Love & Guano: the Pisco Diaries

Rumors…, Deacon Joe says in his swamp-ass southern drawl. He chews through his words like gator jerky; his voice exhibits a gravelly texture nurtured through a longterm partnership with Marlboro. Rumors, he says, of a modern-day cult sacrificing humans to a bloodthirsty elder god in the Peruvian wastelands may be largely hyperbolic. 

Hyperbolic?, I ask with the confusion of the sleepless. My brain-meat spitfires through thoughts of jet-speed or pressure-chambers to cure the bends. No… no, Deacon Joe says, by “hyperbolic”, I mean the rumors are exaggerated. Hard to prove or disprove, though I’ve my hunches. See here, Vic, he explains, when it comes to people disappearing around these parts there ain’t no “missing persons list” cause there weren’t no “persons list” to begin with. It’s wild west, Vic. Wild southwest Peru. The police are only here to direct traffic & collect bribes while the countryside is ruled by gangs of highwaymen & narcos & jail-broke Venezuelans & Chilean cannibals & Bolivian transvestites, depending on which papers you read. These village folk, Vic…, Deacon Joe says with a wave of his hand, when they don’t know who to pay-off they pray. Over time, the desert people lost them their Jesus. Now they pray to ancient idols. Killer-Whale gods. Thirsty gods. Thirsty gods who are only appeased when strange blood is spilt upon their strange altars. The strange blood of wayward strangers most likely…

“Most likely”?, what happened…?, I ask Joe, what happened to these rumors being hyperbolic?

Hyperbole ain’t worth tits on a bull when a man’s got his hunches…, Deacon Joe says after a deep sigh, and my gut says we need be homebound before sundown. When the sky gets rosy, tick-tock-tick, he says. Nightfall in a godforsaken dust-bowl factory town has it’s own sort of reckoning. Darkness in a place like this has a way of smelling out a fella who don’t belong. 

Grapes & guano. There is little more along this desolate stretch of coast than grapes & guano. More foreign visitors came through this part of Peru two centuries ago than would today. In the 19th Century, the town was known as Santa Maria Magdalena, but the international seafarers of those days – be they whalers or pirates or the rival naval forces of Admiral Nelson or Napoleon – marked the “x” on their maps as “pisco” after the name of the port where a highly desired grape brandy was available. For any sea captain low on rum in the South Pacific, this port was a boozy desert oasis. In a savvy marketing move, the entire town wisely rebranded as “Pisco”. They knew what the people wanted. 

The US State Department & British Foreign Office currently zone this region of Peru as “we’d rather you not” for the prevalent highway robbery, kidnappings, drug trafficking, organ harvesting, Shining Path terrorist activity, high UV sunburn potential, etcetera. There is simply no need for tourists to come this way, in their opinion. Not when everyone knows the best pisco sours are in the bars of Lima & Miami. The only reasonable excuse for tourism would be archaeology geeks curious about the mysterious Nazca Lines a few hours inland from here. Archaeologists, especially of the amateur YouTube-influenced variety, pass through these coastal towns with the windows rolled-up to avoid the overpowering stench from the bird-shit processing fertilizer plants. Even for them, the Ancient Alien nerds, there is little-to-no reason to stop here. Not in Pisco. Unless they are an archaeology super-geek. A super-geek who believes the missing key to understanding the Nazca Lines may be the coastal Paracas Civilization more partial to these guano-covered shores than the interior Nasca people. 

Super-geeks like Deacon Joe. Super-geeks like Vic. We would stop here. 

Gilberto, our driver & body-guard, was asleep on the soiled sofa in the hotel lobby when we stepped-out through the iron-gated fortress door into the streets of Pisco. Muy peligroso, Gilberto reminded us earlier in the day. No digas que eres americano, was Gilberto’s advice when speaking to the locals. Deacon Joe assured him we would call ourselves Canadian. Gilberto rejected this too as we were too tan for canadiense. Which is why Deacon Joe & I are pretending to be islanders. Nosotros somos Bahaman. Muy, muy, muy importante…, Gilberto insisted, regresa antes de que oscurezca. I knew enough Spanglish to understand regresa meant “regress”, antes meant “before” and oscurezca meant “dark”. Yes dad, claro que si!, I said enthusiastically to the over-worried & under-slept driver. An early evening for us it shall be. Un poca de comida, I said, maybe una cervasa, maybe dos, mas o menos… y regresa before dark.

