The last American week, once more and so short to seem already ended: the travel through Peru, fantastic but perhaps lived less intensely regarding the adventures in the other Latin American countries. Coming from the uncovered coast of the Pacific Ocean, Lima appears as an enormous and dusty strip of desert, at first sight quite unattractive. The traffic congests this big city reducing the historical center (around Plaza de Armas) to a funnel of smog, nothing romantic. People shout in order to sell goods of any type, from food to the most unthinkable objects. An old man shows us his product, saying “asì me gano la vida“, the Manual del Pendejo, that is expired daydreams and holy water… life in Latin America is never banal neither sweet, just demands a lot, maybe too much creativity.

The Yuyanapaq.Para recordar museum (in memory of the two decades civil war, 1980-2000), remembers through an intense audiovisual exposition, that tragic period in Peruvian history and the sad genocide of the Andean people, a season of ideological contrasts that kicked up a big wave of terror in the country. As always, those who paid the worst price in this war were the indigenous people, particularly in the region of Ayacucho. Overwhelmed by a spiral of violence and terroristic actions, the country lost the conscience and suspended its own history.

During the last few days we are making strange encounters… it can happen while we walk along the streets, while we seat down at a restaurant or while we drink a beer, but the strategy is unfailing: we just wait for someone approaching us! The rest is in the hands of the Mexican colorful behavior. Preferably our friends are in couple, but there are no rules of age, sex or social condition; they are always good drinkers of Tecate or Modelo (popular Mexican beers),. Everytime it sounds like we find long-term friends, who make us feel completely relaxed: questions result more and more frequent and personal, but so natural that they are never fastidious. When we see that the issue “Italy” (and relative salaries) becomes the main one, we try to put again the discussion on exotic themes. Successively, following a typical Mexican social scheme, a disturbing element arises to definitely brake the atmosphere of complicity.

Even if these experiences generally last the short time of a night, we know that only the people met in this way will colour our travel of memories and funny stories. And Mexico seems to be very, very promising in this direction.

A short bus travel took us away from our preferred ghost city, through the pacific ocean. We decided to stop in the portual town of Guaymas, where we were welcome by a hot sun and the usual desertic landscape… soon we moved from our accommodation to the beach: the village of San Carlos, dominated by two twin peaks over the ocean, was our target from many days. To be honest it is not a paradise, but it seemed to us a quiet and pleasant place, where the beautiful beaches of sand and pebbles are touched by a calm, hot and emerald colored sea. The ideal place to swim just before sunset, when also entire Mexican families move from their homes to the seafront. Here the national sport seems to have a swim wearing jeans and t-shirt, obviously with a cold beer (the unfailing Tecate) within easy reach.

It was nothing special, but Hermosillo has become the place where we spent the longest time, till now. A quite prison where we alternated happy, boring and sad moments, in a typically Latin American mix. We met a lot of local people, no tourists and we lowered ourselves in this new Mexican life… we are definitely ready to become nomads, once more. We will smile thinking about the 50 degrees of the first days and about the floods of the last ones. In the meantime, the super-salted “carne asada”, the tasteful juices of our friends (“La Resaca” restaurant, ask to local people about it) and the totally unreliable information we received in the street. We say goodbye to the cacti, we need green forests to breath again.

Mission completed! As the local newspaper says, we have been successful in bringing the water in the desert, too: “¡Tormenton! Una lluvia extraordinaria de setenta milimetros en la capital Hermosillo. Desde hace cuatro años no caia una precipitacion tan fuerte”. Coming the clouds from New Mexico, as we did, they probably followed us, we should resign ourselves… now it is still raining and many people thank us on the street. As the last two weeks, we are still in the Northern Mexico, waiting for news and collecting information before leaving through the south, in a few days.

A beautiful sunset, but unfortunately nothing more…