JOEL GRIFFETT

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When I reached the town of Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca in mid-December, I could literally see Peru from across this enormous body of water, the highest navigable lake on earth. After overly indulging myself in La Paz I was glad for some peace and quiet for a day or two before I made the short hop over the border at Kasani, from then on towards Puno and Arequipa.

Stuck in my stupor in La Paz, the world’s most half-assed capital city, I had naively overlooked the burgeoning storm circling around Peru. As if I was still in a daze, I stumbled into the first office that looked vaguely open and tried to book a bus to Arequipa.
“No,” said the woman behind the desk very firmly.
“Tomorrow then,” I insisted, assuming the bus had already left.
“No,” she replied again.
“Never?” I exclaimed, glancing back at the sign stood in the street with ‘Arequipa’ written in bold letters.
“At the moment, never,” she said eventually, “there are roadblocks all the way around the city,”
“Puno too?” she nodded. I could get as far as the border in a colectivo and from then on mill around just out of the reach of civilisation. My mind flashed back to before the very long weekend, seeing on Bolivian news trucks in their thousands all backed up on either side of the border. It wouldn’t be a very merry Christmas this year in the Andes.

Given my natural cynicism I almost didn’t believe her, especially since she instead tried to sell me a boat ticket to the islands Sol and Luna that lay just off the coast. I stepped out of the office and asked more companies, all of which gave me the same response, all of which tried to sell me the same boat ticket to the islands. The only thing that differed was the length of time before the roadblocks might let up – 3 days, a week or better still, a completely disinterested shrug as if to say ‘I don’t care about your travels.’ I sat down on a bench in the main square. A row of colectivos stood idle, as did the drivers, who all sat around looking pensive. News from neighbouring Peru wasn’t good for business. No one wanted a ride to the border.

Qué has hecho, Pedro?

Peru has a tumultuous political history and a very tenuous grasp of democracy. Politicians never study history and when it is ignored, it tends to repeat itself. 1992: Alberto Fujimori dabbled with dictatorship, staging a successful coup to become sole leader of Peru. For his sins he now lives comfortably in prison.

2022: Almost exactly 30 years later, Pedro Castillo tries to live out his own Fujimori fantasy and fails miserably. Already on the ropes, Peruvian congress were now preparing their third attempt at impeachment and in order to cement his position, Castillo tried to dissolve the assembly and rule by decree until the next election. Believing the army to be on his side, he tried to push through with his devious means and failed. He was impeached and subsequently imprisoned all in one day. Before he was separated from his family, these are the words his wife uttered:

“Pero qué has hecho, Pedro? Por qué lo has hecho?”
“But what have you done, Pedro? Why did you do it?”

As news of this emerged, I, like the rest of the world, assumed that his deposal was a good thing. A lot of Peruvians don’t seem to agree. Protests exploded all over Peru, particularly in the southern cities of Puno, Arequipa, Ayacucho and Cusco. Roadblocks appeared overnight. Nearly 50 people have been killed in skirmishes with police. I saw one rather unpleasant video on Twitter of someone being shot in the head with a gas canister.

In what can only be described as completely logical for South America, the woman, Dina Boluarte, who has replaced Castillo the failed dictator as Peruvian president is even more unpopular. From afar, it’s very difficult to understand why. Because she’s a woman? Because she’s not from the same party and has very different politics? Perhaps. But one thing might enrage the Peruvians most: she allegedly vowed to never take Castillo’s place should his impeachment prove successful. She has done exactly that. As Vice President, she is the most likely candidate to take over in the interim even if she vowed not to. It’s not like a politician has ever lied before…

The most sensible procedure amidst such chaos would be to prepare for new elections, but she immediately ruled them out and made her excuses. As of January when I write this, new elections have been confirmed for early 2024, but when everything began to implode in December it seemed as if elections were three of four years away and that Peru had to accept Boluarte’s extended interim term at the helm of a floundering country.

Peru has long since been plagued by corruption but not even Congress was corrupt enough to keep hold of Castillo and his often dodgy methods. It can be said that dismissing democracy and declaring yourself dictator is good for stability, if nothing else. The alternative is constant chaos: six presidents in as many years and no end in sight to the turmoil. Western news and western citizens applauded the move to oust Castillo – from dictator to detainee in one day is the ultimate fall from grace – but Peruvians are furious for a convoluted set of reasons.

The plot is finally lost

A 4-day hangover finally began to kick in. The only reason I had evaded reality until now was hope; hope of entering Peru; hope of actually beginning the trail I had set out upon just over 3 months ago. Now here I was blocked at the border, in a town that was Bolivia’s answer to Blackpool or Grimsby. A small, dusty town with a pathetic excuse for a beach and a ‘promenade’ that was little more than wasteland fit only for stray dogs to shit all over. In the sunlight it might have seemed nicer, but right now in the dim, grey light of December it was a depressing place to be stuck. I had two choices: stay here and wait for the first bus to Peru, which could be days or even weeks, or go back to La Paz and play the same waiting game. I wasn’t in the mood for decision making, so I went back to the hotel and sat in the dark for a few hours and then went out to eat some trout.

