Llama for Lunch (9 page)

When the officer finally looked in my passport he said, ‘You don’t have an original entry stamp for the United States.’ This was an unexpected blow. Then I remembered that at Chicago airport I’d had trouble because the airline had given me the wrong form for immigration. I said that I thought that my passport had been stamped anyway. Terrific.

The officer said, ‘No. There is no stamp to say you have been legally admitted to the USA.’

Really terrific. He made a couple of phone calls, went through my passport again and made more calls. By this time I was in a state. Now I was an illegal alien of both countries. Fortunately no one had mentioned the Mexican permit I was deficient in. After a long time another man came in – he seemed American, whereas the other was a hybrid Spanish type. This latest person took my passport and after several efforts found the elusive stamp. It was small and very faint but it was there! What a relief. The officer filled out a green card for me, I signed it, they took six dollars from me – the price the Mexicans paid – and away I went rejoicing. I actually saved nineteen dollars, the price I should have paid for the tourist card on the way in. Not to mention the thousands of dollars fine I had been sure would be my fate. But there are better ways to save a few dollars.

The last one back on the bus, I sank relieved into my seat. My neighbour then told me that ‘the chauffeur’ had wanted to take the bus and leave me. I said, ‘He couldn’t do that, my luggage is on the bus.’ She replied that he had said I could come on the next bus. I was stunned to think he really was going to leave me out there in no-man’s land. She told me that he said, ‘The bus will go without the foreign woman.’ But the entire bus load of passengers had stood up and said, ‘No no no!’ So he waited. I was immensely grateful.

In Texas we stopped at a roadhouse. This place had really dreadful food – fried, heavily crumbed and greasy, or dried up as though it had been waiting for an owner for hours. The staff spoke only Spanish and had trouble understanding me when I asked for chicken. I received two lumps of foul – fowl – oleaginous chicken coated with something even I couldn’t eat. I pulled it off, chucked a lot of chilli on what was inside to kill the bugs and ate it. The chicken was accompanied by a lump of some sort of fried suet that was supremely awful.

I had intended to take the train from San Antonio to Miami but when I rang the train booking number from the bus station I discovered that this was not to be. There was no train for three days and it did not go direct. You need to change trains in Orlando, Florida, which means staying overnight. At that rate I wouldn’t get to Miami in time to catch the
Atlanta
, the ship on which I had booked a passage to Peru.

There was nothing for it but a Greyhound bus. The Mexican bus lines only came as far as here. At the Greyhound station a pleasant black American lady told me that there was a bus leaving in an hour that was going all the way to Miami. It would take sixty hours. Two more nights on a bus! I’ll never make it, I thought. But there was no other option. Although I could have done the trip in stages, I decided to get it over with in one fell swoop.

I didn’t have long to wait in the dreary bus station, thank goodness. It was vastly inferior to the Mexican ones. The bus was too. No arm rests between the daggy seats, very cramped leg room and no seat numbers allocated. You just got on and fought for a position. Being a good fighter I got a decent seat but before long I had someone sitting next to me: a small Hispanic fellow who didn’t say two words to me – mainly because he couldn’t, I guess – even though we spent the night together! By this time I was not the best in the abdominal department and decided to eat nothing and drink only lemonade. I didn’t really feel like eating. It’s usually time to call the ambulance when I lose my appetite and by the next morning, though I didn’t feel in the least ill, even the thought of food turned me off. I no longer needed tequila to sleep a lot. All that day I couldn’t wake up. After the Hispanic gent got off in the morning I was alone on the seat so I lay down. I don’t think I missed much. I had imagined that Texas ranches would look like Australian back country but they were different – very green, with lots of trees.

On and on we went, stopping many times. In the evening the bus became crowded again and now I shared my seat with a very, very large American man. He wasn’t fat, just big with hair everywhere possible, and he wore a big bushy coat. We struck up a conversation during which he told me how he had worked in the Caribbean as a construction manager.

Another night passed. The bus ride wasn’t the nightmare I had expected but I hadn’t been prepared for it. I had no toothbrush, nothing to wash with and no change of clothes. I became grottier and grottier.

