Day 307 True Lies

Thursday 11 Jun 2009

Kevin, Ceci’s nephew, unexpectedly shows up this evening; he doesn’t want anything he’s just being friendly because we bumped into him last Sunday night at Anticucheria Adelita—Peruanos are so sociable—it’s one of the things I’ll miss about them in another six weeks.

It turns out Kevin is a racing aficionado so I finally have a chance to show all my pictures and videos to someone; he even likes the in-car videos, complimenting me on a couple of nice passes I make—I like this kid! I tell Kevin about my racing 1970-1981 and then coming back to it in 2002-2008; I tell him it was a childhood dream come true for me when I raced the first time and the last six years were a special joy for me and I hope his dream to race comes true someday.

Kevin is also a bicyclist and rolls up his pants legs and sweater to show us the scars on knees and elbows to prove it; we tell him our son Duncan has similar scars. Teri asks him what else he likes to do and he tells us that he likes to look for precious metals, especially gold and silver. His favorite spot is near Chulucanas, the small town 30 miles from Piura known for its unique pottery. There’s a small hill near there and he goes with his grandfather to sift through the dirt and they’ve found some gold there over the years; it’s a magical hill, Kevin says.

Once his grandfather found a jar buried on the hill and inside the jar was a gold nugget. At the end of the day with little light left in the sky his grandfather started walking home proudly carrying his most fantastic find in his hands. After some time his grandfather was frightened to discover that he was making no progress toward home, in fact, he was going backward toward the mysterious hill and it was now very dark. He bent low and forced himself forward, but no matter how hard he tried, he kept going backward. Terrified, he tossed the jar with the gold in a field by the side of the road and turned to run home. He immediately began to make progress and a short time later he was sitting in a chair at home telling his wife of this strange event.

Kevin says he’s never known his grandfather to tell a lie; he’s told this story for many years and he still tells the story today in exactly the same way. There are other strange tales told by precious metal hunters about this small hill near Chulucanas. Some people don’t believe the stories, but Kevin says many of them are told by men known to him and these men are known not to lie.