Stranded

I grabbed a handful of change and we headed to the street to catch the trusty EM-17 bus.  The brown and white rolling piece of junk was like a thousand others in Lima, but the numerical and color code meant it was heading to Miraflores, a touristy district near Lima’s oceanfront.  My girls had gotten an invitation from one of my colleagues – they could borrow some much coveted books from her library, but they had to help her unpack it.  They had graciously accepted the challenge.

On the way down, a violin player had stepped onto the bus, to play for us in the hopes of a few coins.  He wasn’t bad; my youngest was sure she had heard his song before.  He finished it and turned around with his small change purse in his hand.  I saw that he was blind.  I gave him a handful of small coins, maybe a sole in all.

A short time later, we dismounted and walked the remaining few blocks to my friend’s apartment, where they spent the next two hours sorting and shelving books – not with enthusiasm, but the labor was free, and at least something was getting done.  I spent a bit of my free time drooling over her electronic piano, one of the best I had played.  We would undoubtedly share some sheet music as time went by.  The girls finished, or more accurately, they were finished working, so we left the apartment at 6:30, enough time that we should be able to catch the bus before dark.  We headed back up to the main bus route, Benavides.

We waited there a half hour, which wasn’t unusual on a Sunday night, since the buses had been known to be sparse.  After we had waited another half hour, I fished around in my pocket and counted my change.

I had a total of 7 soles, four 50 centimo pieces and 5 singles.  A dollar is about 2 soles and  60 centimos.  On weekends, the bus cost s/1.20 each.  I was 20 centimos short of the possibility of a two-bus combination to get home, which would be our option if we couldn’t find the right bus.  We needed to wait for the brown and white EM-17, or a blue one with a rainbow on the side that also passed very close to the embassy.  Anything else would leave us almost two miles from home, without enough change to get back.  We would be walking.

The youngest decided we should walk, which was fine with me.  I would glance over my shoulder from time to time, watching for the right bus.  Tons of buses passed by, all heading to San Juan de Hurigancho, or Villa Maria - not places I wanted to visit after dark, and certainly not on the way home.

Just over a minute after our feet started pounding pavement, the rainbow bus went by, at not less than 20 mph, never even slowing.  Youngest, who has a bladder the size of a walnut, had to make a pit stop, so we found a coffee shop, while Middle and I kept watch outside, hoping grumpily that we wouldn’t see our only chance at a ride home pass by while Youngest was in the john.

By 8, I decided I should report in.  Wife was certain to be worried, and since she had taken Middle’s phone to put some minutes on it, we were without commo.  The first payphone we saw, I stopped.  Some idiot had jammed the coin slot.  We moved on.

At 8:30, we were at a place called Ovalo Hugerieta, in the daylight a hub of activity, but after dark a creepy place.  I didn’t like being here alone with my two girls, but the first functional payphone was here, so I posted them as lookouts and tried calling again.  Payphones in Lima are 20c/min, but they don’t give change.  Since I didn’t have enough for a two-hop on the bus, I sacrificed a 50c piece for the good of marital harmony.

Wife suggested I call a cab, and I was agreeable to that, and she gave me a number.  I got a recording at the cab company, which meant another one of my precious coins was gone.

Not content to set up a defensive perimeter here, we kept walking, past the Ovalo de Doomoh Certaino, and back into a more civilized area.  Not a bus in sight, and at this point I would have taken a ride to the nearest big exchange point and walked the last two miles.

We tried each of the next four phones we saw, and not a one of them worked.  Apparently the same phone gremlin who had jammed the previous ones with 5c coins had done so with all of them.

By now it was 9, and we had been on the streets of a Latin American city for two and a half hours.  I wasn’t sure how much longer I could play these kind of odds.  I’m pretty good at projecting a “Do NOT screw with me” aura, but that’s a lot harder with two little blond girls in tow.

Finally we reached a Starbucks, and a payphone bank that was functional.  The drop of another 50c coin, and I called Wife – this time just telling her where we were, and to call a cab for us.  I joked that I would buy Middle a coffee, except I was down to 5 soles.  We sat for ten more minutes, and I called home again, to find out which cab was coming for us.  Fortunately, it was a cabbie we knew, by the name of Carlos.

He was there in 20 more minutes, and ironically we were within a mile and a half of the house.  My feet were killing me, and I’m sure the girls weren’t doing much better.  I didn’t want to risk more bad neighborhood by walking the rest of the way home.

This adventure is a series of lessons learned, like be sure to carry cab fare just in case, and a cell phone is always a good plan - but it demonstrates how our lives work – as a family, we are very adaptable, so really, if one or two things goes wrong, we barely notice.  When something truly bad happens, it is a result of a perfect storm of events – in this case, a dead cell phone and a lack of available cash.  Had the blind violinist not played for us on the early bus, we would have had just enough for a two-hop.

We were home by ten.  I had forgotten Wife’s birthday, and holidays and such usually aren’t a huge deal in our house (She and I both forgot our anniversary until the day after), since it was her (number deleted)^th, the children and I had discussed buying some black balloons or something.  After being stranded for over 3 hours in the Peruvian urban sprawl, none of us were thinking about anyone’s birthday, other than perhaps hoping that we would all be able to celebrate our next one.