Mike Down South

At my current hostel, you need to leave your key at reception whenever you leave and pick it up when you get back. It’s kind of a hassle, but it’s pretty routine at this point and I don’t much notice it. I came back to my hostel after lunch yesterday and there was a guy working reception who was probably about 20. I asked, “¿Podría tener mi llave? [Can I have my key?]” He looked a little worried and stood up and started searching around the desk. I heard him mutter to himself, “Okay… okay.” Peruvians use the word “okay” but I don’t hear it much, so I was wondering if this guy was Peruvian. He definitely looked South American. Or maybe like a tan Asian person. I’ve been surprised at how hard it is to distinguish between the two.

“Okay, you can do this,” he whispered to himself. Alright, that was definitely English. And he must be new because the task of getting my room key was apparently really stressing him out. I’ve been at this hostel about a week and everyone on the staff I’d met was Peruvian, so hearing him speak English threw me a bit.

“Are you speaking English?” I asked him.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

Except he didn’t say “sorry.” He said “soary.” Canadian! I had to confirm.

“Are you Canadian?”
“Oh… Yeah.”
“Ah. I caught your ‘soary’.”
“Oh, um. That’s okay.”

He was still a little frazzled from my heart attack-inducing “can I have my key” request, so he misunderstood what I said. He thought I was apologizing to him for something I had done. Instead of questioning it, he decided to just roll with it and accept my apology. Definitely Canadian.

“No, I mean I could tell you were Canadian because you said ‘soary’.”
“Oh, yeah. The politeness thing. Yeah.”

No! Not the politeness thing! It’s because you talk funny, Canada. Why does this always seem to be news to you?

So I can positively identify a Canadian accent if they’re from the right area and I hear any of the giveaway words (“sorry,” “about,” etc.). But I realized that’s about it. I still can’t distinguish most other accents. I confuse New Zealand for Australia, Australia for England, England for Ireland. I can’t distinguish between a Dane and a German. All of the Eastern European accents sound pretty similar to me. Ditto for all of Scandinavia. I can’t even definitively spot another American because it could just be a sneaky Canadian that hasn’t blown his cover yet. I suppose I could identify an American with a distinctly American accent, like from the Deep South or something, but to date, I have met zero travelers from the Deep South.

The one other accent I have been able to positively identify is Argentina. It’s pretty easy because they replace a lot of “ya” sounds with “sha” sounds so it’s “pla-sha” instead of “pla-ya” (beach). They also use weird Spanish expressions that nobody else uses, like, “¿De donde sus? [Where are you from?]” whereas everyone else would say, “¿De donde eres?”

So there you have it. My secret, never before revealed techniques for identifying (some) people from two countries. Use your new powers responsibly.

I spent this afternoon walking around Barranco, a Bohemian neighborhood in Lima. I was with a Canadian girl from my hostel and we’d been wandering hopelessly for about 2 hours looking for a crafts market we’d heard from hostel staff existed, but for which we declined detailed directions. As we were walking by a park, a taxi pulled up next to us and the driver asked me if I had change for a 20.

Apparently his passenger (a woman in her 50’s or 60’s) didn’t have bills smaller than 20 and they needed two 10’s. I had a 50, a 10, and some change. I was digging through the change to see if I had 10 soles’ worth and the woman said she could give me three 20’s for the 50 and 10, so I said alright. We traded the bills and I felt good about helping this woman out of a jam (entirely in Spanish, no less!).

The astute reader has probably figured out at this point that this was no ordinary bill breaking, but in fact… a scam! I tried to pay for lunch later using one of the 20’s and the waitress rejected the bill as “raro” (“strange”) but she couldn’t say for sure it was counterfeit. I clung to the hope that she was just confused; the bills seemed real to me. They had watermarks when held to the light and had special shiny ink in the right places. I tried someplace else and they said the bill felt wrong and wouldn’t accept it. Back at my hostel, I showed the bills to the staff at reception (both native Peruvians) and one guy said the bills were fine, just newly printed so they felt weird. Hooray! Sadly, the girl working with him immediately burst my bubble. The bills were definitely counterfeit. On real 20’s, the little purple/orange box in the lower left-hand corner has a subtle “20” in it when you look at it at the right angle and these bills did not.

So it’s official: I got scammed. I was taken for 60 Peruvian soles (about $22). I feel kind of stupid, but not that stupid. As far as scams go, I think this one was fairly non-obvious. At the time, I was aware of the fact that this could be a scam, but it seemed unlikely. I thought, “This requires a 30something cabbie to be in cahoots with this 50 or 60 year old woman.” If it was just a cabbie by himself I’d have definitely said no, but the tricky old woman / young man pair bamboozled me.

I had an inkling that something might be wrong when I went to hand over the 60 soles and the driver, not the passenger, was who traded the bills. Also, the president pictured on the 20 was FDR instead of Andrew Jackson, which should have been a big tipoff.

