Last weekend the three of us went to Piura, Peru for a short trip. The main reason for the trip was to attempt to fix the immigration status of Christina and myself. In order to do that we both had to leave the country for a while and re-enter. Christina needed to do it to register herself as an Ecuadorian citizen (despite the fact that her birth certificate is legally registered here in Ecuador and she has an Ecuadorian passport - neither of which were easy to do - she still had to leave the country and come back in again so that they could put her name in the computer at the border). And I had to leave the country and re-enter again to renew my visa. Since both of us came in on tourist visas that had already expired (yes, we should have renewed them before they expired; and no, we didn't do it in time), we were required to pay a fine, to the tune of $200 each (ouch!).
Before we left we were aware of the issue with the fine so we tried to pull a few "palancas" to see if we could get out of it. Lucho's sister, Narcissa, knows some of the heavyweights at the police station so we went to see one of them to ask for his help. He took us to the office of the Migration Police in Loja and the woman there looked at our passports and told us that there was no way we could avoid paying the $200 fine for Christina but since my visa was a little different I didn't have to pay the fine. She told us to go down to Macará (a border town about 3.5 hours away), cross the border, hang out for a few hours and come back to renew our visas. She was going to personally call the staff at the border and let them know that we were coming. That was on Wednesday. We decided to leave on Saturday and spend the night in Piura, Peru because Lucho's friend had told us that food and lodging were cheap and there were lots of shopping opportunities.
So Saturday morning we drove down to Macará and hired someone to drive us to Piura (for various reasons Lucho did not want to drive in Peru). After a quick lunch we piled into our guide, Patricio's, air-conditioned SUV (a welcome change from our truck because it was hot and humid in Macará) and headed to the border (about a 5 minute drive away). The policeman who reviewed our passports looked to be one of those stereotypical arrogant bureaucrats; one of those guys who uses his limited power to drive home the fact that he is "in charge" for the moment. When we arrived he was chastizing a young guy for not renewing his visa in time. We asked him if someone from Loja had called him to inform him that we were coming. He answered, "No". I had a sinking feeling. As he was taking his sweet time reviewing our passports Christina started to get antsy, so I took her to the car (fortunately Patricio had left the car running with the air conditioning on) and kept her busy playing with her dolls. The next time I looked up I saw Mr. Arrogant waving my passport around and shouting something about the "multa" (fine). Then Lucho was making calls on his cell and Mr. Arrogant was making calls on his cell with my passport flying around in his hands. Finally Lucho and Patricio came back and said that the police weren't going to let me get by without paying the fine. To make matters worse, the fine had to be paid at the bank, and it was Saturday afternoon and the banks were closed. We could have waited in Macará until Monday, but Christina only had 24 hours to leave and come back to get her official stamp. We were stuck. Lucho and Patricio even tried to bribe Mr. Arrogant, but it didn't work. Then we were told that we could get some kind of temporary pass to go to Piura for the night, return to Ecuador on Sunday, and register Christina as a dual citizen when we crossed the border. Then we could stay the night in Macará, pay the fine at the bank Monday morning, cross the border, come back, and renew my visa. We really didn't have to go all the way to Piura on Saturday night, but we had already contracted with Patricio for the drive, and we were curious to see what the city was like. So we took the temporary passes and headed to Piura.
As soon as we crossed over the border we noticed that the all the cars and taxis in Peru were much older and worn-out than the ones in Ecuador. Peru, at least northern Peru, appears to be a lot poorer than Ecuador. As we drove along the mountains gave way and we found ourselves in a flat, hot, dusty valley. Patricio told us that there were very few local buses or trucks for hire in this part of Peru, and that in place of buses people moved around old, white Toyota Corolla hatchbacks. We passed lots of them, filled to the brim with people, and piled high on top with stuff, the spot in the back was called the "suitcase" spot and that person paid half price. Patricio said that he had seen people transport animals, even a cow (not sure if I believe that one) in these old vehicles.
In the cities most of the vehicles were moto-taxis (motorcycles attached to a small carriage-like seat) or small yellow taxis. The first relatively big city that we went through, Sullana, was full of moto-taxis. According to Patricio, 90% of the taxis were thieves and if you took one there was a better chance that he would rip you off rather than take you to your destination. This may or may not be true, but at any rate, we just drove through town in our SUV and took pictures of the taxis from the window. Shortly thereafter we arrived in Piura and found our hotel. Piura was also filled with moto-taxis and small yellow taxis. One of the benefits of this is that the pollution level on the streets was much less than what you would find in the average Ecuadorian city with its multitudes of smoke-spewing diesel buses. The noise level was a little less, but not much, because Peruvian taxi drivers honk their horns constantly. There was also a pervasive chemical-like smell, that I think was from the pesticides that were sprayed in the nearby fields.