That was the plan. Mas o menos. 

And here we are. How many beers in? Mas. No menos. How many hours past sunset? Un poco. 

Our evening began innocently enough. We visited Pisco’s plaza de armas, high-fived the statue of the liberator José de San Martín, found a sunny table in a side-alley restaurant were we were served pan-fried pescado del dia: small silver-fish they called pejerrey and a larger fillet of perico, sided with lemon wedges, french fries and a tall bottle of Cusqueña Cervesa we poured into plastic glasses until the bottle was replaced with a second and, if my math is correct, a third. We were fed & happy & a little drunk & on schedule. It would, however, be nice to watch the conclusion of the golden hour from a higher vantage point. Over on the other side of the plaza — there — was a tavern with second floor balcony seating aptly called Los Balconies. Night cap?, one of us suggested. The other said, does seem appropriate…

Which brings us to our present location. Deep into the night. An omnipresent street lamp plays sentinel to our balcony table. Electrical wires dangle & buzz precariously overshoulder. The starless overcast sky has over-ripened to a shade of bruised plum. There is a favorable breeze which keeps the shit-stink of fertilizer plants upwind of us. Was the fresh breeze a stray bit of luck… or the absolute antithesis? A lack of breeze would’ve singed our nostrils with the noxious reminder we should not be here.  

The interior of Los Balconies is an Old West style bar with wood weathered by blood-stains, knife-gashes & bullet-divots. The main parlor is filled with busted-to-shit furniture: wooden tables with mismatched chairs or egg-crates-as-seats. The patrons are mostly pescadores: the fishermen of Pisco; the middle working class. The lower most-impoverished class of pisqueño are the guañeros: the shit-shovelers, who wouldn’t be at Los Balconies as those workers lack the disposable income to spend drinking foolishly at the most preeminent bar in town. Tonight’s fishermen often started as shit-shovelers, digging “white gold” for the international chemical giants until they made enough money to buy a position on a commercial fishing vessel. There is a path of upward mobility in Pisco. It just stinks.

They still dig the shit by hand, Deacon Joe says, the Guano Islands are a bird sanctuary where heavy machinery is outlawed. If the political right is able to deregulate, they’ll bring in the bulldozers and clear those shit-hills faster than hell, putting all the shit-shovelers out of work, and for what?, a quick buck? But conservationism is good business in this case, not only for the jobs, but the product. If those machines scare-off the boobies & cormorants, y’know what them birds take with them? Their future shit. If you want to keep mining potassium-nitrogen-phosphate-enriched guano locally, you gotta keep them birds happily chirping, chirping & shitting, and you gotta keep digging shit by shovel. 

There is a lone bartender at Los Balconies tonight: Monica. Her grandfathers came from the Andean Mountains to the coast to be guañeros. Her father is a pescadore, an achievement which is a sense of familial pride. Monica is unmarried & unblessed by children. She lives with her parents still, but can afford fashion magazines which she devours obsessively. She wears the best flannel & denim available and splurges on cosmetics, accentuating her cheekbones & eyelashes. She brought us large bottles of Cusqueña (called “ballena” for the whale-ish size) and, eventually, she brought shots of the local spirit: pisco. Monica would arrive with three shot glasses filled with the clear elixir and a fresh coat of lipstick; together we’d drink. Ariba, abajo, al centro, al dentro. Down the hatch. We were the first Bahamans she had ever met and she was fascinated with our tales of growing up in Atlantis. But there was a deal: if we wanted pisco, she would only serve it in return for besitos.

With each shot of the grape brandy, the nearby plaza de armas began to blur. The plaza blurred along with the fear of narcos & highwaymen & fanatical serial killers sacrificing foreigners to an obscure whale god. The danger wasn’t forgotten as much as it was dismissed in the fog; my mind was more preoccupied with the taste of lipstick & brandy. 

