Latest Flickr set is here.

Quick Highlights:

• Both myself and Lima were unaffected by the 5.8 magnitude earthquake in Peru early this morning and, in fact, I didn’t even realize it happened.
• Thanks to Peru’s Black Market Mall, Polvos Azules (Blue Dust), my laptop is fixed.
• I move in to my apartment in two days.
• I will most likely be impersonating an American dentist visiting Peru under the guise of observing the nation’s dental health system next week. This is a ploy to allow me to go visit elementary schools to participate in the preventative oral hygiene education outreach program. I will wear a lab coat and pretend to not speak Spanish. Details pending.

Laptop Crisis Averted

My laptop problem is solved. Despite the fact that the power adapter for my laptop showed voltage at the multimeter at Radio Shack, it is actually broken. This means the laptop itself is not the problem, which is good because there is not a single service center for this brand in all of South America. It would have to be shipped to the States (expensive), fixed (time consuming), and then shipped back (also expensive). Apparently I would also have to pay a tax on 30% of the value of the goods shipped in to Peru (said value is set arbitrarily by the dude in customs) AND packages also have a way of disappearing.

So how did I solve the problem? Why with:

The Wild Goose Chase of Aught Eight through The Computer Underground and a Lima Black Market

It took more than five hours and talking to a million people, but I finally found a charger for my laptop. It’s made for something completely different than my actual laptop, but, by God, it works.

After ascertaining that the charger was indeed the problem, the guy at Radio Shack said I should go to “Avenue Wilson” to look for a charger. I was given no more instructions than this. I met up with Gaby and away we went to Avenue Wilson where we found and wandered the hallowed and very casual halls of what I call “The Computer Underground.”

The Computer Underground is actually a dizzyingly large building with 4 or 5 floors and thousands of small booths selling computer stuff. While quite awesome, it is not organized; you just have to go from booth to booth to ask for what you need. The building houses vendors that sell almost everything PC-related – computers, accessories, monitors, printers, ink, etc. etc. Most booths have a barker that rattles off what they’re selling as you walk past them.

The reason I said they sell “almost” everything, is because NO ONE there sells the specific, 9.5 volt, 2.5 amp power adapter my laptop requires. We asked hundreds of people, and no one had what I needed. What was interesting about it, though, was that rarely will anyone tell you, “No, I don’t have that and I don’t know where you can find it.” We got offers to buy other incorrect chargers and, most of all, sent on a wild goose chase from booth to booth with false suggestions of where we could find what we need. Almost everyone would send us on our way with some sort of generic suggestion like, “Oh, go to the second floor – there’s a guy that sells them there.” or “The booth behind you sells them. Check there.” I stopped believing anyone after an hour or so and decided that Peruvians just don’t like to say, “I don’t know.”

I’d finally had enough and we went on a walk to a completely different building that had been suggested: Polvos Azules – Lima’s official black market. I thought The Computer Underground was big, but the Blue Market is MASSIVE. Chocked full of many thousands of small booths selling everything: cheap clothes, cheap electronics, cheap jewelry, pirate DVDs, etc. etc. I loved it.

We finally found a guy who had a power supply for a Phillips portable DVD player that is roughly the same as what my laptop uses. We tried it, and to my absolute delight, it worked. I had been instructed by expert-haggler Gaby to act like I was not excited about it to allow her to bargain better. She managed to knock about 20 Soles off the price the guy was asking and my problems were solved. Nice.

Gigantor Pirate DVD Market

The part of the Blue Market that impressed me the most, though, was the pirate DVD section. I thought the little pirate DVD carts in Cuzco were impressive, but the selection at the Blue Market is absolutely vast, organized, and ridiculous. There are countless booths of pirate DVDs, each containing thousands of titles. They have movies currently in theaters, old movies, anime, full TV series’ – anything. I asked how much it would cost to buy all five seasons of the HBO show “The Wire” and the girl told us it would be 50 Soles for 20 discs – A little less than $18. Crazy. Here’s a quick and cheesy walk through the aisles:

Pirate DVD Section of Polvos Azules in Lima from Nathan Shipley on Vimeo.

