This morning I sip my first Inca Cola and tonight my first Pisco Sour. And I only cry three times in between.
The first time I heard of these beverages was 1978, when I was supposed to have traveled here to Peru with an expedition from LSU´s Museum of Zoology. My friends wrote to me, on paper, of their adventures. I enrolled in a marine biology field course on the Gulf coast instead, and missed the experience.
Some thirty-three years later, I arrive in Lima, thanks to my adventuring friend Carol. She knew me when I passed up that first trip. She came here just a few years later herself, and has been coming ever since. Now she does these tours for a living, and had space on one that I couldn’t pass up.
Because I signed up late, I am booked on a flight separate from the group from Lima to Puerto Maldonado this morning. After changing planes in Cusco, I am to arrive an hour late, still in plenty of time to join the group for the motorized canoe trip up the Tambopata River.
As we sit still on the tarmac at the Lima airport, listening to the announcement about the flight delay, I become concerned about making my connection. When we arrive in Cusco over an hour behind schedule, my connecting flight well on its way, I race to the LanPeru counter to implore them to put me on the very next flight. The woman I find tells me the next flight is tomorrow. This is the first time I cry, but not the last.
Lucelia, the gate agent, looks at me with compassion. My mind races through possible scenarios as it dawns on me that I will not be with the group for the lodge tonight or the six hour canoe trip tomorrow to the research station. I explain my situation, that the group will move on without me into the jungle and I do not know how I will reconnect with them. I am not sure that if I miss the boat trip tomorrow that there will be other boats going that way for days.
I follow Lucelia as she begins working to reschedule my flight. The new direction of the changed trip begins to settle in, and I wait, thirty minutes or more, for the arrangements to be completed. I lean against a wall, the possibility of being stranded in Cusco for a week dawning on me. I cover my face and sob silently into my hand. This is my second cry.
I grieve the loss of the trip I expected and imagine new scenarios for my week. Perhaps a writing retreat in Cusco is what this trip will be, instead of a jungle adventure. I guess that wouldn't be so bad. Lucelia appears again and gives me my new boarding pass, and a hotel voucher, along with ten soles for a taxi, “Five to go now, five to come back here tomorrow.” With this, she tips her hand to the taxi drivers outside who will certainly ask more from this green Gringa tourista. Message received.
It is the second taxi who accepts my bargaining for “cinco (5) soles” after beginning at quince (15). I get to the hotel and rush to find the internet to email Carol and also to get from her earlier email the emergency contact numbers. I print the page of phone numbers and head to my room.
After reaching the second person I call, who speaks fairly good English, I learn that the arrangements have been adjusted. And there is a boat going all the way to the research station on Tuesday. Carol knows where I am. Someone will meet me at the airport tomorrow morning and I can begin my jungle adventure. I will meet up with the group in two days. I begin to breathe.
Once I hang up, I weep for the third time today. Except these tears signal release, relief, discharge. I feel grateful, and rescued. My body is shifting gears. I begin to enjoy the idea of the next two days on my own. I think of that Spanish phrasebook I almost bought at the LA airport. I head out to explore Cusco at dusk, and come back to enjoy my first Pisco Sour.