Children are in the tavern now, going table to table, selling candy, tejas, sweets made from pecans & dried fruit. We give them loose change and shoo them away. Deacon Joe, who gave up smoking ahead of our trip to the Sacred Valley of the Inca, is now craving a cigarette. Having returned to sea level from the heights of Machu Picchu, the boozy rationalization of Deacon Joe’s brain convinces him he deserves a drag. He wanders into the bar to bum a smoke off the pescadores, leaving me overlooking the plaza as the electrical wires buzz around me. 

Monica returns with an unrequested pisco sour – her house specialty. She sits on my lap and I tell her about my travels. I have no idea how much of my English she understands, but she appears engaged. I tell her about the Nazca Lines (which is silly, really, it’s the equivalent of her explaining to me the long-suffering history of the Miami Dolphins). I tell her about the plane Joe & I chartered to view the geoglyph patterns from above the desert. I get technical about artificial intelligence’s ability to discover new Nazca Line designs through satellite imagery. Yesterday’s understanding of these ancient designs is dwarfed by the data were examining today. I tell her about the E.T.-looking motherfucker, or, as what we call him in academic circles: the “Anthropomorphic Mythical Being” (shortened to “AMB” in academic papers). What a weirdo, am I right? My interest, however, is less in the aliens than the orca. What could be more alien than those monstrous beasts in our oceans? The orca deities represented in the Nazca Lines match the thousands-of-years-old pottery shards of the Paracas and Nasca civilizations. Academically, the orca god is called the “Mythical Killer Whale” (“MKW” in academic papers). The orca figure, as modern archaeologists have theorized, is a god of water in-general, rain or river or sea, which would explain the sacrificial offerings to this deity far inland from the coast. The Mythical Killer Whale figure is portrayed in ancient art with blade in-hand and trophy heads of decapitated humans whose mouths had been sewn shut with cactus spikes…

Am I boring you?, I ask Monica. 

Cuéntame más, Monica says. Más?, I say. Yeah, so earlier today, Joe & I visited the Cadelabro de Paracas just off the shore. That predates the Nazca Lines which is a great clue to the cultural exchange… Deja de hablar, she interupts, kisses me and rises to go tend bar. Yeah, adios, I say, happy to stand & return the flow of blood to my legs. 

Deciding I require a piss, I leave the balcony perch in search of el baño. All this time, Deacon Joe has been practicing his Spanish with his new pals: fishermen who insist on buying us a round of beers. Joe’s friends include broken-fingered Alfredo, handsome José Antonio and the giant brick shit-house Miguelito. They are native pisqueños with excited eyes & smiles. Their handshakes are crushing. They are the types of friends who choose you. Once chosen, you either accept allegiance or get the fuck out (GTFO in academic papers). Alfredo, José Antonio & Miguelito are charming, fortunately. My dim-witted ears cannot keep up with their Spanish and I am reliant on Deacon Joe’s interpretations & body language to gauge how well the conversation is going. Yo soy full bladder, I say as I excuse myself. El bano is a musty closet with an open hole; glad I don’t need to shit. I release countless pints of Cusqueña. The mirror over the sink is splotchy, cracked, rusty. I am surprised at the color of my reflection. Why had I let Monica put blush & lip-gloss on me? Muy bonito, she had said as she painted my face. I recall the fisherman laughing at my appearance. I just thought they were happy to see me. I spit on my hands and attempt to remove the makeup. There is no running water and I am not touching the communal hand-rag. I wipe my hands off on my sweat-logged jeans and return to the tavern. 

Dude!, my partner hollers. Deacon Joe is smoking & coughing phlegm & laughing as he waves me over to the table where he is being regaled by the fishermen. Deacon Joe explains to me their love of penguin meat, but don’t fucking ever tell anyone anything because harvesting penguin is illegal, but goddamn smoked penguin is a delicacy and these dudes are willing to get us some, but at a price, and even if the price is reasonable, Deacon Joe says, for the sake of my unborn children and even those bastards already born, I don’t need penguin blood on my conscience. 

