There's a llama on the flag

Thursday, 2 October

Salaverry and Trujillo, Peru

The captain stopped me on deck after I returned from nearby Trujillo to tell me specifically that he never wanted to stop here again. This was a high priority technical port call for Trujillo, 8 hours by car north of Lima, so that the 70 or so passengers who had booked the two night $2,674 per person trip to Machu Picchu could get their B-737 charter to Cusco. Of course, these folks are paying a little less, but not much less, a night for their unused suites on the ship. F. Scott Fitzgerald is proved right again. The reason for the confidence from the captain to me was that when he cut the engines at 7 am to pick up the pilot the swell was so bad that bottles of liquor fell from the bars, cups of coffee off tables, and people fell out of their showers. We bobbed like a cork for about 5 minutes as we listed 30 degrees or so right and left, uh, starboard and port. The bottles of Port fell off the bar, too. I was on deck holding on tightly and kind of enjoyed the E-ticket ride.

After we were docking next to a freighter off-loading corn meal (tortillas Heath kits, if you will), I kind of enjoyed the stark desert scenery. The Peruvian coast gets less than 1 inch of rain a year. Nevertheless, it’s still winter here. Think San Francisco winter weather but with no rain, just very foggy and high temperatures approaching 65 each day. I put away the shorts and went to the layer thing for my visit to Trujillo with Larry and Libby Herson. Larry is Professor Emeritus and a former History Chair from Ohio State I believe. Larry and Libby spend most of their time on ships where Larry gives very animated lectures. I’ve gotten to know him over the years and we exchange ship’s lecturer stories. (I had lunch with a guest entertainer from Las Vegas a couple of days ago. Tom is a magician. We had a great time discussing being in “the business”, but my silverware kept disappearing.)

Trujillo is one of the oldest colonial cities in South America, dating back to 1534. The town square is beautiful with Moorish inspired architecture and a fantastic restored original house that is now a free museum. We were assigned a lovely young lady docent and a not so lovely guard with a machine gun, and the four of us had a great tour of the house that has much authentic and some original furniture and art work. Larry’s additional commentary on the town and its statuary made this one day stop very special, with the added bonus of passing through the swell again on the way out until we gained enough speed for the ship to stabilize. This time everything was tied down.