I asked at the hostel if this is a common scam and they said yes, but I’m not sure they understood the situation. They speak English, but not perfectly and once they realized I got scammed, they kind of assumed I was just an idiot.

Me: Is this a common scam? A taxi driver with a passenger?
Staffer #1: Oh, yes. A lot of taxi drivers give fake bills.
Me: No, I mean it was another passenger. I wasn’t in the cab. The cab pulled up and he had a passenger and the passenger needed change.
Staffer #2: Well, you should never get in a cab where there’s already a passenger inside. They’re going to do something bad to you.
Me: No, I wasn’t going to ride in it. They just wanted change. Is it common for taxi drivers to drive around with a passenger and pretend they need change?
Staffer #1: Oh yes. Sometimes they know each other.
Me: Okay…

I’m not totally convinced it was a planned scam. There’s an alternate explanation: the woman herself got scammed and had only counterfeit bills to pay the driver. The driver didn’t want to get stiffed on the fare, so they drove around looking for some stupid looking gringos to pawn off the money on. In any case, I’ll write it off as a $22 lesson in being a little more skeptical in my travels, which, as far as scams go, is pretty cheap.

After much searching around Lima and finding only super expensive white-people gyms, my friend Javo showed me a tiny rundown gym a few blocks from the main town center. As soon as I saw it, I knew immediately I’d found my gym. It’s basically just a small room with a few very old machines, a lot of freeweights, and deserted save for 1 or 2 serious looking strong guys.

When Javo first showed it to me, the woman at the front desk told me the price was 5 soles (around $1.80) per “clase.” After we left, I asked Javo, “Per class?”
“Yeah! Good price, huh?” Javo said.
“But there are classes there?”
“Yeah, you pay for the class.”
“Is it everyone all together?”
“No, no, the teacher helps you while you exercise.”

I was sure I was missing something in the translation. It sounded like the 5 soles buys me a personal trainer, but how could that be? Do they have a huge room full of personal trainers in the back and one comes out whenever a customer arrives?

I headed over the next morning and the woman at the door said, “5 soles por clase.” And so I said, “Clase? Hay un maestro? [Class? Is there a teacher?]” And she nodded and pointed to this extremely muscular short old man sitting in the corner of the weight room. Okay, this makes more sense. I gathered that he’s sort of like an “on call” trainer for everyone. But given that there are only 2-3 people in the gym at any given time and they’re mostly regulars who didn’t need instruction, he’s kind of like a personal trainer. As soon as I enter, the trainer runs up to me and says welcome, welcome and that he’s a teacher and he asks me what I want to do.

At this point, I realized, “Wait, I don’t really want a personal trainer.” I know what exercises I want to do and I kind of want to just listen to my This American Life podcast and do my workout. So I asked him, “¿Puedo trabajar solo? [Can I work alone?]” And he said, “¡Sí! ¡Sí!” But then for the rest of my workout, he’d come over and we’d have these little exchanges that didn’t really go anywhere.

[As I’m between sets for shoulder press]
Trainer: How many sets are you doing?
Me: Five.
Trainer: Ah, good. Good.

[After I finish shoulder press]
Trainer: You’re doing shoulders. You should do this exercise now. [miming a different shoulder exercise]
Me: I’m going to do legs now.
Trainer: Ah, yes. Good.

[As I’m between sets for deadlifts, he runs up to me]
Trainer: This is 70 kilos. The bar is 20 kilos and then 25 kilos for each weight.
Me: Yes… Thanks?

I finished the workout without ever letting him help me with anything, which I felt bad about since he seemed pretty dead set on assisting me in some way. So the next day I went in (sure enough, same trainer) and, after warming up, asked him if he could spot me for bench press. His response was what I would describe as impatiently confused. I thought maybe he didn’t understand what I was asking him (I don’t know the words for “spot” or “bench press” so most of this was being communicated via pantomime).

He followed me over to the bench and started saying stuff to me in Spanish that I didn’t understand, but the tone was, “What do you want me to do?” Hmm, maybe he doesn’t do spotting? I’d never actually seen him spot anyone else in the gym, so maybe what I’m asking of him is beyond his responsibilities or beneath him or something. He continues talking and I continue not understanding, but then a nearby gym patron translated:

Translator: You didn’t say hi to him.
Me: What?
Translator: He’s upset because he said you didn’t say hi to him when you came in.
Me: ???
Trainer: (in Spanish, angrily) In Peru, when you arrive at the gym, you say, ‘Hello, teacher.’ Everyone does this!
Me: (in incorrect and awkward Spanish) Oh! Sorry. I didn’t know that… Hi.
Trainer: (in Spanish, happily) Hi!

After that he was really happy and friendly. He was telling me that he used to be a competitive bodybuilder (he won Mr. Peru in ~1964) and a lot of the posters of freakishly strong guys on the wall are actually of him in his heyday.