Ha, uh…, yeah, I say to the table, gracias pero no gracias. Pingüino no para mi! The bad lighting in Los Balconies flickers a little, casting shade over their eyes. I’m a little unnerved. Miguelito is leaning against the bar, picking shit out of his teeth with a pocket knife. And he’s got deep pockets. Okay, claro, I say, perhaps un poco pingüino para mi. I mean, if you’ve already throttled the damn thing I guess I might as well have a taste…

The alcohol in my blood is no longer distracting me from danger. I’m now completely zeroed-in on peligroso. Gilberto’s warnings come to mind. We missed our sundown curfew. I wonder if it might be safer if we holed-up here until sunrise than risk the streets at this hour.

Okay, see ya around…, I say and retreat to my balcony perch. Monica follows with two shot glasses, but I insist on no more pisco, solo agua. I need to sober up. She procures a beat-to-shit plastic water bottle that looks like it was kicked here from the Falklands. I chug and she joins me in my cheap patio furniture seat. Monica tells me about the vampire legends of Pisco. La hermana de Drácula is buried in a local cemetery. ¿Eres un vampiro?, she asks with inquisitive eyes. No soy vampiro, I say before teasing her, mas o menos. She giggles with fright before being summoned by patrons inside. She sighs with a roll of her eyes. Taking a letter out of her pocket, she hands it to me before leaving my side. Attempting to read to whom the envelope is addressed, “mi amor”, my drunken eyes get crossed. I pocket the letter for a more sober moment.

A weariness descends on my brain. The peak of my alcohol buzz has long left. I require either sleep or a reinvigorating boost of booze. Or cocaine, which is available, but I have to draw the line somewhere. My dull haze evaporates with the screech of a chair being dragged backwards. I look across the table expecting Deacon Joe. It is not. It is a local in a leather jacket with well-coifed hair. I spotted him earlier chatting with Monica at the bar. Young, charismatic, sinister. Grinning like Mephistopheles offering Memorial Day mattress deals. He introduces himself, me llamo Garbiel… y tú eres Víctor. Ah yeah, I say, si. Gabriel nods and asks, eres de Estados Unidos? Yeah, I mean… shit, I say. Soy bahameño, I say, I am from Atlantis. After more attempts at conversation, Gabriel smiles and provides a hand to shake. Mucho gusto, he says as he stands to leave. Ditto, amigo, I say. 

Shit. 

Gabriel returns to the bar. Joins his mates. One of his compadres laughs at something he says. Several sets of eyes turn my way. Gabriel himself looks over his shoulder with less glimmer in his eyes than malice.

Shit. 

Now I do want to move bowels. Even if it requires hovering over the hole in the floor of el baño.

I look for a distraction. A fire alarm, no chance. I could jump off this balcony and try not to electrocute myself on the wires all the way down. The street below would take some of my bones with it, but it would be some sort of liberation from this current predicament. 

Shit.

Joe!, I holler at my comrade. Mira!, I say while holding up my phone, mira this futbol highlight, amigo! Deacon Joe finishes his story with the penguin poachers and walks out onto the balcony, asking, what’s got your ass puckered? Don’t turn around, I say, but I am being targeted by criminal elements. The guy at the bar in the jacket has declared me an American & is giggling like a dingo at an unsupervised daycare. Deacon Joe looks into the night with careful consideration on his face. Or maybe he is suppressing flatulence. He asks, why didn’t you tell him you are Bahaman? I did!, I say. He just didn’t believe it. He even mentioned “ballena”, but I don’t have any beer bottles so he must have been speaking about the elder god he prays to. Joe, I say, a man has his hunches and my hunch is Gabriel would like to sacrifice us to Shamu. I think he might be the MKW-Killer. Or he wants to hold us hostage. Or rape us, harvest our organs then rape us. 

Shit, Deacon Joe says. Yeah, I say, exactamente. 

