Another Day in Cusco: the secret repair shop and scary dogs edition

I'm starting to realize that crazy days here in Peru come fairly frequently.  At some point I'll get over it and stop blogging about it, but for now, I still find myself recounting with disbelief and lots of laughter the every day craziness of life in this country.

So this morning my mission was to get my cell phone fixed.  It's less than a year old, and the screen has been malfunctioning, so I looked up the website for the makers of my phone was pleased to find that they had a service location listed in Cusco!  The place was called "Grupo Deltron."  I jotted down the name and address, printed off my receipt from Amazon.com, fount my waranty card, and headed out the door with the phone.

I found a taxi pretty quickly and asked the driver about if he knew where this business was located.  He didn't.  So I described the location to him and off we went.  Usually in this sort of situation I'd be pulling up google maps on my phone to help me direct the taxista, but alas, the phone wasn't working.

I got out of the taxi in what I presumed to be the right area, and started walking.  It was very residential, so I was beginning to wonder whether I'd actually come to the right place.  I found the street listed on the address, but didn't see any signs or any building that even looked like a store front.  I asked a security guard standing in front of an apartment building if he knew where this place was, and he didn't.  I was about to give up and head home, when I noticed that a lot of the homes on this street were actually marked with numbers.  I examined the address I'd written down more closely, and was shortly thereafter able to locate a building with the exact address I was searching for.  It looked like an apartment building.  No sign.  Just a locked gate.  There wasn't even a doorbell to ring, like most apartment buildings have.

This is a picture of the building.  Does it look like a cellphone repair shop to you?  How in the world does a place like this stay in business.  Even the neighbors don't know it exists!

I stood there for a moment trying to decide what to do, when a lady walked up, and started banging on the gate to this building.  I asked her if she knew whether Grupo Deltron was located here.  She furrowed her brows, said, "Serivicio Tecnico?"

"Sí" I said, thinking that sounded like the right category of business.

She turned and continued banging on the gate until someone came and let us in.  He directed me to the 2nd floor, where low an behold, I found an actual sign which said "Grupo Deltron!"  I approached the desk marked "Servicio Tecnico" and waited to be helped.

The man who greeted me was very friendly and helpful.  After looking at my phone and looking up my warranty information he explained many things to me which I did not understand, and a few things that I did understand.  For one, my warranty was not international, so it would only help me in the US.  Secondly, he would be happy to fix it for me, except they didn't have the parts necessary for this model of phone.  The crazy part is, that shortly after entering this shop, my phone started functioning relatively normally.  I headed home, wondering at the sense of humor which orchestrated this whole experience for me, when something else happened.

I was walking down the sidewalk to go catch a taxi home, when I heard a bunch of barking behind me and then felt a jaw close around my calf.  I turned to see two dogs that both looked pretty upset with me for some reason.  I instinctively jerked away, looked to see that my leg was fine, and tried to remember what I was supposed to do in this sort of situation.

"Do I run or walk away?"

"I'm not supposed to look them in the eyes, that would be taken as a challenge."

I stated walking briskly as the dogs continued to bark and started coming at me again.  I suddenly remembered what my language teachers in Arequipa had taught me regarding aggressive dogs.  I quickly knelt down and pretended to pick up a stone from the ground and raised it quickly as though to throw it at them.  It worked!  They quickly backed away from me.  I continued my quick walk away from them, but after a few seconds they came at me again, still angry.  I started looking around to see who might be nearby if I needed help.  The security guard down the street had to see what was going on.  He didn't seem to be interested in lending a hand, though.  I tried the pretend rock trick again.  Fortunately these dogs weren't too bright, because it worked a second time.

At this point I started hearing barking from in front of me, and I saw a large dog approaching me from up ahead.  Great, I thought, they've got me cornered.  I shortly realized, however, that this dog was not barking at me.  He proceeded to go around me toward the other two dogs.  It was helping me!  Yay for my knight in furry armor!  I hastened quickly down the street toward a taxi, and jumped in.

Just another day in Cusco.