Chapter 2: The Frog

The man looked uncannily like the frog statue I had seen earlier that afternoon at the chifa restaurant. His body rested solidly on the stool, unmoving except for his mouth, which was open wide belting the best of Peru's patriotic ballads, and the occasional arm flourish. He and his guitar-strumming partner sat as part of our circle, surrounding a table filled with bottles of pisco, ginger ale, cups of bitters and sugar, and bowls of sliced limes. Everyone joined the frog in yelling at the top of their lungs lyrics along the lines of "Hate me, hate me, because even that is better than forgetting me" and "Peru, until death, with you always, Peru." The paint-chipped walls were filled with faded black and white photographs of Lima in the 40s and 50s, evidence of the nostalgia that pervades the city, brought on by a couple decades of terrorism and state-sponsored violence. I was the only gringa in the entire bar, my identity revealed by the fact that I was the only one who did not know the words. But the pisco was flowing, so not many noticed. It helped that all the tourists are told that El Centro, the historic neighborhood home to the majestic and dilapidated government buildings, is dangerous at night and they dutifully steer clear. But when the sun goes down, Limenos fill the quaint bars around La Plaza de San Martin to drink bottles of pisco, cheap beer, and munch on simple ham sandwiches.

In my experience traveling, I had come to believe that the "authentic" was a fantasy, something tourists told themselves they all had witnessed. Reality, or the reality we read in the magazine articles later, tells us that it was really all a performance. It is the Catch-22 of tourism: it slowly destroys its own life-source by its very nature. But sitting there looking at the frog, I could not help but entertain the idea that maybe I had caught a small glipse of the authentic after all.