señor ruiz

finding the courage

Over breakfast the next morning I dipped into my Peru guide but, flickering through its pages, the weariness of indecision descended upon me. Until two days earlier, this trip was going to be simple, so very simple. In November, I’d booked my month-long, non-refundable ticket, flying out to Lima in early December. I’d intended to go directly from the capital to Cusco, the launch pad for Machu Picchu. Once I’d scattered Sacha’s ashes, my plan was to collapse in some tranquil, grief-friendly resort near the sea for the remainder of my stay, and chill.

Then Roberto called.

Roberto was my ex-husband. To my surprise, he told me he wanted to attend the scattering – but insisted he couldn’t make it to Peru until the end of December. His trip, he pointed out, would coincide with the first anniversary of Sacha’s death on 2nd January. Roberto was the last person in the world I felt like meeting up with. But he was also Sacha’s father, and I couldn’t deny him the right to be present.

I hadn’t seen him since the funeral – nor had I wanted to. Although he loved his son, I suspected that Roberto, the partner in a Franco-Colombian architectural practice, had deliberately chosen to run its Africa office from Lagos to maintain a convenient distance between himself and Sacha’s troubles. I was still angry with him for that.

In my heart, however, I knew the timing made sense. Perhaps Sacha himself wanted his ashes to be scattered on the first anniversary of his death by his motherand his father.

The prospect of being holed up in a hotel for nearly a month waiting for Roberto to arrive was grim, but did I have the courage to hit the road – with the ashes in tow – and explore Peru alone? In a complete quandary, I ventured out to change some traveller’s cheques.

Ten minutes after leaving El Balcón Dorado, I was lost. The street names bore no resemblance to those on my map and Friday’s bank queues were snaking around the plazas. I was thirsty, but without any sol – the local currency – I couldn’t even buy a bottle of water, let alone grab a taxi back to the jet-lag sanctuary of the hotel. With its loud Latin jazz, traffic horns and growling street dogs, daytime Lima was certainly as lively and chaotic as I’d anticipated, and scary too: my guide book warned of ‘strangle muggers’ who roamed the streets, throttling and robbing unsuspecting tourists.

A robust young policeman strode over and asked me if I was lost. He offered to escort me to the Plaza Mayor where, he claimed, the banks weren’t so busy. I didn’t like to tell him that the Plaza Mayor was where I’d just come from.

When I’d last visited South America I was constantly quizzed about the Queen, but this young man showered me with questions about that new British royal: Wayne Rooney. To keep him at my side for as long as possible, I dredged up all the superlative adjectives about Wayne and the Premier League my wobbly Spanish could muster, until we arrived at the end of his patch – and back at El Balcón Dorado.

An hour later I plucked up the courage to venture out again. Wandering down a narrow pedestrian side street, I stopped to admire a Spanish colonial building of glistening white marble. Amazingly, it was a bank; a cool, empty, queue-less bank with a good exchange rate. Sunlight streamed in through the glass-domed ceiling. I felt a quick pang of excitement as the friendly cashier counted out my sol: I’d actually made it to Peru.

The cashier volunteered advice on what to see in Lima. Sightseeing was a great idea: it meant I could delay having to make a decision about what to do next.

The yellow stucco façade of the baroque Monastery of San Francisco was almost obscured by the sea of pigeons that swarmed around it – courtesy of the vendors selling bags of seed at its ga