The Long Way Back–A Short Trip To Peru, Part 7
Stephan and I have been caught in a pandemic lockdown at a Peruvian Amazon lodge. The two-week quarantine order has been extended three times. I’ve run out of antidepressants and been sick during the six weeks we've waited to go home to our sailboat in Ecuador.
SV Hanalei’s Ecuadorian papers have just expired. We can’t extend her temporary import unless we’re in country, but the border is still closed. It’s time to evacuate to the U.S. To strengthen my immune system, I just did a Kambô cleanse.
The twenty-nine hour road trip to Lima.
New Smells
Intense odors assault my nose as I walk to past Wasaí’s plant lounge. Humus. Charcoal. Rain.
If there were blood on the ground, I’d smell it.
One use of Kambô is to sharpen hunters’ senses. Since my encounter with Phyllomedusa bicolor, my sense of smell is more acute, as though it has a new dimension. I see differently, too.
I just can’t describe it without sounding–not to mention writing–like I’m stoned.
A wisp of breeze vaults the balcony’s thatch and clambers through teak slats but does not linger. It prefers invisibility to great effect. Palm fronds arc, droop and finger walk, each to a different time-delayed reaction.
See what I mean? I wonder why I didn’t think of ingesting frog poison earlier.
Official portrait of Guillermo’s car.
Four Days
It’s Wednesday, the beginning of a four-day trip home, to the U.S.A, not the boat. Guillermo, who will drive us the nine hours to Cusco, has already arrived.
It’s time to say goodbye to our quarantine pod. We might meet the other travelers again, but not the staff who cared for us. Margarita understands all too well that guests–even when they stay two months–are only passing through. She hands me two large plastic bags and wipes her eyes. They’re filled with snacks of jungle fruits and Brazil nuts, something to remember her by.
A doctor from the Ministry of Health appears to test us for Covid. Covid tests don’t measure the effects of Kambô, how strong resistance is to the virus.
This Covid test doesn’t even test for Covid. There are no swabs. The doctor’s only tools are infrared temperature gun and pulse oximeter. Peru doesn’t have that many test kits, so they’re saving them for real outbreaks. Why waste them on someone without symptoms when there’s no Covid here?
I’m tired of the circular logic. Anyway, I don’t feel vulnerable or anxious.
He shoots our temperatures. Normal.
Normal? Is anything normal anymore?
The doctor clamps the white pulse oximeter on my right index finger. The gadget reports an oxygen level of 95%. Close enough. He signs a form attesting we are Covid-free.
On paper, we are good to go.
That’s it? If that’s all the testing the other eighteen passengers get, our bus ride will be a masked crapshoot.
Not very anxious, at least. I’ll definitely wear the mask and gloves our Still In Peru WhatsApp group advised.
Tourist Police
Next stop, tourist police. Guillermo already submitted his credentials. They joined a stack of forms and letters required for travel under the state of emergency, like proof of confirmed flights, seats on the charter bus from Cusco, and a note from our government excusing us from quarantine.
Letter from Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Chief of National Police:
I am writing to you to inform you that North American citizens Christine Myers and Stephan Gerard Regulinski will travel tomorrow, Wednesday, May 6, from Puerto Maldonado to Cusco, in accordance with the indications obtained in the attached Note. It will be greatly appreciated to grant them the facilities of the case.
In this regard, the Foreign Ministry has received the aforementioned diplomatic note requesting the authorization of the case, which has been granted so that the aforementioned US citizens can arrive in Cusco in a timely manner to take the flight assigned to Lima.
Without other particular, I take the opportunity to express my feelings of personal consideration.
[Google Translation]
The follow-me truck pulls in front of us.
No one leaves town without an escort. A few weeks ago, rocks were thrown at departing tourists. Some Peruvians still blame foreigners for bringing the disease. Some are angry at our special treatment and reprieve from lockdown. Thousands of Peruvians are stranded, camping in Lima. They want to go home, too. Some have started walking.
