Wednesday 1 Oct 2008: Flying Discovery
Today I fly to Topeka, Kansas for the national championship races; rather, I fly to Lima from Piura leaving at 2:40 pm for a couple of hours, then I wait in Lima until 00:20 of 2 Oct to fly to Miami arriving about 7:00 am, then I fly to Atlanta about 11:00, and on to Kansas City about 4:00 pm. There I rent a car and drive to Topeka, a little less than an hour.
I leave the house with a carryon over one shoulder and a soft cooler over the other that holds my two video cameras and some Spanish books. I walk toward Padre Good and when I round the corner I see the red Toyota station wagon sitting where I usually see it; it’s a taxi that Teri suggested I take, if I could. He’s an independent driver and he “only takes people he trusts” he told Teri a week or so ago. He’s not in the car as I approach it and figure I’ll have to go on Av Independencia and grab a commercial rig. When I get opposite the car he’s sitting in the shade under a small palm tree and he’s very happy to take me to the airport.
At the Piura airport when I go through security a woman in uniform asks me to put all metal into a tray including money. I throw all that’s in my right front pocket into the tray which includes about 13 soles in coin, two 5s, two 1s, one 50- and two 20-centimos coins. After they all hit the tray the woman reaches into the tray, picks up my fingernail clipper, and makes a show of looking it over, smiles at me, and tosses it back in the tray. After I’m through security and sitting down I get the feeling that something isn’t right and I discover that I now have only one 5; the woman palmed one of my 5 sole coins! I try to rationalize away my discovery, but I’m sure I was ripped off by a security woman and it pisses me off. So I get up and move to where I can see her and she’s a kindly-looking older woman that I’m sure wouldn’t hurt a flea. But—it’s a mystery as to what happened to the 2nd 5 sole coin that I know I had in my pocket when I left the house. If it wasn’t ripped off, what the hell happened to it?
An uneventful flight and I’m in the Lima airport looking for the window to pay the airport tax; I know it’s supposed to be about 30 bucks which seems a bit of a rip off. I know I left the house with a 50 and a 20 sole bill in my wallet as well as three 20 dollar bills. A sign tells me as I approach the window that the tax is 90 soles or $30.25 dollars. For some stupid reason I hand the guy the 50 sole bill and then give him one of the 20s. He seems puzzled and asks if I want the rest of the tax taken out of the 20. I’m now puzzled why he asked such a thing. When he’s finished he ends up giving me a handful of Peruvian change including four 1-centimos coins. I haven’t even seen a 1-cintimos coin before today so I’m puzzled as to why he gave them to me. As I stand there I feel something isn’t right, but I shuffle away without saying anything. Then I realize that I should have received a 20 sole bill because the exchange is about 3 to 1 and I gave him a 50 sole bill and 3x20=60 soles or 110 soles and all he gave me were a bunch of coins!
Ripped off twice in the same day! I must be getting old! What an idiot to give him both soles and dollars I should have just given him dollars! That’s why he gave me all those stupid coins, to confuse me so I wouldn’t think about the 20 soles.
Later that evening I’m hungry and thirsty and I go to an airport café for a beer and a snack. Well, my bill is 21 soles and I have the 20 sole bill and all those dumb coins so I pay the bill with those keeping a few. Now I want dessert so I mosey over to a duty-free shop and espy a Snicker’s Bar and they only want 2 dollars and 25 cents for it. Damn, I’ll have to break one of the 20s. I open my wallet and there are two 20s and one 5 dollar bill. Now, I do know I left Piura with three 20s so there is only one explanation—the airport tax guy gave me a five dollar bill before he gave me all that oddball change. He wasn’t trying to confuse me; it seems I confused myself.
Since I was wrong about the airport tax guy it got me thinking a bit more about the security woman. After some minutes of rumination I was finally able to recall something else I seem to have been confused about; the independent taxi guy surprised me this morning when I asked him if the ride was three soles and he said, no it is four soles. So I most assuredly gave him one of my five sole coins, so I didn’t have two of them to throw in that tray. Damn, I am getting old!
I won’t go into what this might say about my subconscious stereotyping of brown-skinned people who don’t speak English but I don’t feel real good about myself when I think about that, so I’ll take the easy way out and stop thinking about it.
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