The thing that bridges the gap between these two different worlds is the Combi. Every morning, I take a short walk from our apartment to a main avenue in town called Plaza de Cayma, and I wait at the corner (la esquina) for the combi to come and take me up the mountain to Alto Cayma.
A combi is a fifteen passenger van with two staff members: the driver and the faretaker. It costs .70 soles (approximately $0.25) to ride to work one way.
This is what a combi looks like:
As best I can tell, there are not really combi "companies." Instead, individuals own a combi and begin running a designated route. There is no schedule for a combi, instead, you just go to a street corner, and wait for the appropriate combi to pass by. I have never had to wait more than 5 or 6 minutes.
When you hop on the combi, the faretaker will open the door (sometimes while the van is still moving) and say, "Sube, sube, sube." And you will get on. On a good day, you have a seat on the combi. On a not-so-ideal day, you will stand. I have ridden a combi with as many as 26 other people.
Just before you want to get off the combi, you will pay your fare, and say, "Baja." The fare-taker will call out "Baja!" to the driver, and the combi will slow (although not always to a stop) and the fare-taker will yell, "Baja, baja, baja, baja" as you get off.
At first, I was pretty intimidated by the combi. I was worried about ladrones (pick-pockets) and catching the right combi. Because not every combi takes the same route up the mountain and down again, I was also worried about getting lost ... which did happen a couple of times.
The first time I rode the combi, I had no problems. The second time I rode the combi, the driver took a slightly different route, and I got turned around. I was on the combi in Sector 13 (when I should have gone to Sector 7), and started fumbling through Spanish to ask the fare-taker where we were. I know I looked stressed. Thankfully, a very sweet man next to me was listening to my conversation, and at one point, interrupted me to say, "Are you looking for Gloria and Jim?" HA! There was an English speaker on my combi! Thank goodness.
I get a lot of strange looks when I ride the combi. I am a sort of oddity in Peru. I am tall (taller than most Peruvian men), and I have white skin (really white skin), and curly red hair. I attract attention and stick out like a sore thumb. For all of these reasons, I usually end up having conversations with people on the combi. They ask me where I'm from, what I'm doing here, do I really know where I'm going, and they tell me I have hair of "gold." (I like that last part --- especially since it's a far cry from my mother's description of my hair, "Meghan," she says, "It's like the burning bush.")
After almost three weeks in Peru, I don't want to jinx myself, but I think I've mastered the combi. I haven't gotten lost or even turned around in over a week and half. I even enjoy participating in this part of Peruvian culture.
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