Prostitutes and Cocheras

I definitely have entirely the wrong audience to write about prostitutes, meaning my coworkers and my family, but I´m going to do it anyways.

This city has its share, and they´re all over, enough that you´ll run across them just going about your normal business. The first set were in the pricey nighlife district, Miraflores. Just two girls with the softest voices, one said Hi and cocked her head next to a taxi stand. Then ¡Vamos! as we walked away.

The third set was my favorite, we made good friends with them! We went to the bus station about three hours early because our last bar experience went poorly, I´ll get to that later. While the driver was dropping us off he said, ¨It´s really secure here¨ even though we didn´t ask. I learned later either that neighborhood or Callao, by the airport, were the most dangerous in Lima. I would have chosen Rimac though.

We bought our tickets to Trujillo (an 8hr luxury bus ride for $14), and found a corner store that sold beer with the typical jail bars to buy through. Drinking on the street is cool here, yet I haven´t seen anyone do it besides us and the bus station security guard. We did that for a few rounds of 32 ouncers between some parked cars.

This entirely too cute girl kept walking by in an aqua windbreaker and white sweatpants, she was hard to miss. We purchased and ate the shit out of a pile of chicken from a street vendor on the hood of some car. As we were finishing up, somehow we started talking to her on her 5th pass with her friend.

It was the usual broken Spanish introductions for a while. I asked them if they were 16, and they said, ¨No! 21 and .... 25.¨ At some point they said they had to go to work, I asked where they worked and got just smiles and no answer.

Eventually the proposition came, and it went completely over my head. I understood none of the words, but the hand slapping was pretty clear.

As drunk as we were, and as good of an idea as it seemed (possibly underage girls in a bad part of Lima, three guys and two girls) we had to add to that our bus was leaving in 15 minutes, so we said our goodbyes.

8 hours later in Trujillo I expected a laid back beach culture but it was as intense as Lima, like we never left. We wandered around and checked into a Hostel / Cochera, which turned out to be a sex hotel mostly. A cochera is a place where you bring your esteemed lady of the night for hourly room rental. A hostel in South America doesn´t have to be a place for bearded backpackers, it´s any cheap hotel. In this case the matresses were wrapped in plastic and so were the three remotes they gave us. Whatever goes on in that room with three matresses is probably too kinky for me to imagine. It was all brand new though, clean, and the most expensive place we stayed, $21 for the three of us.

Hospedaje is the real word for backpacker´s hostel. La Casa Suiza in Huanchaco was a great hospedaje we ended up at next. They had a rooftop barbeque deck, TV room, free internet and friendly surfer staff for $5/night per person.

Another great one in Lima is Casa del Mochilero, where I am now. It´s basically a homestay, also for $5 per night.