Covered in Shit

This time I was a nurse for four days.

The only two patients were my wife and our one-year-old daughter. The concerningly high fevers were serious enough for bedrest. The technical side was to just keep the liquids coming, sponge sweat and change diapers. Mom had had the worst of it. Daughter was still nursing and had been languid but content.

The hostel we were in was just off Cuzco’s tourist area with its colourful and engaging chaos. The large residence was clean, safe and homey. This was our third stay there in as many months during our wanderings about the Andes.  

Once the fever had seemingly broken for good, the symbiotes were comfortable and nourished, I went into the city for a walk about. The pretense was to pick up some fresh fruits. The real reason was to refresh my spirit. It had been a long four days.

Wandering downhill into the Plaza de Armas enjoying the ambience in Cuzco as evening began. I scouted for the healthiest looking food vendor (tip: when travelling always choose the healthiest and happiest food vendors) and got some Papas Huancain. Here, after all of our visits, there was a vague sense of familiarity. I sat people watching while I ate the creamy spicy potato dish.

The most obvious people were a minority of young international trekker types weaving in small clumps amongst huckster locals, traditional (semi traditional?) workers and visitors from the hills, the odd awkward looking yuppies on a quest, the smooth boomer ‘enlightened’ once hippies now Yanquis that smuggled coke and worse while posing as art collectors and exporters, wealthy Cusco born players and the lurking hungry souls (mostly international) ghoulish victims of the kook-a-louk-a cocaine disease.

After picking up some mangoes, avocados and an alfalfa/pineapple juice for my fam, I was passing a crowd consisting primarily of the aforementioned young trekker types. They loitered around the staired entrance of a second-floor nightclub, Mama Africa spilling out onto the old Spanish cobbles betwixt buildings stacked upon their ancient Incan (possibly older-much older) bases. The ubiquitous Ace of Bass smudged the ambience.

Lars and Emma (can’t remember their real names), a swiss couple we had run into in the northern mountains several times, popped in front of me. They had just arrived and wanted to hit Mama Africa’s. They wanted me to join them. After weighing the duty of getting back to my family against time with some semi familiar folk after months walking in the Andes as a stranger and then four days bedside. My hedonistic side prevailed. It usually did back then. I went up the stairs.

‘I will come up for one drink.’ My guardian’s alarms went off. It knew what ‘one drink’ usually meant.

I can proudly say I kept to that one drink. It was a Cuba Libre’ (never a soda fan, that was the last time I ever drank Coca-cola or any pop) We chatted and laughed. They teased me into dancing with them.

We sat back down and I set to finish the drink that I was not actually enjoying.

As I looked about, I noticed two nice dressed Peruvian men closely watching me.

Those who have adventured out of a back pack on a shoe string in unfamiliar and gritty lands understand the sixth sense that activates, especially in crowds and doubly so in clubs. This was a sense reasonably well developed in me. These two anomalies were noted.

 I finished my drink and bid farewell to the couple. As I headed out, these two men got up also. Thinking to maybe head back in if they came out (and then back out if they followed me back in) I waited in the soaring stairwell down to the street exit. They came out, noticed me, went back in.

‘Fuck’, I thought, ‘I don’t feel like this shit.’ Honestly, I was beginning to feel a bit guilty about not being at the hostel with my family and wanted to return ASAP.

Deciding to bee line the six or so blocks to the hostel, I hustled down the stairs and onto the street. A taxi driver smoking as he leaned against his car spotted me and began pestering me to hire him. I refused with great suspicion and headed into and across the Plaza proper.

I slipped into the crevice of Siete Culebras street. It had a chthonic charm; narrow, pedestrian and lined with old Spanish buildings atop bases of said ancient Incan(?) structures. It was the carving of serpents on these ancient walls that named the street. Bluntly, that street was the flavour of adventure.

When I arrived at the T junction with Siete Diablos, I was halfway ‘home’. At that corner is a fantastic sculpture carved into the wall. A bat like demon face with a font of water flowing from its mouth into a bowl it holds. From the bowl the water flows down into a drain hole at its feet.

This is a great spot. One can drink, wash their hands and piss at the same time.

I did such. A sense of calm came over me…at peace with the richness of the spot. I stood Grounded.