The next day I trudged back into the town and found that it was even more depressing that I’d thought yesterday. The same signs advertising buses to Peru were still stood on the street. I had lunch and then walked around the square. The same bored faces of the colectivo drivers were still hollering ‘Kasani ya sale’ but there were few takers. Some were headed back to La Paz: the only destination of the larger and far more comfortable buses. I decided to stay at Blackpool’s no pleasure beach another night, because fried trout was slightly more healthy than all the fried chicken I ate in La Paz. The hotel I was in decided on a whim to shut down while I was there so I took that as a sign to leave this nuclear fallout zone and trundle 4 hours back to La Paz, where I could at least book a flight if the situation didn’t clear up.

The sight of a lone man with a backpack is enough for every hawker to, in their own half-assed Bolivian manner, try and win me over. Copacabana was full of people like me now; confused and slightly lost travellers who were all hoping to get to Peru but instead stood around wondering what to do. It is beginning to resemble a refugee camp for middle-class Europeans. They walk into the offices selling bus tickets with the intention of purchasing one bound for Peru and walk out a few minutes later bewildered, clutching a ticket to somewhere else entirely.

One man went far and above his duty. After trying to bundle me into a colectivo, ignoring my insistence that I had a ticket for the bus whose wing mirror I’d just headbutted trying to sidestep him, the elderly one eyed man limped over while I waited on the other side of the road.
“Apostamos? Argentina o Francia,” he asked me.
Somehow I had no idea that he was talking about the World Cup; I stopped paying attention to the coverage after I left Sucre, so he tried another avenue. He rolled up the sleeves of his jumper and showed me a collection of freshly done tattoos: the ace of spades, a dragon, a serpent and the word ‘Valentina’ written in cursive script.
“You live here?” I asked.
“No, I live in La Paz,” he grunted as if the answer was obvious, “I’ve been here 10 days, to see my woman,”
“Your wife?”
“No, a mermaid,” he said with a straight face.
“Where does she live?”
He stared at me as if this was obvious too: in the lake.
“You’ve seen a mermaid?” Another stupid question from me, unless he had a woman he’d never met before.
“Claro,” he nodded.
“How did you find her?”
“I was fishing,” he declared, without a shred of irony. I stifled a smile.
A mermaid is a hell of a thing to pull out of a lake filled with trout. I was so taken aback I didn’t know how to respond.
He lifted up his jumper, exposing beautiful lettering peppered across bloated belly. He held the flab still and told me to read, but I couldn’t because it was Latin. He translated it for me word for word, something about the holy trinity and God being all he needs in life. God, and his mermaid.

The bus I was due to catch sprung into life and the driver revved the engine, the universal sign for ‘hurry up we’re leaving soon’ so I bade Mister Mermaid farewell.
“Hasta luego, amigo,”
“Ciao Papi,” he called after me.
He wasn’t done. No sooner had I taken my seat, he climbed about and began a sermon, finishing with a blessing upon all the passengers aboard. Before he disembarked, he declared there were 3 distinct and special souls on the bus…

Back in La Paz (for the fourth time)

I got back to La Paz and took stock of the situation. The regional airports of Arequipa and Cusco had been swarmed by protestors and were closed temporarily. These cities in the south were plagued by roadblocks, protests and police brutality and a state of emergency has been declared across these cities with curfews after 8pm. I was due to meet some friends from home in Cusco for Christmas and New Year but that looked unlikely now; none of us could get to Cusco and even on the off chance we managed it, the 8pm curfew didn’t sound very appealing.

In La Paz I met a man from Spain, ironically named Pedro, who told me he’d just arrived from Cusco by land. He proudly declared that he bribed his way through the roadblocks and hitched a ride all the way from Cusco to La Paz. This gave me some hope, but when I woke up in the morning and pondered what he’d said it didn’t make any sense. Sat in a tiny plastic chair having my lunch I watched Bolivian news; the roads were still clogged with thousands of trucks on either side. The drivers were lamenting about how Christmas was ruined because they couldn’t get home in time nor would they be paid because of the blockades. There were tales of travellers and tourists all stranded in remote towns all across the Andes, or caught in these queues near the border with nothing to eat or drink. The more I thought about it, the more Pedro’s story didn’t add up.

The final straw was my last visit to the bus terminal in La Paz when I returned once more after Christmas. When I stuck my head into the tiny window of the office selling tickets I was confronted with the suffocating smell of baby shit as the woman within changed her young child. I backed away, out of respect and frankly shock at the stench, leaning awkwardly on the counter until she’d finished. The terminal seemed oddly quiet; I’d already been here a few times and it was always heaving. I glanced through the window again and she was stood there smirking at my awkwardness. She told me buses were suspended indefinitely but hinted at a boat leaving from Copacabana to Puno. She didn’t know how much it cost nor how long it took, which made me think the process was akin to human trafficking. It wasn’t a boat, it was a dinghy across Lake Titicaca. It may have been symbolic to enter Peru by boat just like Trevithick, with added irony of arriving from a landlocked country but it sounded far too vague and Puno was the heartland of rebellious activity.

There was only one realistic option: pay through the nose for a flight to Lima. Then truly begin ‘The Trevithick Trail’