"Lanzar:" To Throw

I arrived here, in Huanuco, at 4:30 am on Saturday morning. The first thing my taxi driver did was attempt to put my gigantic duffel on the back of a motorcycle. The attempt was hardly successful and it took almost 20 minutes to rectify.

When I arrived the hotel I had reserved the day before, the infamous "hotel game" ensued. This game is one where the person who owns the hotel acts as if they have never heard of you. I think they do this because they have overbooked the hotel and now have very limited space. After arguing for a moment, it turned out there was a single room left and it was on the 5th floor. At 5 am, I was willing to make concessions I usually do not make. So we lugged my huge bag and extra stuff up many, many stairs to a room that smelled like cooked cabbage. I was concerned about bugs. Sometimes, the prices of rooms change once one arrives. In this case, my room price went up about 60 cents as my room quality went down.

Needless to say, I changed hotels the next morning. The woman who owned the hotel was absolutely shocked that I did not want to stay at her fine establishment. She even offered to let me change rooms in a few days. By that point, I had carried all my stuff back down the 5 flights of stairs. Who needs to go to the gym when you can just play the hotel game?

My new hotel is double the price (a whopping $20 a night), but significantly cleaner and without odor. Apparently the water in Huanuco goes out quite frequently, so I find myself showering a lot just in case I can't again for awhile.

Wednesday I did not leave the hotel. There was a national strike (or riot, whatever we prefer to call it) across Peru. Every time I would discuss the strike with people, they would use the Spanish verb "to throw" which led me to believe that those who are protesting throw things at those who are not.

Since nothing would be open, I was told to "gather provisions." It felt very much like preparing for a hurricane. I bought bread, water, and fruit and waited for the storm to start.

It started around 8am with yelling. Then there was a march around the city. I did not witness either of these things simply out of fear of the "throwing." By about 3pm everyone was tired and things had completely died down. By 4pm I bravely ventured outside to discover the city as a ghost town. The taxi drivers were on strike too, so it was the first time in my Peruvian life that I did not almost die while trying to cross the street. There are positives in everything I guess.