Sleepless in Tarapoto

  Tarapoto, San Martín, Peru
Friday, July 17, 2009

Tarapoto City, they call it. I don't begrudge Tarapoto its city status (I live in the 'city' of Preston after all) but I was there for all of 12 hours and the city-ness of it was lost on me. The main thing that struck me about Tarapoto was the staggering number of motokars (motorbike taxis) - more motokars than people, as far as I could see. It rivals Iquitos for the number of bikes per head of population and, as you can imagine, walking down the street requires ear defenders and a mask. I flew in quite late on Thursday night and left early Friday morning, trying to get to a place called Chachapoyas. I'm increasingly aware of how few days left I have to get back to Lima and am trying to make the most of the time. This is actually starting to weigh on me a little - the fact that, soon, this adventure will all be over. I didn't like Tarapoto at all - unfortunately I was in a crappy mood for most of the time I was there.

However, the reason I'm even mentioning Tarapoto as a stop is because of one thing. Food. The local specialities never fail to impress me - and one of the local delicacies in the San Martín area is a crispy pork thing that they are quite proud of. Having arrived late in the evening and feeling very tired of traveling, I checked in and went straight out for dinner and I really was looking forward to their crispy pork but it turned out to be awful. As far as I could tell, it was just a really well done pork fillet that was intentionally dry, crispy and leathery... awful. Truly depressing. Owing to the noise of the motorcycle mayhem, I slept pretty badly too and woke up having to rush out to a bus station on the outskirts of town to try to get onto any bus leaving in the right direction (I don't like this sort of haphazard traveling - but owing to having to change plans in Iquitos, I didn't really have much of a choice) - in general, I was feeling really very ticked off with Tarapoto. Not happy at all. To top it off, at the bus station, I was approached by a sweet young woman who was carrying out a survey of tourists (there aren't very many here) about what they thought of San Martín and Tarapoto... I bit my tongue. I managed to get a ticket for the aearly afternoon bus leaving for a place called Pedro Ruiz which is near enough to my final destination - long bus ride ahead so I thought I should get some food in me (the bus I was getting was pretty basic - 6 hours with toilet breaks). So I scouted around the bus station for somewhere to eat something in a rush.

Normally, bus stations are not located in particularly salubrious parts of town and Tarapoto was no exception. The only place in this dustbowl area of town was a pretty ropey looking restaurant place that was deserted. As far as I could tell, it also doubled as an internet café and a garage. It was deserted and a bored looking waitress pointed to a stained whiteboard menu. I just wanted to eat something and get out of there (and get out of Tarapoto completely) as quickly as possible. Looking at the place, I was quite sure that I'd contract some exotic disease from about half of the items on the menu (and the fact that the place was empty made me really suspicious but I didn't have much of a choice) but these places normally make soup fresh every day and so I figured it to be the safest option. I'm not even sure what the soup was but I ordered it and a couple of minutes later, this bowl of soup arrived.

Honestly, it was absolutely delicious. The most delicious broth I have tasted in a long long time. I have no clue what was in it - there were noodles and a huge clam thing, but aside from that, it was mystery manna. But it really made my whole day - Tarapoto, all is forgiven. In my terrible Spanish, I tried to tell the still-very-bored waitress that this was amazing soup ('perfecto', I tried to say, with a big smile) but she just gave me a bit of a funny look. Who would have thought it? In this place of all places.

Moral of the story: even on the crappiest of days, a good dish of food can make you smile and make the world seem a better place.