Washing Machine Shopping with Peruvian Dental Surgeons

I went shopping for a washing machine yesterday with Gaby and her co-worker Cesar, who is always laughing and quite awesome. I met Cesar last week when I got to walk through a Peruvian hospital with him and Gaby. At lunch on hospital tour day, Cesar introduced me to a tasty root juice that he said is the natural Peruvian Viagra and that I might need to cover myself as we walked down the street after leaving the restaurant. The results weren’t as dramatic as he made them out to be, but I knew I liked him when he said I was going to be a “tripod walking down the street” and that “women in front of me should be careful.”

This was in the afternoon – they finished with their patients and, rather than staying at the office, decided to go washing machine shopping instead. I tagged along and it was fun.

More Cheap Taste Delights!

Food here continues to be fantastic, filling, and stupidly cheap. Full menu lunch prices at small restaurants are in the $1.35 to $2.25 range. This includes a starter such as soup, calamari, or a potato concoction, followed by “segundos” which is your choice of a main dish, and a drink – which is usually a light fruit juice.

Here are some recent meals:

Fried fish, hot soup, rice, and lentils – $1.67.

Tasty steak and noodles with aji sauce and drink. Was about $1.83 and included the above-pictured really good calamari as a starter.

Biding My Time at Home Peru

I have been staying in a private room at a different hostel in Lima called “Home Peru.” It’s in an old, classic home in the Miraflores area. It’s been fun and I’ve continued to meet people from all around the world.

Peru Observations, Part 1: Traffic, Police, Poop, Prostitutes, and General Nose-Pickery

Traffic:
Car horns are for using. A lot. And not just your standard “Meep! Meep!” but car horns of many different varieties, most of which sound like frantic car alarms. Taxis honk to alert possible fares to their presence, combis honk for the same reason, all vehicles honk to warn pedestrians that they might get hit (whether or not they are moving towards the road), and, of course, cars honk at each other most of all.

Traffic lanes are merely a suggestion. Whichever vehicle is bigger or ballsier wins the right of way. Never assume that cars will slow down to give right of way to a pedestrian.

Caliente Traffic Cops:
I will not lie and tell you that there is not an allure to most of the female transit cops in Peru. They certainly have a mystique with their perfectly pulled back hair, uniforms, and stern-ish looks on their faces.

Dogs:
There are dogs running all over the place in every city I’ve been to. They are amazingly adept at not getting hit by cars. They don’t seem to bark either. They do seem to poop freely, often, and with reckless abandon.

Public Nose-Picking:
Nose-picking is big here. It seems to happen publicly, too. This guy was actually digging for gold nuggets for at least a minute and a half while he read the weekly specials at the grocery store.

Poop in Peru:
Maybe I’m immature, but I seem to notice more things about poop than I do back home.

Bathrooms are usually stinkier here because used toilet paper is to be thrown in the trash can next to the toilet rather than flushed to prevent blockages.

My leavings were unnervingly dark for a 4 day period last week. Things seem to be back to normal now, but trips to the stall had a rather sinister undercurrent for a while. The mystery remains unsolved.

Staying in hostels with unisex dorm-style bathrooms has proven to me that even pale, waifish, blonde Dutch girls can make sounds like truckers fueled by a day’s worth of Spicy Slim Jims, coffee, and diesel fumes at around 2 in the morning at a truck stop off of I-10 in Nowhere, Texas.

Prostitutes:
If you’re a gringo and you walk around the Calle de Pizzas at night in Miraflores, you will get hit up by prostitutes. They’re generally young, attractive in a slutty way – not like the wrinkled old bags blowing down the streets at home? – and will ask if you “want company.” Sorry, ladies.

Peruvian Beer:
It is good. Lighter but still quite full flavored. Actually not unlike High Life. Cusquena would be my favorite, but I’ve been drinking “Cristal” beer most of all because it shares a name with famous champagne and lends itself to quoting hiphop lines that no one laughs at (“some of that ol’ kris-staayl” or “money, hoes, cristal flows,” etc.). It is the self-dubbed “Cerveza de los Peruanos.”

Security Through Obscurity

I’ve decided that the best way to carry around money is not in a wallet, but rather, in a notebook that goes in my front pocket. The money goes in a flap in the notebook and nothing of value is even in my back pockets. Credit / ATM cards never even leave my hostel unless they’re going to be used.

Additionally, when I needed to take my laptop to the Wild Goose Chase, I opted to put it inside a common yellow plastic grocery bag rather than in a backpack or mjore substantial bag that looks worth stealing.

Stay tuned for more Lima dispatches!

Again, this posts Flickr set is here.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS