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Those lovable thieves and liars

It happened the first time in Arequipa, when it seemed like the cack-handed workings of a semi-sly buffoon, but it's got to the stage where it's an endemic amongst hoteliers and fruit-juicers, and the whole process of haggling and payment has to be re-thought.

It goes like this - you check into a hostel, ask the price of a room, whistle loudly and shake one hand back and forth in a 'Blimey guv, I'm not Donald Trump' fashion, while proposing a sum approximately one euro less, watch as the person at reception frowns in a 'you want my kids to starve' manner and settle on a price, usually after eschewing the offer of a breakfast of rice and noodles with chips to balance out the massive price reduction. Having stayed three days in room 14 at Hostal Reyna, for 25 soles a night, and settled up for the room and a bundle of laundry, we came back for one night, taking the same room and left the next morning. While it was no real surprise to see reception-dude reach for a calculator to work out the devilishly complicated arithmetical expression of twenty-five multiplied by one, it seemed as though he had simply mashed the keyboard at random points when he rotated the screen to reveal forty-three soles. Anyone can make a mistake, so I chuckled and asked him to recount, kindly prompting him with the expected answer. For some bizarre reason, the machine obstinately refused to comply, and once again spat out the higher figure. Watching him closely, it transpired that some Parkinsonian tick was forcing his hand to add 25 to 18, and so I asked him to carry out the addition step-by-step. Sure enough, he was including the cost of the previously paid for laundry. As I carried him back through the mists of time to three days earlier, I painted the picture of a dozy early Monday morning when I'd paid him in person the full sum. Nope, never happened. Once again, with feeling. No, I must be imagining it. I had the receipt somewhere in my backpack, but assumed a brief consultation of the accounts book would resolve the issue, as I'd seen him note down the payment of the full amount. Deary me, my mind is playing tricks, as sure enough, the amount of the laundry was still owing. Still owing, that is, in the new figure scribbled over the thick layer of Tippex (White-out) obscuring the original sum, scrawled in the same spidery style. When I'd chipped away at the offending overcoat to reveal the full sum, I was told that 'el otro señor' had surely made the amendment. I told him unless he had an even thicker twin brother, that was a little unlikely. Time then to settle the amended bill. Thirty soles. A bit of a jump from three days prior, but lo and behold, 'el otro señor' had been up to his old tricks again and hiked up the price while we were busy thrashing out the other figures. I reckon a quick couple of slaps upside the head would have been the kindest thing for the chap, but wasn't feeling charitable enough to administer the recommended dosage, so it was left at that.

What's all this to with the price of yuca in Aguas Calientes you might wonder. Very little, in fact, but as 'very little' accurately describes the events of the couple of days following the hike up, I thought I'd add this now, and tie it in loosely with the purchase of a beer in our new, fandabidoozy, en-suite hostel in the village of hot water. So we come in one evening with a bottle of beer, and the lass at the desk asks how much we'd paid for it. Seven soles? robbery! Buy it from me next time and you can have it for five. Only when you do buy her bottle of luke-warm llama-dribble, the price has magically inflated itself, dinghy-style, to ten of your new soles, missus. And so it continues - a two sol fruit juice, a sharp mix of grapefruit, orange and strawberry, which you've explained four times and been told four times will cost two soles, ends up as an exotic blend of orange and H2O, scented with cinnamon and costing four soles. When you object, you're once again met with the half-blank stare, the outstetched palm and the confirmation of what you secretly suspected - you've been in a hallucinogenic trance since you entered the market and have been ordering all kinds of weird concotions to soothe your drug-fuelled thirst. Peruvians will, however, often do you the courtesy of telling you cryptically when they're going to try and rip you off, using the following conversation, learned by rote in gringo-fleecing class.

So where are you from?
/insert country/
Oh, how far away is that?
/insert distance in kilometres/
And how much is the flight to Peru?
/insert price of flight/
Oh... we Peruvians could never afford to travel like that. We don't earn much money you see... which sad fact sufficiently burdens you with white man's guilt so that when I now all but reach into your wallet and help myself to whatever amount I feel I deserve for my misfortune, you'll not only silently acquiesce, but throw in a tip and apologise profusely for being born.

We went for a walk, Chris and I, on the allocated day of rest one day prior to the final ascent, to a place of great beauty which turned out not to exist, and ended up tramping a further twelve km to the entrance to a waterfall, where an unsmiling sentinel requested we pay her the princely sum of five soles each to view the cascade. Having politely declined, we walked a hundred metres, slipped under some barbed wire and walked up, picking pineapples and bananas on the way, to a rather pretty little gushing spring, feeding a cling-film clear, icy spring whose banks of whitest sand were made. By a twist of karma, a ten-sole note fell from my pocket as I was hanging inverted trying to photograph a drooping gladiolus.

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