Life in Tarapoto

Here most of the people seem very friendly and there doesn't seem to be much of a crime problem - at least as compared to other places I've stayed, like Lima and Quito. I like that I can take my laundry to a lady who lives across the street and buy fresh fruit from the house of another lady who lives on the same block. There are many restaurants with 2-course lunches with juice for a dollar or two. Some families serve dinner out of their houses on their front porches. Last night I had a juane (rice, olives, spices and a little chicken wrapped in a banana leaf), a few small humitas (like a soft tamale), yuca (a starchy root vegetable) and a small pitcher of cebada - a drink made from a kind of barley, like a dark beer but sweeter and without the alcohol.

One example of a difference, or inconvenience, here are the gimnasios. I visited a couple of these to get some exercise, and they are cheap but hot, dirty and stocked with equipment that almost without exception is comically defective. Many of the machines take a lot of contortions just to position yourself to use them. I've injured myself in some good gyms in the States but it would be so much easier to injure yourself here. Last time I broke the rope cord used in place of a steel cable on the pulldown machine. I have the impression that some enterprising businessperson found a pile of useless equipment about to be discarded, and had the brilliant idea of opening a business with practically no upfront capital costs!

Another interesting thing are the health food ("naturista") liquor establishments. These are also very informal - sometimes in the front room of someone's house - and stocked with homemade liquors from local fruits and medicinal plants. I bought a couple bottles of one "antigripal" concoction to help me get over the cold I had last week.

It's very hot during the day, but I feel relatively comfortable having a place to live with a clean bathroom. Can't complain about the price - just 200 soles/month, which translates to about $2/day. In contrast with many other places in town, including restaurants and the church, the water supply has been reliable there so far. The erratic water supply in other places is largely due to the deforestation in the area, which has caused less rain and more runoff of soils into the rivers. It's supposed to be the start of the rainy season here in the rainforest, but there has been surprisingly little rain so far. That makes for a lot of dust in the air, and in houses or buildings by the dirt roads, kicked up by all the moto traffic.

One of the things I'm adjusting to is that in this environment, it's not always possible to work as efficiently as I'd like. My laptop computer has been having issues again (sometimes it boots and sometimes it doesn't) and the internet access is not always available. It's also been difficult at times to reach people for meetings. However, in spite of the discomforts and inconveniences, I like the simplicity here - the openness and neighborliness that is lacking in the harried and more impersonal, car-centric environments of the big cities, especially in the US.

written by  cjones on October 19, 2008 from Tarapoto, Peru
from the travel blog: so-journ
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