Home: Ulises’s AirBNB

Rett’s intestines continued to settle overnight, but she was still nowhere near healthy enough to ride on from Huanta. But she also wanted to reach the AirBNB we’d booked for three nights in the big city of Ayacucho, and Andrew and his family had suggested that they might be able to take us there just like they had brought us to Huanta. When we tried to call in that favor, they seemed (understandably!) a bit less-motivated to follow through, first trying to see if anyone else they knew could help us out, but dead-ends there led to them personally giving us a huge help once more.

Mom Gloria was absent this time, but Andrew, his dad, and his friend were again along for this excursion, again helping the bikes get strapped back onto the roof (in hindsight, we should have just left them there overnight!) I was secretly glad to have another opportunity to communicate with a Peruvian about Peru in English; we learned that no, they don’t drink the tap water either, that my interpretations of Peruvian vs. US culture weren’t totally off-base (Peru feels much less keeping-up-with-the-Joneses/show-offy to me), and that Andrew definitely has to adjust between driving cultures when he switches countries (and he seems to now prefer the more-orderly American style).

I had already learned from yesterday’s drive how proud Andrew’s parents were of their “milagro” (miracle), who went from a life in their mid-size Peruvian city where he loved American movies, to living and working and succeeding in the United States. But when I asked about the downside of his “success” that has him living a continent away from his family, Gloria got tears in her eyes that reminded my very much of my parents, and the wings that they selflessly helped my brother and I grow, despite knowing that they might lead us to fly away. But Andrew was also very interested to learn about early-retirement concepts, and I suggested that his citizenship in a low cost-of-living country (that he loves) gives him an easy and obvious early-retirement destination that many American FIRE-enthusiasts would be very jealous of.

Unlike yesterday’s drive, where we regretted not being able to bike through the surreal scenery, the ride into Ayacucho was much more enjoyable from inside an SUV, especially as we got closer to the city and its chaos. The narrow, crowded streets of the historic center would have been a nightmare to ride, but they also created an old-world atmosphere that we’ve felt only rarely in Peru. We gave hugs and goodbyes to our life-saving Good Samaritans, but were also glad that they accepted payment, with minimal protest, well above Andrew’s initial suggestion of gas money.

Our new AirBNB host in Ayacucho was just as flexible, happy to just unofficially shift our booking by a day due to our delayed arrival. The unit immediately made us feel like we were in Europe, and a walk to get groceries was enough to make us fall in love with the city, though our very-central location was surely a huge part of that. At the traditional market a couple blocks away, the fruit-and-vegetable vendor we bought from was interested to learn the English words for the items we bought (a first!), and as we moved on, we heard her repeating with amazement our cycling-through-Peru story to other vendors, a nice confirmation that we had actually communicated our story to her in Spanish! At the far end of the market, and older gentleman stopped us just to chat, first guessing that we were French, and then saying a lot of things we couldn’t understand, but maybe talking a bit about politics, while the women at the nearby stalls all laughed good-naturedly at our interaction. It’s small random encounters like that that (unfairly) separate a “great city” from a “mediocre city”.

Our three days were spent mostly letting Rett continue to recover from her illness (and luckily there were no signs that my proximity to her expulsions had infected me), but our walks for supplies were enough to convince us that we wanted to spend more time in this city, so we added another two nights onto our AirBNB booking. We designated Friday, our second-to-last day, as the day for our major exploration, though I was doubtful that we would find enough entertainment to justify Rett’s 9:30am start-time.

But that’s because I hadn’t anticipated the class of school kids doing artwork at Plazoleta Santa Teresa. I was just trying to get a picture of the church (one of Ayacucho’s supposed biblically-significant 33), but a few of the boys were excited to hold up their drawings when they saw my camera. And then a girl came directly to say hello and ask questions, and with the ice broken, we were soon surrounded by the entire class, asking us about bands we like, asking us to sign their artwork (some of which were quite good and I felt bad defacing, but they insisted!), and causing consternation for their teacher, who was torn between giving them the “art” education they were supposed to be having, and this impromptu social learning opportunity (he rightly recognized that the latter was more rare and valuable). We spent nearly 30 minutes of our day right there, and it was among the most-rewarding 30 minutes we’ve had in Peru. The kids were just the right age, still young enough to not feel the need to hide their interest in these strange gringos, but old enough that their interest was genuine and produced good questions.

We continued on our ad-hoc walking tour, where I was proud of my ability to correctly guess at worthwhile parts of the city based simply on the street structure on Google Maps (or is it just that any randomly-thrown dart at a map of Ayacucho would lead us to a worthwhile location)? We discovered that we should have been going to the Plaza Quattro grocery store all along; while the Maxis was quite good and had drawn us repeatedly to the historic streets, at the Plaza Quattro I got myself a microwave lasagna, they had Reese’s NutRageous bars, and a whole load of local “VRAEM” high-end chocolate! Then at a “biomarket” just a block from our place, they even had Bob’s Red Mill Nutritional Yeast!

We’ve stayed in many places in the Peruvian Andes that sit around 10,000 feet above sea-level (like Huaraz), and at these latitudes, that equates to a “cool paradise” climate where space-heating/cooling, while maybe desirable, isn’t necessary (it literally doesn’t exist anywhere). But Ayacucho, 1000 feet lower, seems to be even more-perfect. Inside, we never needed to do any “tricks” to warm up or cool down our AirBNB, and normal bedcovers, without any of the heavy wool blankets, were sufficient to make sleeping comfortable. Outside, I spent the day unbothered in pants and long sleeves, while Rett was fine with arms and legs bare, with no down jackets necessary even into the evening.