As of now, I believe I’m on his good side, but I’m constantly paranoid about minor things I could do that could hurt his feelings. Do I have to say bye, too? Can I listen to my headphones while I’m there? Am I supposed to bring him gifts as a sign of respect?

My first stop in Peru was Máncora, which is a surfing / beach party town in the North. I’d heard about it from lots of people in my hostel in Quito and decided to check it out for myself. While there, I spent most of my time with this group of Argentinians I’d met at my hostel (seen here playing an epic game of gigantic Jenga):

On my first night in Máncora, I was having dinner with Juan on the beach and we saw a really hot girl strip down to a bikini in front of us and I turned to Juan and said, “Daaaaamn!” He looked confused so I explained, “In America, when you see a hot girl you can say to your friend, ‘Daaaamn!’” Juan beamed and was immediately on board. He looked toward the girl and said, “DAN!” I corrected, “No, no. ‘Daaaamn.’” He seemed to get it and I figured my important cultural exchange was completed.

The next day, while hanging out with Juan, Sole, and Augústina, we were walking around and spotted another hot beach girl and Juan turns to me and asks eagerly, “Daaaamn?” I nodded approvingly and Juan explained the “damn” system to the girls. Later I told Sole I thought a girl was attractive and she said, “You should go to her and say, ‘I want to kiss you. You are damn!’” I gave her a quick refresher on how ‘damn’ is used, but the next girl we saw, both Sole and Augústina said, “Oooooh! She is a daaaaamn!”

By my last day in Máncora, all the Argentinians were seeing hot girls and pointing at them excitedly to say, “Oooooh, damp!” Eh, close enough.

The boardwalk is called the malecón and not the maricón which means “faggot.” I was lost on the second day and I’m glad that I found the boardwalk before I found a person, because otherwise I would have asked them where I could find the “maricón.”

Viruenza means “shame,” which I already knew, so I assumed sin viruenza simply meant “without shame” but apparently it doesn’t, though I’m still not entirely clear on what it means. The first time I heard it, I had just turned to Pamela after she served me ceviche and said, “Que reeeeco! [Yummy!]” and Javier smiled and said quietly to me, “sin viruenza.” The next night, I said something complimentary to Lorena and she smiled and shook her head and said, “sin viruenza.” At the time I thought she was quoting Javier, but it turns out she was just saying it too. The way it was explained to me, it’s sort of like calling someone a “player.” Javier was implying that I was hitting on Pamela and then Lorena was implying that I was trying to pursue both her and Pamela simultaneously, making me a “sin viruenza.”

Caña is a type of liquor they sell in the Galapagos that mixes well with Sprite and was a favorite drink among our friends during nights on the maricón malecón. Caña is spelled with a’s, not o’s, however, so when I mistakenly asked Jonny if he had, “bought coños,” the reason everyone started giggling was because I’d just asked him whether he’d bought “vaginas.”

A buena chica, is a “good girl” and it seems to have the same connotation as “good girl” does in English. A chica buena is a “hot girl” or as Ecuadorean girls say it to me, “a chhhhhot gayrl.” It isn’t quite the same as saying “hot girl” in English because three different people told me a girl would slap me if I actually called her that to her face, so I think it’s closer to saying something like, “a hot piece of ass” in America. Incidentally, when we were drinking Cañas on the malecon, I asked Sole if she was a “chica buena” and she thought for a second, nodded, and said, “sí,” and I got away unslapped.

When I was asking about what exactly constitutes a “chica buena,” Javier laughed and said, “Mike quiere conquistar unas chicas! [Mike wants to conquer some girls!]” This doesn’t mean what you think. It seems to be more emotional than sexual. The idea is you “conquer” a girl when she’s in love with or strongly attracted to you. You can’t just show up at a bar and “conquer” a girl that night; it’s like a months long thing. It’s also possible to say that a girl has “conquered you” if she’s made you fall in love with her.

When Pamela was asking for American slang, I told her there’s one expression that’s never actually used, but is ridiculous slang I learned from Gilad, which is, “Oh snap! Clickety clack!” She would say it in this really adorable singsong voice that sounded more like a part of a nursery rhyme than an expletive. She kept repeating it throughout the night and for days after and promised us she was going to teach it to her daughter because it, “sounds really, really nice!”

I tried to tell Francisco that his next door neighbor was skittish but I didn’t know the Spanish equivalent so I asked,
“Como se dice en español ‘skittish’?”
“Skittish?” Francisco asked, confused.
“Yeah, like ‘jumpy.’”
“Skittish… That’s a Jewish word!”
“Are you thinking of yiddish?”
“Ah, maybe. Maybe.”
The only word I could get from anyone was “nerviosa” which simply means, “nervous.” I told Javier, “You only have one word for nervous? You’re a very brave people.” And he said, “Well… there are lots of people in this world who are nervous. We just don’t go around saying (pointing his finger), ‘Hey, skittish!’ ‘Hey, jumpy!’”