67. Lima Again

67.

Morning.

Mr. Nerves hopes to reach Lima today and asks me to go faster so I blaze along the vacant desert road like a race driver. I suppose there are no traffic laws or policemen out here. Actually, there are few vehicles of any kind on this dried up roadway.

Here are the shabby outskirts of Lima!

Nerves takes the wheel and copes so well with the crazy city traffic that we soon arrive at his mother’s grand residence in a swanky suburb.

The home is old and aristocratic and so is Mom and now I see the game: Nerves is the pampered scion of an aristocratic family. The kid is his and so is Mrs. Jones, of course, but since Jones is an Indian, nobody admits their relationship—especially not old Mom, who merely offers Jones a room in the servant’s quarters and ignores her grandson.

Well, it is their reality and it got me a ride with amusing company the length of Peru so everybody is satisfied.

I bid Nerves, Jones and Mom farewell in my best Spanish and backpack across Lima to El Cheapo Hotel. The next day I catch a train to La Oroya high up in the Andes. Some backpackers in Cuzco told me how to catch a boat down the Amazon River so that’s where I’m headed.

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