That inner voice spoke. Take Siete Diablos. And, I ignored it. Why? I do not know. It would have only been about an extra block.

After going through a smaller courtyard of sorts, there came the last stretch of Siete Culebras. A dark and dank cleft punctuated with a halide orange glow at the far end. As I entered a wave of unsteadiness befell me. Again, I had had only one Cuba Libre’. I shrugged off the feeling with a ‘that it must have been a strong one’ and continued.

With each step the unsteadiness increased. Adjacent to it was an uncomfortable euphoria.

Then I realized I was lurching and swaying in wide measured steps. I knew I had very likely been drugged. Having done a wide array and mixture of drugs (mostly pot, booze, acid and shrooms but had tried all the hard stuff and most popular pills).  

A nicer dressed Peruvian man approached me rapidly.        

“Comos esta?!”

He smiled as he offered his hand.

Time was speeding up and slowing down.

I unthinkingly, like Pavlov’s pooch, extended my hand. That action completely ignored my inner voice that watched with eyebrows raised.

First shake.

Second shake.

I recognized him. He was one of the men from Mama Africa’s.

Then I knew trouble was coming.

It would also be unusual for that person to be friendly towards a scruffy backpacker in a dark alley.

Third shake and as I let go he did not.

Just as I was realizing this was going to happen. He tightly gripped my hand. He began to brace we locked eyes. He was fucking serious and he was realizing two things. That he was about 2/3 my height/weight and that I might not be as affected as he had expected. I mean I probably was but I was also a veteran of substance use extremes, the control override was engaging.

Somehow, in my now fucked up state, I take initiative. Grabbing his hand tighter, pulling him in, stepping up with my left foot and grabbing his right arm. Then planting my right foot and swinging him around as hard as I could into the ancient stone wall of his ancestors head first. He dropped with a quiet grunt. I was surprised how well that worked.

Then Inner Voice said “Run there is likely more.” Not in a panic. It was alert and calm. There was another twenty yards of dark and narrow to the lit street. I sprinted towards that light. Expecting an ambush, I flicked open my Spyderco. I was ready to defend myself without discrimination.

As I came into the lit but abandoned street, a man lunged at me from my left with a small knife. Avoiding this I turned to him as I continued to move forward.

Something hard smacked the back of my head. I fell forward, dropping my knife as I caught my fall. It skittered into a grated storm drain and out of sight, out of reach.

Instantly there was a knife tight on my throat from a man behind. I was given the universal ‘finger to lips’ sign from the man in front.

I was then punched, kicked and dragged with a knife still on my throat back into the darkness of Siete’ Culebras. The man I had tossed was there and standing. He looked very unhappy. He had a bloody forehead.

They then held me down in a baño tucked into the side of the alley chasm.

For those unfamiliar with Latin America this is often a hole in a concrete floor and this was that. Its exception was that it was clogged and about two inches deep in third world shit, piss and who knows what. My whole backside from head to feet was soaking in it.

I only had twelve Inti ($3) on me. They took that. Passport, they took that. Laminated photocopies of wife and daughter’s passports, they took that. They persistently demanded my American dollars getting frustrated that I insisted that I did not have any (I had left many thousands with my wife back at the hostel). Their frustration was giving murderous vibes.

Retrospectively, each time we had visited Cusco we did the same routine for accommodations and money exchange. They had cased me.

Still fighting off the drug daze, I found myself thinking ‘Life of an adventurer…this isn’t too surprising’. I was facing death almost without fear.

Then my daughter’s face filled my mind. It wasn’t just me that was threatened.

The legendary adrenaline rush happened.

I literally shit myself.

With little clarity (drugs) I remember scolding them in Spanish more fluent than I think I have ever been. Somehow, I jumped up and they backed off. Somehow, I forced them with intimidation to return my passport. Which they did and then they ran off.

I had turned into a feral stark raving diarrhea soaked giant (6’4”) with bruised ribs, a nice cut across my neck, a growing black eye, a lump on the back of my head, covered in much shit and deadly furious. At least some of the shit was my own.

A bag of fruit lay abandoned somewhere.

I felt stronger for it all as I marched madly laughing the rest of the way ‘home’.