Filmmaker in Search of Her Subject - visit to southern coastal Peru #1

In December of 2014, I spent about a month in Peru, shooting footage for documentaries about Afro-Peruvians.  About half of that time I was in Lima (see “Filmmaker in Search of Her Subject - My Trip to Lima, Peru).  The other half I spent in the coastal area to the north and south of Lima, in small towns known for being treasure troves of Afro-Peruvian culture.

No, the Andes Mountains and the ruins at Machu Picchu were not on my agenda;  I was working.

Lima is on the coast, about halfway down.  I was heading south.

In the south, I visited the town of el Carmen;  and in the north, the town of Zaña.  In this article, I’ll talk about going to the south, to el Carmen, and then San Luis de Cañete.

To get to el Carmen, I took a bus-cama (bus with beds).  A friend in Lima helped me purchase the ticket, which was a good thing because I certainly didn’t know my way around well enough to do so easily on my own.

The buses were overnight buses;  you could choose to leave any time from around 5pm up until around 8pm, all of which would put me at my destination in the morning.  A long trip.

I believe that somewhere on that bus-cama there were seats that could be stretched out into beds, but most passengers, myself included, had a seat in an area in which you could recline the seat somewhat, but certainly not enough to make it into a bed.

El Carmen is a little below the center of this map.

Dinner and breakfast were provided on the buses.  These meals were not anything memorable, so I’ll pass over them.  If you take one of these trips, consider bringing along your own food.

We traveled along the Pan-American highway which in most places is a two-lane highway with streets and roads crossing it. 

I had a window seat.  At the beginning of the trip, since the sun was up, I could look out.  For the first hour, what I saw was seemingly endless, poorer suburbs of Lima.  Then, we got to the countryside.

The river-valleys are full of small farms growing cotton and other crops.

The countryside was mostly dessert, with the ocean off on one side in the distance.   There were squatters’ shacks along part of this dessert area.  Then, almost without warning, we’d come to a lush river valley:  green, and full of trees, small farms, and towns.  I learned that Peru had had land-reform about 30 years ago, so that where once there were huge estates worked by day laborers or tenant farmers, now most of the farmers own their own land.

After a couple of hours on the bus-cama, it got dark.  Someone in corporate offices had had the unfortunate idea of installing a TV in the bus-camas and for some reason, the volume was turned up pretty loud.  It was impossible to ignore this machine once you couldn’t look out the window any more;  but finally, around 10:30pm, it went off. 

In the morning, I got off the bus-cama in a town called Chincha, and according to instructions (from the person who owned the bed and breakfast where I would stay), I took a licensed taxi to el Carmen.  The ride took about 15 minutes.

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Eve A. Ma, a former university professor, lawyer, and director of a non-profit cultural organization, is the producer-director of two documentaries about Afro-Peruvians:  A Zest for Life and Masters of Rhythm with addendum.  Sign up for her newsletter to keep up with her work and get a special video:  www.PalominoPro-signup.com