SUV Tetris!

Many of you are old enough, admit it, to remember a fairly clunky video game called Tetris, in which falling blocks of various shapes came faster and faster and faster until you screamed and shut the thing off, and then your little brother beat your score by about seven times.

Here in our part of Peru, about 95% of the vehicles on the road are for hire, be they taxis, mototaxis, trucks, etc.  Therefore, most hotels and restaurants don't need much parking - you just wave down a moto and jump out at your destination, the vehicle having at least slowed down, you hope.  

We are in Huánuco, a city of about 200,000 people at about 6,000 feet, which is a 6-7-hour drive from Huancayo.  Being the most reasonable and safe hotel in town, we usually stay at the Gran Hotel Huánuco, which was built about two months after I was.

Especially in that bygone era (OK, it's not THAT long ago!), there were even fewer private vehicles, so the cochera, or place to stash your car, didn't have to be very big.  

However, times change, and in addition to there being more and bigger cars, the owners of the hotel got ambitious and recently doubled the rooms and went after groups.  

Unfortunately, car number and size has collided with hotelier ambitions.  The cochera is now woefully inadequate, and it's anyone's bet whether you can get out if you got in.  Add the mining company groups with their trucks, and it's SUV TETRIS!!  

The rules of the game are that you leave your keys at the front desk, and if someone panics and needs to get out, the hotel guys play SUV Tetris with your vehicles.  That's "The Beast" in the foreground, as the Nissan Pathfinder (Path-squasher?) has been named by the missionaries.

We hope that your cocheras are adequate, or that your hotel guys are good at SUV Tetris.

Dave & Paula