Almanac Travel: The Train Boy – Juliaca, Southern Peru

 

Juliaca. Southern Peru.

 

 

 

The train stumbles slowly through the town. The tracks are littered with yesterday’s enterprise, lost souls, plastic bags and dreams for tomorrow. A slight haze drifts above it all, like a spirit sent down from the mountains. Trucks cross the railway line wherever there isn’t a crossing. Smoking cars, spluttering tuk tuks, motor bikes, the odd battered tourist bus, and masses of people, compete for road space. I notice a lack of cyclists. This country of 21,000 mountains isn’t cyclist friendly.  A bloke, guitar slung over the shoulders, head slightly bowed in contemplation, (perhaps composing the masterpiece), dressed in the musician’s melancholy black leather jacket, strides purposefully across the tracks. He looks like a Bruce Springsteen record cover.

 

We’re heading for Puno in southern Peru situated on the shores of Lake Titicaca, having left Cuzco about eight hours prior on the brilliant ten-hour train journey through some of Peru’s stunning valleys and high-altitude mountain country. After a long ascent through the hills of Cuzco and onto the great plateau known as the Altiplano, the train rests at La Raya and we disembark to stretch our legs. La Raya sits at an altitude of 4312 metres. It’s remote, cold, and desolate. There’s a church and a small market and nothing else. A few optimistic locals try and flog baby alpaca blankets, jumpers and coats to us. When we depart, they seem to just melt off into the mountains.

 

 

 

 

Peru is a country of the great unfinished project. All across the land single story houses built from rough local bricks stand incomplete. Reinforced steel bars stick out of the brickwork pointing to the sky above the roof line. I ask a guide what it’s about. Why are the homes not finished? He tells me the people build the ground floor and leave the infrastructure in place to add the first floor when God smiles upon them and provides the money to do so. And they believe he will smile upon them. In his own good time.

 

The metropolis of Juliaca is suitably chaotic. Peruvian chaotic. As we rattle through it, we situate ourselves on the open platform at the back of the last carriage to take in the mayhem and noise and colour of the town up close. Windows block out the humanity. We want to feel it and smell it. The train, with horns blaring constantly, crawls just above walking pace right through the middle of the town’s market which is literally on the tracks. Activity temporarily ceases, like a biblical parting of the sea, then immediately resumes once the train passes, as if nothing happened. They must be very familiar with the timetable.

 

 

 

 

The market is a sprawling, glorious example of the laws of supply and demand. There are hundreds of tiny shops and canvas-walled stalls, trestle tables and even some people simply selling goods off a blanket spread over the dusty, grey ground. No such thing as a market permit here. If there is space, someone will fill it. A few little kids, having obtained a collection of lollies from somewhere, are selling them on a turned-up plastic bucket. The start of a long career mastering in initiative and inventiveness.

 

One woman selling fruit has her wares displayed over the tracks. Perhaps because it provides something of a platform to advertise the array of colourful fruit available. She doesn’t even bother removing her goods as the train rolls through, passing over it all. She simply leans back to let the engine by, then leans forward again once it’s gone. A mere inconvenience to her enterprise.

 

 

 

 

Everything is for sale here: fruit, vegetables, meat, kitchen appliances, cabinetry, laundry troughs, solar panels, car parts, hats, exhaust fans, toilets and other hardware, computers, tyres, tourist trinkets, blankets, clothes. And probably nuclear isotopes if you look hard enough. Our guide tells us that a few months prior he saw a chap drag an old plane engine to the market to sell. He Laughed to himself marveling at the optimism of the vendor. Who is going to purchase a plane engine? The next week it was gone, presumably sold.

 

We’re very conspicuous perched on the back of the train. As we shuffle through the masses, people spy us. Suddenly we are a point of interest to the Juliacans. A curiosity! It starts with a few kids who wave at us. We wave back. It becomes infectious and ripples down the track. Two blokes, having a drink out of dirty plastic bottles, look up upon hearing the commotion and raise their drinks in a boozer’s salute. The little ones are giggling and pointing and some are skipping along with us. Teenagers, self-conscious at first, now raise their arms and carry on like kids again. Parents pick their youngsters up to get a better view. The toddlers are jubilant.

 

I’m snapping away on the camera, trying to capture faces, trying to capture Peru.

 

 

 

 

From amongst the throng one little tacker wins my attention. With a hat too big for his head and a smile wider than the plains of the great plateau he breaks into a trot to keep up. The waving game is on in earnest. We wave, he waves. He waves, we wave. He’s running now, stumbling and laughing at the absurdity of trying to catch a moving train. His face is sunshine against the ashen dirt of the town. Its modern Peru; bright and hopeful.

 

Eventually the train increases speed and he’s left behind. But the waving, laughing, and joyous grin persist. As we pull away, he becomes a tiny dot in the middle of the tracks, standing still now with arms down by his side, watching the fun disappear, until the town’s bedlam swallows him up and he’s gone.

 

We’ve glimpsed into his world. Perhaps he is wondering who we were? Where we are from? Why we were there? He might think about us from time to time. The folks with the camera, who waved back at him.  This snapshot will go in our book. The book of the chosen photos.

 

And whilst the spectacular mountain ranges of the Andes and vast, open plains of the Altiplano, and the mystique of Machu Picchu, and the stark wilderness of the salt plains, and the power of the Amazon and Rio with its Christ the Redeemer and Iguazu and Buenos Aires all leave indelible marks, the little train boy was something special. It felt like, in those moments, we actually touched this place, ever so lightly.

 

One day train boy’s home will be finished, I’m sure.

 

 

 

 

 

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