Once we had checked into our hotel (which turned out to be about twice the price of what we had been told it would be) we decided to check out the town, looking for the famous low priced merchandise. There were lots of stores, and things like clothes and shoes were definitely cheaper than Ecuador, but the styles and quality weren't very good. After trying to squeeze into many extremely tight (supposedly size large) blouses, I decided to give up trying to find clothes that I like in this part of the world. Everything around here is just too tight, too low-cut, too ruffly, or too sparkly for my taste. Plus the material is about the thickness of tissue paper. That must be why the shirts only cost about $3 each.
The Friday before our trip Christina had come home from school with the desire to get her face painted. Apparently her teacher had painted a couple of her classmate's faces but had run out of time to paint hers. So on Saturday morning, as we were leaving Loja, she started saying "I want to paint my face!". We explained to her that face painting was usually done during special occasions, like birthday parties, but it was like talking to a brick wall. As the day wore on she became more insistent. "I WANT TO PAINT MY FACE", became her refrain. Fortunately for us, as we were walking around Piura on Saturday night, we ran across some women who were painting kid's faces for about $1 each. Christina got a butterfly on her face, with lots of glitter. When we got back to the hotel she made me take a ton of pictures of her with the face paint before we washed it off in the shower. But, I was happy because I thought she had been "cured" of the face painting bug.
The next morning we decided that clothes shopping in Piura was a waste of time so we asked Patricio to take us somewhere that where we could buy handicrafts. He said there was a place about 10 minutes to the south called Catacaos, where there were lots of items to buy. While we were eating breakfast, Christina started in with her refrain, "I WANT TO PAINT MY FACE!". Throughout the day she would repeat it over and over again. Later she would start getting mad because were weren't asking people were we could find someone to paint her face.
Catacaos turned out to be a nice little town with lots of cute, crafty things to buy. I bought some jewelry and Lucho purchased a set of vases with interesting geometric patterns. While we were checking out the crafts a young kid approached us and gave us a flyer about a place called Narihualla where there were ruins and a museum about the Tallan civilization. We had some time to kill so we decided to check it out. On the way there our guide filled us in on the Tallanes. Apparently they were a matriarchial society. According to our young guide, the men stayed home and took care of the children and the women went out to hunt and work in the fields. When we arrived at the museum we were approached by a group of kids, and one of them offered to be our guide. With the two kids as our guides we entered the museum. It was small but neat and organized. Our new guide showed us some of the artifacts, including some hammer-looking things that he said were used by the Tallans to sacrifice their children to the gods (ugh). Then we walked around the ruins, which looked to me like a big, dusty hole in the ground with a nice view of the countryside. There was also an old church on the site, long since abandoned. Once back at the museum we ran into a group of "Perros Viringos" or Peruvian Hairless Dogs. According to local legend these dogs will cure allergies, asthma and reumatism. All you have to do is sleep in the same bed with them. This appears to be the same species of dog that Peru offered to Barack Obama for his allergic daughter.
On the way back from Narihualla I was talking with our guide and I found out that his name was Cristian and he was 10 years old. He had 2 sisters, and the oldest one was a driver of one of those moto-taxis. Back in Catacaos, we ate an excellent lunch of traditional Peruvian food at a local restaurant, paid Cristian for his services, and headed back for Ecuador. It was about a 3 hour drive and along the way Christina remembered that she wanted to paint her face. She repeated her request over, and over, and over again (in English and Spanish) throughout the trip. Our attempts to explain to her that face painting is not a common activity on Pan-American Highway between Piura, Peru and Macará, Ecuador fell on deaf ears. She was convinced that we could find someone to paint her face, if we just looked hard enough. With that refrain in the background we arrived at the border between Peru and Ecuador. Crossing over was uneventful and they stamped Christina's passport with the necessary stamp and entered her into the computer as a dual citizen of Ecuador and the United States.
That night we stayed in Macará in a hotel that was a lot newer, cleaner, and cheaper than the one we had stayed at in Piura. The next morning Christina woke up with one thought in her head - she wanted to paint her face! (surprise, surprise). We told her to look out for kids with painted faces and to let us know if she saw one so that we could ask them were they painted their faces. That seemed to distract her (a bit). After breakfast Lucho went to the bank to pay the fine while I got our suitcases together. Then we called Patricio and asked to help us at the border. He took us down there and helped us bribe the Peruvian border guards so that they would give us an entrance and exit visa on the same day (to avoid spending another night). Luckily it was a different Ecuadorian guard this time and he was the "nice" one. He stamped my passport and gave me the coveted 3 month visa. Now I'm legal again in this country and next week Lucho is going to Quito to submit the paperwork (again) to request my resident visa. We're all crossing our fingers that it goes through this time!
On Tuesday Christina went back to school and came home with... a painted face!!! Apparently her teacher had the time to paint all the kids in her class that day. Since then she hasn't been asking to paint her face evey 5 minutes. Seems like the face-painting fever has passed. Whew!