About how Peruvian soldiers who went to Iraq got $900 total for the entire time served there. About how the railroad is monopolized and it’s too expensive and crappy. And how the government is making it easier for foreigners to come over and take over the businesses. And, probably most importantly, how these big companies are starting to emerge and chocking out the small businesses.
John is 32 years old and has an older brother who is fairly smart and is a doctor at Cuzco’s hospital. John started the Internet business at the historical center, and his cousin of 16 years old was helping him. She goes to school, but from 4 to 9 PM at night.
He asks me if I’m vegetarian and if I eat chicken or fish. I tell him I eat anything and everything. He starts doing his laundry. He comes home once every week to visit his parents and hand wash his laundry. Meanwhile, the mechanic was at this point still messing with my car so I slouch over the chair and try to get some shuteye. John goes inside for a bit and comes out with a sleeping pad. He tells me to sleep a bit, and I oblige. He then covers my eyes with a shirt, and the rest of my face as well, saying the sun here is really hot. I try to fall asleep but after 15 minutes or so, I go out and try to figure out what is taking the mechanic so long to take out the turbo.
All of a sudden, it’s time for lunch. And John prepares fish for lunch. His mother joins us as well, and the conversation between the two starts to get serious enough that John seems to be silently sobbing and I excuse myself from the table. At one point, he looked at me and said, “This is Peru.” I wait outside at the mechanic’s shop, and a boy named Luchin comes in and makes small talk with me. I didn’t think too much of it, but he’s just being really friendly and quite simply just wanted someone to talk with. I head over to the car to see how it’s doing with a quarter of its mechanical pieces missing from under the hood. He is a mechanic himself, so he starts talking to me in Spanish about how the car works and asks me to teach him how to say a few words related to cars in English. It’s 2 PM at this point, and John is ready to go.
We head over to the turbo shop first, and the guy says it will cost 480 soles. John asks him to lower the price down AND get it done quicker. The guy lowers it down to 450 soles and tells me to be back at 4:30PM. We take a vanbus there and again to the cultural center as well. That was a pretty fun experience for less than 70 soles cents (centimos). The vans have particular names on them which indicate what routes they’re taking. There is the driver as well as a helper who opens the side door and receives the payment as well. The helper also opens the door or the windows and at each paradero starts screaming out in rapid succession the names of the places that the van is going to. And he does this every ‘bus’ stop, every 2 blocks or so.
John and I walk back to his internet cafe, but only after he makes sure I know which van to take to get back to the taller (the turbo workshop) as well as back to his mother’s place where he says I can stay at for free. This is the last time I see him. I thought he would stay at his business, but he goes off somewhere while I go to the ATM to withdraw enough money to pay for the turbo.
I get on the van just fine, and I’m somewhat getting better at fitting in. I get to the workshop at 4:30 PM, but the guy says another hour is needed. I go use the internet, come back, and wait until 6:30 PM. By then, the sun had set and temperatures were rapidly dropping. I was only wearing a shirt then, believing that I would have been back with the turbo piece by then. After all, when I left the mechanic’s shop, it was 2PM, pretty sunny and hot, and thought the turbo would be ready by 3PM. I’m shivering and it’s so cold that I put my arms inside my shirt. I watch with envy as people with heavy clothing stop by for a few minutes and pick up their pieces. I finally go inside and tell the workshop worker that I don’t care about anything but I just want the turbo to be perfect. He says that’s why it’s taking so long, something about the oil and the pressure level, and I tell him I’ll be back tomorrow morning.
I take a van to the mechanic’s shop at 6:30PM, with the moon in full glow directly above me. But that’s after I eat some shishkabab style beef with potatoes on the sticks for 50 centimos each. I ate 3 beef and 2 pork, and I thoroughly enjoyed both. I had 3 of them on the van when one of the girls is eyeing me either because I look different or because she’s hungry. I offer her a stick and she happily accepts.
I get to the mechanic shop fairly promptly, but the guy is long gone. It’s way too late to do anything, and the shop doesn’t have any lights. I knock on the door, 1) because I’m cold as hell, and 2) because if I am too late, then I need to go out, in my t shirt, and find a hostal to sleep in. The boy Luchin answers the door after a few minutes and says, oh, maestro, como estas? He says the mechanic’s gone, and I tell him that I am trying to get some sleep at John’s parents’ place. I knock on their door that seperates the garage and their house, and they don’t answer. Meanwhile, I talk with Luchin for a bit and realize, to my amazement, that he sleeps in the bus that I thought the mechanics were working on. It’s sitting on the corner of the garage, and I ask him if I can look inside but he kindly refuses. Meanwhile, John’s mom answers the door. It turns out that she was unaware that John had offered up her place, and she is taken back a bit but politely lets me through the door.
At this point, I’m thinking I should have just found a hostal to sleep in. John’s mom goes and prepares some tea for me again, and his dad walks in and starts talking with me. He says he’s 77 years old, has been retired for 22 years, and worked as a federal customs policeman for 30 years. John’s mom later takes me upstairs where she had a room prepared for me. I ask to use the restroom, which is more of a little room underneath the stairs that I have to use the moonlight to see anything around with.
I was thinking about setting an alarm clock so that I would wake up in time to get to the Turbo repair shop tomorrow at 8:30 AM. But I remember that they have roosters here, so I’m quite certain I will wake up at the brink of dawn. Right now, I am just wondering how this ‘new’ turbo is going to affect the engine especially at this altitude and temperature. I think tomorrow is truly the day today was supposed to be, the moment of truth.