Every time the bus stopped, which was often, the passengers poured off, only to return with armfuls of chips and boxes of take-away contained in masses of disposable packaging. Food was served in a box and a plastic bag and there were styrofoam cups in horrendous numbers. I saw one woman buy armfuls of chips, dips in plastic tubs and soft drinks to the value of twenty-seven dollars. That’s fifty-four Australian! No wonder the kids here are fat. It’s really sad to see a sixyear-old with an enormous stomach sticking out in front like a dreadful old man with a beer gut so big he can hardly walk.

All the next day we travelled down through Florida, finally arriving in Miami West at a quarter past four in the morning. No one had told me that this bus terminus was a long way from Miami Beach where I planned to stay. By now it was forty-eight hours since I had eaten. I was okay but felt washed out. I waited in the dismal bus station until half past five and then rang the youth hostel. They said I could have a room right then although check-in time wasn’t normally until two. The taxi across town and over the causeway to the beach cost fifty dollars, but I was glad just to find a place to lie down that wasn’t moving.

At the hostel I found that there were no private rooms available, and settled for a four-bed dormitory. Creeping up the stairs I snuck in, collapsed on a bed and was immediately out like a light.

I spent most of the day sleeping or lying about lethargically. Around mid-morning I felt hungry and forced myself to get up. I was still in a grubby state, having slept in my clothes, but, more in need of food than cleaning, I went to the cafe downstairs and had eggs and hash fries. This was a mistake. Lesson learned! I resumed a fluids-only regime.

I had alighted from the taxi at the hostel in balmy predawn air, but the day quickly became boiling hot. About lunch time it rained very heavily and soon afterwards the day became frightfully humid. It felt just like Darwin in the build up to the wet. In the evening I surfaced long enough to talk to one of my room mates, a likeable English lady.

Next morning I pronounced myself cured and, feeling fit as a flea, went in search of fodder. I found a place called Chop Chicken across the road that had decent food – not fried, breaded or crumbed rubbish. I ate as though I believed that food was about to be abolished, then worried that I, too, would soon be joining the obese brigade.

The youth hostel was located in the old Clay Hotel which, in its past life, had been the home of Desi Arnaz and a gambling casino owned by Al Capone. The front part of it was a beautiful Art Deco building and the dormitories were in attractive, Spanish-style blocks at the rear. However the dorms were dog boxes inside, with little room to move between the two sets of bunks and no space for your luggage.

My room was filthy, but it did have a fridge and an adequate bathroom. Of the four of us in this room, one got up and left shortly after I arrived. The English girl I had spoken to the first night went off in the afternoon to find somewhere better. I tossed up whether I would join her but in the end couldn’t be bothered. The fourth inmate was a gorgeous Argentinian with whom I practised my Spanish during our brief encounters. She rushed in, gave everyone great big kisses on each cheek, said, ‘I am Elenora,’ got cleaned up and went out on the town at ten at night and didn’t return until lunchtime the next day. She did this every day. The phone rang every twenty minutes all day and late into the night and it was always some man looking for her. In the end I took the phone off the hook after she left each night.

There was a supermarket across the street and the prices were not the only shock I received there. The first time I visited it I saw two American girls sitting on the footpath against the shop wall. They were clean and nice looking, but I could not believe what they were doing. Begging. As a small black man went by they asked him for money and he gave them some.

From the foyer at Clays, where you could make phone calls seated in comfortable cushioned cane chairs, I rang the ship’s agent, who informed me that the
Atlanta
was sailing on time. I rang a hotel in Lima and booked a room for when I left the ship, hoping I had got the message across. You never know.

An attractive young German, who said he was working in Miami, sat down and talked to me. I learned that he wanted to go to Australia by ship. When I left he followed me out and we walked together for a while. He said I should come to a nearby bar later that gave free drinks to ladies after ten. I told him that, unfortunately, these days I couldn’t stay awake until ten, let alone after. Travelling is tiring stuff. Still, I hope this practice catches on in Australia.

