The Pitts, policeman, pelicans and paracas

We finally made it to the end of the 10 week term and have been rewarded with 6 days off school. We kindly had a car lent to us by some friends from school and so headed off down south to search for sun.

The damp grey of Lima had soaked through to the marrow and we knew it would take a serious dose of sunning to get our bodies back to normal functioning speed.

We firstly however had to deal with my first experience of driving in this mad city. Lima, where the only rules of the road are that there are no rules. You can cut anybody up as long as you stick your hand out of the window, it seems that if you are female you are not allowed to drive without a phone attached to your ear, you are not allowed to check your wing mirrors - just go – and never ever think about checking your blind spot. On top of that, never use your indicators and in stead use your horn to let people know that you are about to veer into their lane, don’t worry about MOTs or emissions – as long as your car can go forward (however slowly) it is ok to drive and do not worry about how many men you have hanging out of the top of your lorry or out of the side of your bus – remember you can always fit more in there!

So with the rules of the road fully memorised we headed off. We started out at 5.30 in the morning to try and make the journey out of the city easier but the thing we forgot is that starting that early just makes you more obvious (especially with two very white people driving a car packed to the brim with Tilly’s stuff!). So we made it to an hour outside of Lima when the police called us over.

The police had set up a road block just outside the coastal resort of Asia and as far as we could tell – all they were there for was to make money! They pulled us over, saw we were tourists and then went through everything that they could possibly fine us for. We had our passports colour scanned, we had our driving licences, we had all the relevant car documents (thanks Jason), I had only had one beer the night before, we were driving well under the speed limit and so surely there was nothing they could fine us for – WRONG! Firstly they tried telling us that we only had a permit to drive in the city and we were outside of city limits (I pleaded ignorance and just spoke really quickly at him in English), he realised that this was a silly excuse and so rather than going for a more sensible way to fine us he said that we were to be fined for driving in the left hand land of a dual carriageway! I tried hard not to laugh, now knowing the police could make up any old excuse at all to fine you and so asked how much the fine was. Clare was conscious of me now communicating in Spanish when we were trying to plead ignorance and so gave me a quick poke in the ribs and the ignorance game continued. He pointed at a random fine in the booklet (400 dollars!!!!) even though the offence next to the fine did not match what he was saying we were now very clear that this was not an English type of pull over. We were not in control, there was no innocent until proven guilty and no ticket that we could then pay at the local police station. This man was like a Peruvian Judge Dredd – He was the law! I asked where we could pay the fine (knowing that tourists do not have to pay roadside offences as there is no way of tracking them down) he was well aware of this and said we had to pay now.
Whilst he was saying this, I snuck my wallet to Clare for her to remove as much money from it as possible (I think that is also what many husbands will say as their wives depart on yet another shopping trip!). But as we looked in, the smallest bill we had was a 100 soles (just over 30 dollars for those reading in England) and so this was going to have to be our bribe.
As I said, this was no English pull over and so bribery is always an option. I therefore slipped him the 100 under my licence. He looked at it, slipped it into his pocket and he handed back all of our documents. We were free to go.
The ignorance had not worked, Clare pleading “senor – bebita” had not worked, the fact that we had not done anything wrong had not worked and so money was the final option.
He then repeated my name another couple of times as if to scare me but actually I was just impressed the man could say Jonathan and then with a final reminder that we had to drive on the right hand side – we were off – free from the law and the seriously corrupt police that we had just passed. The only thing that made us feel better was that they were doing exactly the same to every car and I would imagine were earning more money than there pay packet gives them in a year.
Now I do not have a problem with people earning an honest living. There are millions of people in this country living in poverty, there are beggars, shoe shiners, sweet sellers, combi drivers, illegal DVD sellers, car parking men, watchy men, bodega owners, street performers, bag packers……. The list goes on and on. They are poor, poorer than an English person can even imagine (most ex-pats here just don’t think about it and just carry on enjoying their blissful, sheltered existence) but they all have one thing in common; THEY WORK HARD! This country thinks it is based on the rich people that live in their botoxed, bubble but it is actually supported by the poor people that work tirelessly and always with a smile on their faces and not due to plastic surgery gone wrong!. They are the real Peru, they are the foundations of what may eventually make this country powerful again but it could all be ruined by PC Pedro and his merry gang of thieves. The fact that tourists can get stopped and exploited will not exactly help the economy of this place. The tourist attractions I will rave about in this blog will not be enhanced by this behaviour and it will merely put people off coming here. It will make people think twice before they click on that Peruvian flight when they can go to the Niagra Falls, Uluru, Phuket for the same price and in the knowledge that they will not be exploited by crooked policemen.

Sorry- I feel that I have now ranted enough and am ready to continue with the Paracas tale (see the above blog)