I had the “American Breakfast” at the Hotel Bracamonte and finished weaving the black and red pulsera which I started yesterday. Today was one of those days where I had little to do but wait around killing time.
I had my bus ticket for 20:30 hrs. tonight and my room had to be vacated at 13:00 hrs. I swam in the hotel swimming pool and sat reading in the sun for the rest of the morning. When 13:00 hrs. finally arrived, I went for a walk into town, leaving my baggage in storage at the hotel. The manageress warned me that now, as a non-resident I would have to pay 50 Intis to use the swimming pool.
I bought some stale monkey nuts and ate them in the shade along the seafront. I then went for a beer in the shady upstairs bar of the Estrella Marina. It was open to a nice view of the bay but this also meant that it was at the mercy of the stiff breeze which kept the shell mobiles spinning and clattering, and even brought one crashing down on to the floor.
I ate in the Pisagua after a long wait while they did a good job of cooking the fish in a spicy yellow sauce. I returned to the hotel and sat at a table killing time and getting progressively more bored, defacing the Trujillo Tourist Brochure. This tedium eventually drove me to take another walk into town.
I walked out along the pier for the first time. A lot of locals were fishing with hand lines and fishermen on their distinctive straw canoe boats checked their nets which were secured to the pier. I then walked to the dusty northern extremity of the town and back to the hotel to sit in a deck chair on the high sun deck and further doodle on the tourist leaflet.
The Monty Python phrase “Suddenly nothing happened”! came to mind. I was sobbing with boredom. At 17:00 hrs. I went to the hotel bar and ordered a cheese sandwich, a huge slice of apple pie and a coffee.
Two new arrivals called me over. I thought they looked like Germans, but they turned out to be two English lads, Piers and James. We had a good chat and they showed me their colourful joint diary. Both of them were taking a year off (gap year) before starting university. They told me that tonight there was a party on at the Colonial Hotel. Typical! I had to leave for Huaráz.
At 19:30 hrs. I had to tear myself away. A music cassette was now playing in the bar, which was providing good music from The Pogues, The New York Dolls, Lou Reed, etc., but I had a bus to catch. I left and caught a bus almost immediately. Luckily the bus strike was over, but unfortunately it broke down on the outskirts of Trujillo.
I transferred to another bus and got off too early by mistake, meaning that I had to hurry across town, through the window-shopping Saturday night crowd, to the Chinchay Suyo Bus Yard. I boarded the bus at 20:28 hrs. and we left five minutes later.
It was a big, comfortable Volvo coach which roared along the coast road through Chimbote to Puerto Casma and then went up into the mountains. I dozed comfortably in my reclining chair.
A Peruvian sitting next to me on the bus told me that the people of Bolivia were monkeys so I should take plenty of bananas when I go there!
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