After three months in Lima, looking for a reason to get out of the noisy grey city, I read on a blog that “Calango houses an enormous stone with magico-religious symbols … that performs miracles for women that wish to become pregnant”. Calango is a small village, a little inland from the coastal town of Mala south of Lima. The next Saturday morning I hail a taxi in downtown Miraflores and tell the driver “I want the bus to Mala!”
He takes me through a grid of dirty back streets on the edge of the town centre, past several blocks lined with stores and stalls selling bicycles and bicycle parts, a cascade of wheels and frames hanging from shop fronts and spilling across the roadway. The ticket sellers calling “Mala Mala Mala Mala…” offer a clue. Within 20 minutes the bus is full and takes me on a 90 minute journey south along the PanAmerican highway to reach the bus station or “Landport”, Termino Terrestial, of Mala.