I reckon…, he says with a huff, “MKW-Killer” sounds good but ultimately you’re saying “killer” twice. “Mythical Killer Whale-Killer” is a little dunce-capped, ain’t it? Even if our guy is slitting throats for his orca god. Uh…, I sigh and hold up my exasperated hands, I dunno man, I think the Associated Press would run with it. 

Hmm. Whelp, Deacon Joe says, it is easier to step into shit than out of it. When the night is full of troubles, a fella is best relying on what he’s best at. A boxer is gonna punch his way through. A trapeze artist is gonna to flip-out. A whore is gonna whore. Normally, Joe says, I’d say Vic Neverman could bullshit his way out of trouble, but your caveman Spanish is at best only going to stun them with confusion.

Then what do we do? 

Moscow Rules, Deacon Joe says. Trust no one, pull off your panties & get to work, whatever it takes, leave behind any moral imperative your mama gave you, it’s time to get low. Moscow Rules, I say in agreement. Alright…, Deacon Joe says, remember to act natural when you high-tail it. Run for hell or high-water, but be cool about it. Don’t let ‘em see you shit your pants. Got it, I say, we need to panic calmly. 

We hash a plan. 

The deacon leaves the balcony to rejoin the fishermen. I return to el baño too nervous to piss. The deacon should be dropping a sweaty wad of cash at the bar for Monica. He & I agreed to give her enough of a tip she could potentially negotiate a ransom on our behalf. I leave the lavatory and turn left rather than right back into the belly of the beast. Finding the staircase, I descend 8 steps at a time until I am out the door and into the street. I can hear Joe lumbering after me. In our plotting, we debated on leaving in the opposite direction of our hotel in case there is a trap set for us, but ultimately, we barely know our way home, let alone an alternative zigzag back. The quickest path to salvation is the straight & narrow, the deacon says. We beeline it, passing under the balcony where we were previously sitting. Don’t look back, Deacon Joe says, don’t turn around. I do not look back nor do I imagine Monica’s anguish at our quick escape.

We move past the plaza de armas, so far so good, no footsteps behind us, no hollers at our departure, even the street dogs are disinterested. We march like soldiers, our inflated chests daring anyone to fuck with us while our wide-eyes scream “oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh”. 

We arrive at our hotel’s iron gate and punch in the security code. We punch it in wrong. Dude, fucking shit!, we yell at each other, chancing a look over-shoulder at any lurking dangers. Shadows flirt curiously around corners. On the third try, our fat fingers correctly punch the code and we are granted entry. 

Jesus Christ. Thank you. Fuck, that was a close one. We’re safe, Deacon Joe says as his eyes scan the fortress door from the inside, we’re safe as long as they don’t Benghazi our ass. 

It is two-oh-two a.m. by the time we collapse into our room. Our alarms are set for a daybreak departure. In my jean pocket I find the crushed love letter written by Monica. Dude, I say to Joe, if I try to read this I will puke. He takes the letter and I leave to take a shower. I return five minutes later brushing my teeth. Deacon Joe is sitting upright, shaking his head. 

Dude.

Dude?

Monica wrote mostly about an English vampire buried in Pisco, one of Dracula’s sisters, he says as he holds the letter in his hands. The rest of the time she’s talking about the many babies she will have for you in Atlantis. The first boy will be named Victorito after you. The first girl she wants to name after her grandmother, Illari. The second boy, she wants to name after her brother, Gabriel. 

Gabriel?, I ask. 

Gabriel, he says. Your toothsome tormentor. She says in the letter her brother is happy his sister is marrying an American. 

… He… so?, I say, Gabriel didn’t want to cut our throats for Shamu?, or sell our kidneys?, or fuck our corpses?

Deacon Joe looks at the love note and says, even if he does, he knows to play the long game. You’re his golden calf, hombre. His future-brother-in-law. 

We sit for a moment. Let all of it settle. I eventually speak, saying, I am glad we got out of there when we did. Yeah, Deacon Joe says, them boys were sizing you up. Not for a coffin, but a tuxedo. Skin of your teeth, hombre…, he says with a pat on my back. We’ll get the penguin tacos next time. 

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