Of Pisco and Peru: Arequipa Pt. 7

I know why the caged bird sings karaoke

This place is like a comfy, windswept tomb. Zombie tourists slog, cram a chicharron with sweet potato fries and salsa criolla down their gullets, then stumble off to kitesurf, fish, and dune-buggy before a decadent night of tasting piscos.

Auntie M puts in her hair barrette very casually. “So, es you ready for your blind date?”

“What?” I bash my knee into a chair, coming back from the hotel’s breakfast buffet counter with a Greek yogurt and a coffee.

“I set you up. In Arequipa.” Auntie M laughs, then starts humming along to the instrumental theme song from ‘Charlie Brown’ playing in the background.

I carefully sit down on the steel trap chair and exhale. Well, there went breakfast. My stomach puckers at the social threat of dating, like a hemorrhoid drowning in a giant vat of Preparation H. “Why would you do that? You know I don’t make good first impressions.” Or second or third impressions for that matter.”

“It will be fun. Es part of your tour. And besides, I hears she gets dressed up and kinky for gringos.” Auntie M holds up her glass of orange juice and nods at the full cup on my placemat. “Jugo de naranja with un poco de poop. Just the way you likes it.”

She twirls her head around to the beat as I dig out the crusted yellow gunk that’s sealed over the corner of my eyelid. “Uh. . . we’re drinking orange juice with some freshly-squeezed poop?”

She stops twirling long enough to pause in thought, then nod. “Yeah.”

Is this a riddle? I lean in. “You mean pulp?”

“Síííííí.” If she could boogie any more she’d be dancing on her chair.

I pause, admiring the flock of fishing boats bobbing in the bay, then pull out the Cusqueña beer can from the inside pocket of my windbreaker. “No thanks. I’ll stick with beer.”

Is this the last Cusqueña? Cripes, supply lines are being stretched perilously thin.

Auntie M stares into her cell phone screen, pressing buttons. “I wants to do kara-oke.”

“Karaoke? Now?” I look around at the hotel’s buffet/TV room, a piecemeal grouping of and hungover late-night partiers and stoic pre-dawn early risers. “It’s a little early, don’t you think? Besides, I haven’t even finished my. . . postprandial.”

I pop open the beer can, preparing for a deep, refreshing sip.

“Ooh-Wah-Ah-Ah-Ah!”

Beer foam explodes and I jump three feet in the air. “Shit.” After blowing out my colon hole, I land back on tierra firma wide-eyed like a barn owl caught masturbating. “What the Jesus fucking Christ was that?”

Auntie M shrugs, then points and laughs. “Your crotch!”

“Fucking cripes!” I grab a handful of paper napkins and dab at my soaked shorts, trying to be pissed off, but her laugh is infectious. “It’s not funny.” Dammit. Don’t laugh. “And no blind dates!”

“But she es just your type.”

“Ughh.” I sit back down, shivering like I’ve been dunked in castor oil. “That’s even worse. What asylum did you pull her out of?”

Auntie M sets her phone on the table and starts putting on her red windbreaker as she sings.

“You better be ready. And don’t be. . . mel’an’chol’ic.”

“What?”

“Mel’an’chol’ic. You es being mel’an’chol’ic. You wants me to eh-spell it for you?”

Where is she pulling these big words from? Slamming down my orange juice, I slowly uncork myself from the chair. Auntie M freezes, locking in a stare that seems to envelop me.

“What? I’m heading to the pool.”

“Are you wearing those eh-shoes?”

Black tube socks with white sneakers. They’re clean. What’s the problem? “They. . . Don’t. . . go with these socks?”

She raises her arms like her favorite team just scored a goal. “Dios mio. He is learning. He is learning!”

“See? You can teach an old dog to turn tricks.”

A titter before I can correct myself.

“You know what I mean.”

Lifting up her orange juice, she smiles. “The pool it es. . .”

. . . Not. It’s full of seagulls. About fifty of the suckers are bobbing up and down like feathered corks, preening themselves. A plastic scarecrow kite of a bird of prey, tethered to a pole, flails helplessly above, ignored by all.

“Ooh-Wah-Ah-Ah-Ah!”

Auntie M and I look up at the speaker perched on the patio ceiling behind us. It blares out supposed seagull predator sounds like the lead singer of a hard rock band.

The gulls couldn’t be calmer, ignoring the screeches and shrieks while floating serenely, bobbing their heads up and down. Very Metal. So much for the pool.

Before leaving Paracas, we pay a visit to The Museo de Sitio Julio C. Tello. It’s built like an intellectual bomb shelter, a rustbelt red reconstruction necessity from the aforementioned earthquake, housing the most famous discovery of the ‘Father of Peruvian Archeology’: a set of cemeteries connected to Paracas culture.

“Mira.” Auntie M tugs my shoulder and points at the elongated skull ensconced in a glass case. Looks like you could fit two brains inside, one stacked on top of the other.

Shaking my head. “Talk about a split personality.”

Our tour guide, who looks like Peru’s answer to Ichabod Crane, blathers out in a stiff monotone.

“A very young child’s skull is pliant at birth and remains in this way for months. It is, therefore, possible, by lashing a rope around the head, with a board placed at the back of the skull, and perhaps the front as well, to alter the shape of the head over time.”

Some of the remains date back at least 5,000 BC.