chanchan
So I finally found myself crouched on the floor of a van, clinging to whatever I could cling to, as it wound its way out of Trujillo, and I wondered, again, what the fuck I was playing at. "Sure," the French guy in Bogota had said, "Macchu Picchu is nice, but Chan-Chan -- c'est mieux." I shrugged. "Sure," I said, probably.
But I found myself in Trujillo after all, breaking up the day-long bus from Cuenca to Lima, altitude sickness grumbling in my lungs, and very few fucks left to give, and then on the floor of a rattling van, and then dropped off alone in the desert, the Andes shadowy in the distance.
"Well, fuck," I thought, philosophically. I grabbed my backpack and began trudging up the thing most closely approximating a road.
"Ay, senorita!" called a voice accompanying a rumbling engine. "Puedo ayudarte?"
"Um, I said, intelligently.Â
He tilted his head in the direction of the endless desert. "Chan-Chan?"
Fuck it, I thought.
"Fuck it," I said. "Si, Chan-Chan." He gestured towards the passenger door.
Five minutes and no murder later, I waved goodbye and gave him a handful of change; I never knew his name.