Taking on the Peruvian mafia - Nico, Alejandro, Jose, and Roz do Trujillo

[Inspired by Eli introducing himself as Alejandro, Jesse and I chose our own Spanish names.  Nico has been a big hit.]

Known as the Spring Capital of Peru, the northern city of Trujillo is famous for its pre-Incan ruins of Chan Chan and the Temples of Sun and Moon.

We visited those.  Kinda cool.  Jesse took some pictures.


Our real adventure in Trujillo, however, was saved for the night. After meeting a couple local girls from the university during lunch and conversing with them in our broken Spanish, we were invited to hang out with them later and given their address near the university. With nothing else to do that night, we decided to check it out and took a bus to the university after dinner. I stopped a nice-looking man to ask for directions and handed him the paper with the address.

His eyes nearly popped out of his head. In Spanish, he told us (we think) that despite being only a few blocks from the university, that area was extremely dangerous. To colorfully illustrate his point, he stuck his hand into our pockets as a sign of what would happen to our money; memories of West Philadelphia and Spanish Harlem danced flitted through our heads. Now quite curious albeit unnerved, we thanked him and pondered our next move.

A second opinion was certainly in order. We next asked a passing policeman. "Your money: gone. And if you don´t have any, boom boom!"  Upping the ante, he said that while firing a mock gun at us and indicating slitted throats.

Alejandro then remarked, "You know, I read online before coming that it is common in Trujillo for uncommonly attractive girls to befriend tourists in order to lead them into dangerous situations."  "Why didn´t you mention this earlier?"  "They weren´t uncommonly attractive."

We decided to pass and went to a pool hall instead for a couple of hopefully safe games. But the guns just kept coming; only seconds after setting up the triangle at our table, a gaggle of old men came over and once again I had a gun-shaped hand pointed at my chest. "Bang! Bang! Mafia!"

We moved to the next table. Later on, the same man came over and made a similar motion, this time seemingly offering us drinks instead of bullets. We passed anyway.

I´m initially writing this as we celebrate July 4 in Lima after a couple of glorious days in the mountains of Huaraz. Check back soon for In the path of the Incas - Nico and Alejandro do Machu Picchu.