To make sure no one switches out the foreigners, an officer takes our picture standing between Guillermo’s car and the police pickup. Once everything is matched up properly, he places a handwritten sign on the dashboard: TRASLADO HUMANITARIO.
Humanitarian Transfer.
All systems are go.
“Follow Me” vehicle escorts us to the town limits.
We stay behind the truck until it veers of at the highway, then we’re on our own.
We’re traveling light. After months of daily wear in jungle environment, the shoes and clothing we brought for our ten-day trip have disintegrated and been jettisoned.
For the first time I can remember, our luggage contains no boat parts. Will we see SV Hanalei again, or have we abandoned her to Covid?
The first checkpoint is near an empty, one-horse town. There’s no roadblock like there were in Nigeria, no soldiers pointing loaded guns, only an SUV parked off the road. Two national police, one of whom is leaning into the vehicle’s scant shade while the other looks at his phone hoping for a signal.
Guillermo presents the usual papers, along with authorization from the tourist police, the ministry of foreign affairs, the army.
The cops check them without much fuss. They knew we were coming, who to look for. A driver would be taking quite a risk to travel without papers. The fines are too steep. No one would do it–unless they were sure the army and cops would accept a bribe. Even then, seven checkpoints equals a lot of bribes. The cops politely clear us to proceed.
We follow the river for a few hours and pass unauthorized gold mines in the midst of forest preserve.
Where are the police and soldiers now?
Continental Divide
Eventually we turn west, climbing through the Rockies. On this side of the continental divide, mountain streams rush east to the Amazon basin. After that they’ll slow down, take their sweet time, curve indolently through the lungs of the planet.
I’ve slowed enough to feel rooted in present. I’m so zen I barely notice I’ve been listening to the same Bon Jovi cassette for four hours.
Should I attribute that to Kambô?
At the next checkpoint, we step outside for disinfection. Men in hazmat suits spray us, our shoes and the car, inside and out. Soldiers examine our passports, compare photos to faces, verify the numbers on our papers.
They record our names, charting the vessel’s progress so they’ll have an idea where to look for us in case we disappear. It reminds me of the Pacific Seafarer’s Ham radio network, reporting our position every day of a three-week passage.
If I had to choose between the sea and land, I’d choose land. Land makes life possible; the sea makes it worthwhile. I study butterflies, listen to birdsong, smell meadow in the air. I wish we could stop and hike for days, remain in the before-Covid times.
Along with everyone else in the world.
Guillermo’s car wends higher. As a child I pictured frigid, snowy Andes. Here, they’re more like Switzerland in summer than the Himalayas.
We encounter more checkpoints, more government representatives. Our temperatures are taken again and again. If we get sick, there’ll be quite a paper trail.
Beyond the treeline I spot a few glaciers high up. A child is running barefoot at 12,000 feet, an altitude where I struggle to catch breath. The soil looks thinner, rockier. We’re going too fast to smell it or I would.
Personal oxygen tank.
Kambô may have honed my senses and immune system, but it can’t protect me from altitude sickness. By the time we reach Cusco, I have the telltale headache.
Oxygen would help, but I’m saving my personal-sized tank for later. I have no idea how much time it’s good for. The road to Lima passes through 14,000 feet, an altitude that leaves me gasping, face pressed against the window, sucking air.
Still, I’m relieved to finish the first leg.
El Templo de la Sagrada Familia, Cusco, Peru (photo by S. Regulinski)
I slip into the certainty of the western traveler. Tomorrow we’ll join eighteen fellow strandees on a chartered bus for the twenty-hour trip to Lima. Friday, we’ll board a flight to Miami. Passports will be stamped. Hotels will be open. On Saturday, flights to Dallas and Seattle will deliver us home.
The trip will take longer than advertised–much, much longer–but I don’t know that yet.
Next week: Landslide.
Fair Winds,
Christine
