Advertisement
Published: December 27th 2010
Edit Blog Post
The security guard escorted me to the front door, motioned to an official taxi driver and instructed me to pay no more than a Peso for the three hundred meter journey. He pointed at a yellow sign on a building a little further down the street and instructed me to get out there and not to loiter.
Walk right in and don't stop to talk to anyone. It's too dangerous. Good luck, you'll need it. For years I had been following traveller's trip reports. It appeared that Peruvian and Ecuadorian pick-pockets were at war. Not with each other - with tourists and locals alike. Who stole more was a matter of national pride.
Those Ecuadorians? No, no, your wallet is more in danger here in Peru, beamed one salesman as we discussed the two nations. Backpackers left, right and centre were reciting stories about how they had this bag sliced or that pocket picked in a crowd, on a night bus or while on a trek. Anecdotes like this may make many a sensitive person ill at ease and put them off coming here but my twisted mind worked differently. So where do all those stolen cameras end up? I
hadn't seen any posh Peruvian travellers with large SLRs hanging around their necks. They were perfectly content to flash their pocket sized IXUS's around in a 'smaller is better' sort of manner. The gringos I'd talked to with first hand theft experience had all had new gear sent from home, bought it in Miraflores's modern shopping malls that came complete with western prices or gone without. It was time to ask the people on the street.
-
Hola, señorita, where can I find goods that fell off a truck? -
Que? The concept seemed to be alien to these young, fashionable Miraflores chicas. Their mothers were secretive.
Oh, yes, there are such places but don't go there, they would cut me short before changing the topic and talking fluff such as how I like Peru. I'd like it a whole lot more if I could get my hands on some cheap stolen goods, I thought to myself and targeted the señores.
You need to go towards el centro, they offered a little more help.
There are such places there but it is not safe for a gringo. It was obvious they didn't know me. If I can walk
Married or single?
Hats tell the story on Taquile Island around Sao Paulo's dodgy areas solo at four o' clock in the morning with gun toting badasses eying me up or stroll through the back streets of Salvador's Pelourinho district past kids taking hits of glue and sizing up the bulge in my pocket while a blade peers out of theirs, then I did not have an issue with pint sized Peruvians eager to sneak up on me and looking to secretly relieve me of my possessions.
It took me seven attempts to hale a taxi. The price wasn't the problem, it was the destination.
You're crazy, what will you do there? said one, the rest just sped off. Funny thing is, people are scared of places they've never been to. Rumours spread about what happened to a friend of a friend and a place soon gets labelled a no go area. Looking around my third
mercado negro of the day, I didn't see what all the fuss was about. Shop keepers, buyers, security guards...nothing different from the usual. Mobile phones. Mobile phones accessories. Accessories to accessories. The selection was endless but it wasn't what I was looking for. Chinese junk you'll find the world over. Where the hell
is the good stuff?! I want to see rows upon rows of EOS 1D's, two-point-eight aperture zooms so heavy the shelves buckle beneath them; Manfrotto tripods with Arca Swiss ballheads – you know, the things tourists bitch about having had stolen.
The taxi drops me underneath that yellow sign. The driver reiterates to get in quickly and I take a look around. Hm, this is more promising. These are the things that gringos would find missing. There were high end watches on view but they turned out to be fake. Camping equipment made an appearance, yet it seemed to be genuinely new and judging from the prices I was quoted, probably was. Finally I came upon my first camera shop. A few lenses lay underneath a glass case. On shelves in the back were camera bodies. Manual, old and almost certainly not stolen.
Hey, amigo, where can I find a nice new Canon lens for a hundred bucks or less. Something, that may have perhaps fallen of a truck... The astonished looks I was given were getting old quick. One little shop owner after the next seemed to find the concept foreign.
No, no, not in Peru. It didn't
Do you think my skirt is loud?
No, darling, it's perfectly fine matter what approach I tried, these elderly gentlemen were sticking to their story. Either they thought this Spanish speaking whitey was an undercover cop or the majority of reports of camera theft are insurance scams made by gringos before they head back to la-la land. There is of course the off-chance that those smug Ecuadorians really do have the upper hand and it is they that are the undisputed kings of pickpockets and control the sale of stolen goods...I would learn that later.
For now, I gave up on finding a sweet deal and jumped in a taxi.
To the airport, I told the driver. My friend was flying in to join me. It was time to do some sightseeing.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.062s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 11; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0235s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
EdVallance
Edward Adrian-Vallance
different and interesting blog, thanks. It's true that locals are always the worst people to ask about these place as the amount of horror stories they've heard over their lives will end up creating a false impression of a place in their minds