Chapter 6: Claudio and the New Girls

Friday 22.03.2019

Early in the morning I booked another night at the hotel. I had planned to go to the airport to see if it was possible to hire a helicopter. Failing that, I planned to buy a cheap used jeep in town and set off tomorrow for my lovely home, our paradise. Today I wanted to be seen at the hacienda with the smaller girls, but tomorrow I had to get back.

At the airport I was given no hope of being able to hire a heli. Only the army, police and a hospital had helicopters. There was no chance of renting a helicopter, even for two hours. An idea popped into my head.

“Is it possible to rent a small plane with pilots?”

There was a small possibility. The employee sent me to a room in the airport administration. In less than an hour I had hired a small two-seater with a friendly pilot. The pilot was a nice guy, spoke very good English and was pleased with my order. He had agreed without any problems that I could drop something off on the way.

A cleaning lady at the airport gave me two large bags of toilet paper for a reasonable amount of change. I also packed a cardboard box with a few packets of chewing gum, sweets, and lollipops from the airport shop. I felt that the children in the valley needed this. I wrote a short explanation about it:

Hello my dears,

I’m alive and will hopefully be back soon.

The helicopter pilot got away from me.

I’m trying to get over the mountain road.

Surely road construction workers have to help me.

So this will take several days.

I’ll be back in about a week.

Be good to each other.

I love you all.

Michael Berthier

A short trip inland was very easy here. I was worried about my expired visa. The security officers greeted the pilot like a good friend and waved us through a security door without any checks. There was little activity at the airfield. Very quickly our plane was cleared to take off. The pilot was trying to make a point, I thought at first, as he pulled the plane up quite steeply. But we also needed to climb quickly as the mountains were very close.

I enjoyed the huge view of the northern Andes. Often in Peru the mountains are bare and you can only see rocks. But here everything was green. In the distance, the five to six thousand metre peaks shimmered in their eternal ice shells, a fantastic view.

Soon we were buzzing around our valley. No one was to be seen. Everyone had taken cover, as often practiced. Despite the loud engine, I heard the screeching of two sirens. The pilot pulled down, flapped his wings and headed down the road towards the canyon. After a daring 180-degree turn, we were heading for the Palazzo. I threw single rolls of toilet paper in the direction of the Palazzo garden, hoping that my loved ones would take it as a signal. Who throws individual rolls of toilet paper into a seemingly deserted valley?

We were turning over the waterfall. On the second approach, the bag of toilet paper burst on the road and my cardboard, packed in a mailbag, landed exactly between the guesthouse and our paradise. No one could hear my loud scream, but I was full of adrenaline. Eventually, Sula came running, opened the bag and waved as we made our final pass back north. Several of the young ladies were now standing outside the entrance to the Palazzo. I could see Luisa and Ramona as well.

“Thank God, you had a sign of life from me.”, I was quietly pleased.

The pilot assured me that he could have landed on the road without any problems if the obstacles I had erected had not prevented this. Caution is also not always helpful, but the safety of the people in the valley came first. Otherwise, I would have returned home to my loved ones this day, but so I had to fly back to the provincial capital.

A little later, we landed again at the airport in Trujillo. The pilot was happy about a small snack I donated in the lobby, but even more about the fact that I had paid him with dollars. It had been confirmed again, with money you can solve almost everything, at least if the conditions allow, just not in our peaceful valley.

My next task was to buy a car, preferably with four-wheel drive and not too big or heavy. A taxi took me to the city’s largest car dealership. None of the few used cars on offer met my minimum requirements. Finally, after lengthy negotiations, I bought an almost new Toyota Landcruiser for exactly $50,000. It was the only car I could take home the next day. Actually, it was too big and perhaps too heavy for our mountain road, but I wanted to leave as soon as possible and I would definitely make it to the overgrown part.

The seller registered the car in my name. The car was a nine-seater, maybe all the girls could fit in, but the weakened little ones would never make it the last fifty kilometres, if the car even made it that far? So I decided to go alone for the time being, parking the car on the way and camouflaging it somehow in case I had to continue on foot.

Registering the car for a foreigner would take a little longer here, the dealer said. As my visa had expired, I asked the salesman if he could extend it for an obulus of $200 and gave him another $200 to cover his costs. I told him that I was an investor in a resort in the mountains and would be applying for Peruvian citizenship soon.

He smiled, I was sure he didn’t believe a word of it. For a short time I was able to plug my phone into his charger. Luckily he had one of those outdated ones. During the charging process, I quickly gained access to my files. After a few minutes I was able to show him a photo of the declaration of my property in the Cordilleras. He had it sent to his phone via Blue tooth and congratulated me on my decision. Suddenly he was almost exuberantly nice. Almost all Peruvians have an uncanny national pride. “Great. This is enough for a permanent visa, welcome to our country,” he said friendly.

I happily left him a $10,000 deposit for the car and took a taxi to the computer shop where the shopkeeper was trying to get me a satellite set up. He was successful and showed me two devices. The cost of the call or Internet was considerable, the equivalent of about five dollars a minute. He did not know the price of a flat rate for the Internet, but he called a provider. The salesman looked at me in total surprise when I immediately agreed to the 800 SOL per month. A few minutes later I was able to sign the contract. As I hadn’t my passport with me, I gave the name of Rus that was on the credit card. I also had the monthly fee debited from his account.

Without hesitation, the salesman registered Rus as a customer and I confirmed the debit from the credit card. I bought the expensive device for 6,000 SOL and asked if I could use the code for the other device if it broke. He showed me that all I had to do was change the card. It only cost 800 SOL and it was mine. He was then asked to show me how to connect the satellite receiver to the tablet. The necessary cable was included in the scope of delivery. And this can also be done via Wi-Fi or Blue tooth. Perfect. Tomorrow I would pick up the satellite equipment, hopefully my car too.

Finally, I bought a pre-paid mobile phone for the next day or a few days, in case my return journey was delayed. It might even be possible to use it in the valley if there was a connection to the telephone company’s network. So, I took the highest possible amount, 100 SOL, for the prepaid card, hoping of course to be able to use it completely.

Now I had time for the girls at the hacienda. I called Claudio and asked him if he wanted to go to his grandmother’s with me. He immediately agreed. He was surprised that I now had a phone. If he knew what else I had bought, he would be even more surprised.

Soon he and Alonso picked me up at the hotel. At one of the local markets I bought some clothes for the girls. Soon we had almost twenty pairs of long jeans and fifteen simple girls’ dresses. I bought extra because firstly I had bought the clothes too big yesterday and secondly the girls would grow and hopefully get stronger again. Then we got some toys, board and card games, some light balls, and three badminton sets. Plush toys, combs, and hairbrushes followed. In another shop I bought an electric hair-cutting set, two hairdressing scissors and a larger mirror, knowing how important hair had been to my girls in the valley in the beginning.

Never in my life had I bought something without thinking. But the girls needed a lot of things and I used the foreign credit cards without hesitation. I could imagine it was a crime to use credit cards that did not belong to me, but it gave me great pleasure to spend the bandit’s money for good purposes.

Claudio confirmed to me that his grandmother’s electricity was good enough for a washing machine. Tap water would come clean from a mountain spring in any quantity. So we bought a washing machine, detergent and fabric softener. I paid for the washing machine with my third credit card, which I did not have a pin for. The salesman ran the card, which was still valid for more than a year, through his machine, I signed illegibly and that’s that.