Apart from tourists you don’t see many Caucasians in this part of Miami. To my astonishment hardly anyone spoke or understood English in shops and cafes. They all spoke Spanish to me – maybe it was the hair, I still looked like an Indian. The gorgeous mad Argentinian who came flying in like a whirlwind before racking off until the next day told me that my face is Argentinian. I hope that’s good.

Miami Beach had a deco area with many beautiful old pastel-coloured buildings that curved in the typical fashion of the era. The post office was semi-circular and lovely outside, but not so nice inside. A sign warned, ‘No loitering or soliciting,’ and there were no seats or comfortable spots if you had the desire to defy the admonition.

I had serious doubts about entrusting my letters to the dilapidated blue objects found in the streets that were alleged to be mail boxes. They looked more like rubbish bins to me and nothing reassuring was written on them about collection times. I was floored by the amount of packaging and waste that occurred here. I bought two stamps and was given them in an envelope too small to do anything with but immediately throw away.

I made another phone call to the ship’s agent who said, ‘I’ve been looking for you. There is a problem with the ship.’

Oh, no! The bloody thing has sunk, I thought. It was still afloat, but on the way down the coast from New York one of the crew had been diagnosed with hepatitis B. The ship had pulled into the next port and put him ashore, and now the vessel was quarantined until the medical authorities cleared it. The options for me were to take a refund, sail on the next ship in a month or, if I still wanted to sail on the
Atlanta
, to produce proof of full vaccination against hepatitis B. Fortunately I had this qualification and could prove it via my yellow vaccination book, a copy of which I had to fax to the agent. Just as well I’d had inoculations against everything known to man and recorded them. The ship would now be sailing a day late. Sadly the crew member who caused all the ruckus with the hepatitis died an hour after he was returned to his home country, Burma.

My room mates at the hostel were now an erudite Turkish professor of English called Aisha and a tiny ballerina from Canada as well as the fun-loving Argentinian, with whom I enjoyed fractured conversations.

Trauma struck. I got flea-bitten. I worked out that it must have happened when I sat in the foyer making phone calls and leant my arm on the padded chair. There were cats everywhere in the hotel at night. The cause dawned on me as I leaned on the cushions again the next day and my arm started to burn as though it was being bitten.

On the scheduled sailing day the
Atlanta
was delayed yet again and boarding time was put off until midnight. I hung about in my room for as long as I could before it was turf-out time and, suddenly, I was homeless and on the street. Then it started to rain. I headed for the library and read the local papers until the rain stopped, then set off for the library at the other end of town which I was told had access to the internet. This was the signal for the heavens to dump a deluge on my head. Wow, that storm was something else.

The bus stop outside the library was said to harbour a bus that would take me across town to my destination, but another bus had broken down at the stop, so when the bus I wanted came it zoomed around the broken bus and didn’t halt. I walked. It poured more, and despite my trusty brolly I got soaked again. When the thunder claps and lightning flashes intensified I took refuge in the foyer of an apartment building and talked to a couple of people who were also sheltering there. Half an hour later it was still pelting down so I sloshed out into it again and found another bus stop. A helpful man came along and said, ‘Go across the road. This bus costs one dollar twenty-five because it goes over the toll bridge, but the local bus is only twenty-five cents.’

Coming out of a second library I found rain still bucketing down. Four metres of water radiated out from the gutter so that the bus couldn’t pull in to collect me. While the driver waited patiently, I took off my shoes and, starting to wade to him, promptly fell into a hole up to my knees. I squelched soaking wet onto the freezing, air-conditioned bus, much to the amusement of the other passengers.

Back in the hostel lobby in my dripping wet, floppy pants I selected a wooden seat and avoided the flea-harbouring cushioned chairs. This was the fourth of July holiday weekend and many people had come from New York and other parts of the north to celebrate it in Miami. I talked to several of these holiday-makers in between reading a book during my long wait. Everyone complained about the dirtiness of this hostel. A young Englishman said he planned to sleep at the airport rather than spend another night in the filthy, smelly room he’d had here. And that had been the second room he had been shown. The first was even worse and he had refused it.