Of Pisco and Peru: Arequipa Pt. 5

Paracas

“All the infinities of this world are swept up in the winds of Paracas.” Where did that come from? Sounds almost deep and kick-ass.

Auntie M adjusts her life preserver, running her fingers through her chestnut hair as the forty-two-person speedboat plunges out of Pisco Bay, into gale-swept waves. “Es eh-sounds nice. Who says that?”

“Me.”

“You?”

She shakes her head, vehemently. “NOOooooo. Dougito, you es un goofball. Now you es a writer, too?”

“Yes. . . well, no. Just a writer’s apprentice.”

The boat tour’s a father-son team and they’ve synchronized their apparel for the benefit of us all: blue-and-white striped shirts, weather-beaten captain’s hats, aviator sunglasses. The young man of the sea abruptly kills the engine.

The old man sneaks a puff off his hand-rolled cigarette, then points to a giant three-pronged dildo sketched on the hillocks to our left. “Da Candelabro dates back ta an estimated 200 BC, do’ some estimates es much olda.”

A Rubenesque Peruvian mother, adorned with a red and tan poncho, stands up rigidly to take pictures, practically knocking over her thin, stern-faced teenage son overboard. A small price to pay for the perfectly composed shot she’ll get. He looks like he’s recovering from some sort of bizarre hairstyling accident, sporting a cotton gauze headwrap over his curly, black hair and an eye patch. No fresh blood, though. He’ll survive.

Our co-capitan smirks. “Da geoglyph is sis hundred feet tall and was created by makin’ two feet deep cuts in da petrified sand. No one knows what da Candelabra of da Andes is fer. Could be fer sailors at sea. Could be da trident of da Incan god Vircocha.” He sneaks a puff from his ciggy before cupping it in his hands. “Personally, I think it looks like God’s Jimson weed. Any questions?”

Before anyone can respond he nods to his son. “Good.”

Junior pinches his sunglasses to his face, then guns it, knocking everyone back.

“Aye.” Auntie M slams into me, squishing me against the side of the boat. I catch my breath as she peels a glaring eye my way. “Dougito?”

“Yeah.”

“Where es your hands?”

“Oh! Sorry.”

Everybody holds on for dear life while we blast off further into mother ocean, towards Las Islas Ballestas, competing with a small handful of other touring boats for ocean space.

At first, “The Poor Man´s Galapagos” looks like a pissed-off ant colony swarming over white termite mounds. Upon closer circumspection, though, the randomized masses of gyring movement turn out to be thousands upon thousands of Humbolt penguins, sea lions, Inca terns, pelicans, cormorants, Peruvian boobies and crabs overwhelming every square inch of pewter-stained, craggy rock.

About thirty feet away from the menagerie the smell hits us like an olfactory force field and Capitan the Younger cuts the engine. We bob like a disarrayed armada of corks shoved through the bunghole of a wine cask while everyone distracts themselves while taking pictures. Capitan the Elder tosses his cigarillo in the ocean. “Da Islas Ballestas is protected, so don’t even think of going fer a walk.”

Staring over at the assemblage of yelping seals and screeching birds and crawling crabs fighting over razor-sharp rookery space, I’m quite sure no one in our group thought about jumping overboard and taking a casual stroll, but it’s good to know there that rules are rules.

The Rubenesque mother blurts out. “Why are all the rocks colored white?”

Capitan the Elder beams with pride, raising his voice above the howls of sea lions as they sunbathe. “That’s shit. A round-da-clock factory drippin’ tons of phosphates and nitrates. Peru’s da world’s top producer, far ahead of other pretenders to da throne like Chile and Namibia. We’ll collect some 23,000 tons of shit dis year. As good as gold.”

It turns out Peru is a bonafide birdshit superpower. Who knew?

Without warning, Capitan the Younger kicks up the engine, jerking us around the other side of the islet, which forms a small beachhead bombarded by gnarly surf. Our boat rocks and rolls in the swells, while touristas take pictures of an alpha sea lion using his sledgehammer noggin to bludgeon a rival into submission.

Capitan the Elder braces his legs against the rolling waves while lighting another fag. “It’s a combination of cold water, warm air currents, and no rain. Da nitrates don’t evaporate. Instead, da guano leaches into da rock and dries in da sunshine. It’s a national treasure. Peru has literally got da best shit in da whole damn world.”

This arouses chuckles, but my God. Our future. I see it. Cheap oil will peak. Nuclear power will give way to wind and solar. But bird shit is forever.

“Under a constant drizzle of bird droppings, generations of hardy farmers do back-breaking seasonal work, scaling the island’s narrow pathways before dawn.”

The ramifications are clear to me. A pigeonshit specialist from Lima talks to a biochemist savant from Huancayo who takes a Snapchat with a leading Bolivian metallurgist who just happens to share her notes with a cutting-edge propulsion physicist from Asunción. . .

“After eight months on da islands, most workers pack up and head home for a break. Leaving behind a lone guard to protect da birds from shit poachers.”

. . . And I can see it now. I was here, at sea level zero, when the nitrate-rich Peruvian booby-powered revolución formed, finally cracked the U.S. hegemony. An entire division of 500 ton Peruvian pelican dung-fueled main battle tanks tearing up the New Mexico steppes at 75 km/h, outflanking the hopelessly outmatched 1st Armored Division in the Battle of the Albuquerque salient.

“It’s a lonely bidness.” El Capitain the Elder. “But it is kinda nice workin’ with da birds.”

Panic at the Pentagon. Aircraft carriers in fearful retreat. Over 800 overseas U.S. bases, all abruptly abandoned like the fall of Saigon, under immediate threat from hypersonic Bolivian shit missiles raining down like Mach 30 comets. No defense. And coming from La Paz no less. The ultimate sneak attack.

“Da Incas were da first to collect guano, what dey called wanu, and anyone caught disturbing the birds was punished with death.” El Capitan the Elder smiles while lighting another cig. “Now it’s making a comeback. Shit has a great future.”

Of world domination. I stare at the hordes of birds excreting. Constantly. Twenty-four hours a day. Every day. A clockwork colonic. A truly awesome sight to behold, like staring straight into the targeting lasers of a guano-filled Death Star that’s set its sights on a defenseless solar system.