Enter the Captain.

Hermes* emailed me yesterday: “Guess who I got an email from this morning? I hadn't heard from him for over a year and he wrote to apologise for being out of contact and to say that he is now living in Miraflores, actually just a few blocks away from my place. Any idea who it is??? I´ll give you a clue - you know him!” I knew immediately who he was talking about. The Captain is back.

A couple of years ago, Hermes* and I were travelling from La Paz to Lima via Lake Titicaca and at his suggestion, we paid a visit to the Yavari, the 19th century British military boat moored on the lake.

“I know the captain,” Hermes* told me. “With any luck, we’ll be able to stay overnight on the Yavari. Be careful, though: most women who meet Captain Carlos seem to fall for him!”
“Nonsense and poppycock,” I told him. “I’m not easily smitten.”

That evening, I had to eat my words. There was something about Captain Carlos – I couldn’t put my finger on it – that made me even more tongue-tied than normal. I attributed it to my limited Spanish at the time, but by the end of dinner, I had a full-blown crush. His tactile manner made it even worse: I got a mini-heart attack every time his fingers brushed my arm and I found it hard to concentrate on what he was saying, wondering instead if there is a significant other or whether he is married to the boat, having spent fifteen years on the lake looking after it. He did touch on his private life briefly, saying that things haven’t really worked out for him, what with him spending many years in the Navy and then on the boat. “Maybe I have a shot,” I thought.

I made the mistake of mentioning the growing infatuation to Hermes* and he teased me mercilessly when we retired for the night to our cosy bunks in the guest cabin: “Why don’t you knock on the Captain’s door in the middle of the night, wearing nothing but a smile?”

If only.

In the morning, the sight of compact, muscled, moustachioed Captain Carlos wandering around, fresh from a shower, the small towel around his waist barely covering his modesty, did nothing to cool my ardour. I spent half the time averting my gaze and the other half willing the towel to fall off. Hermes* already told me that the Captain was fit; one time, he persuaded Hermes* to go for a jog with him along the lake. Twenty-something Hermes* collapsed shortly, while the fifty-something Captain ran rings around him. "Fit" was definitely a good way of describing him.

Over lunch, and he divulged his grand plan: to leave the Yavari, to spend the next ten years travelling the world, using only public transport, making a living by doing seasonal work alongside peasants, sleeping rough, and after he’d seen everything he wanted to see, he was happy to die.

Since he was due to come to Lima for a few days, the three of us made vague plans to meet up. I managed to get his email address and sent him a flattering email, and then spent my days checking my email, finding no reply and getting despondent.

He called Hermes* in the end and invited us over to his mother’s house for lunch. When he asked to speak to me, I had to put up with Hermes* doing hip-thrusting motions in the background and other assirted mockery. The Captain politely deflected my attempt to get him alone, explaining that his time in Lima was limited and his relatives numerous. I had to content myself with sitting next to him at lunch, hyperaware of his physical proximity to me. There was some vague talk of meeting up somewhere in the world during his travels – Egypt, perhaps, or Crimea – but otherwise I had to concede defeat.

Word of my crush got round to my friend Pedrito* who possibly mentioned something to the Captain while passing through Puno, thereby probably ruining my chances forever. Months later, Hermes* informed me that the Captain had met a wealthy middle-aged American woman who fell for him and offered to help him with his travels: “We can do everything you want to do – first class all the way!”

“That woman has been sent here to tempt me,” Captain Carlos grumbled to Hermes*; whether or not he took up her offer, thus giving up his dream of sleeping in the fields with peasants, is not yet known; all we knew is that he left the Yavari and disappeared from view for a year and a half…until yesterday.

All Hermes* was able to get out of him is that “lots of difficult things happened during that time in my life ... I mean bad things ... now I have managed to be freed of them". I knew it! I knew that wealthy American was no good for him! He should’ve totally gone for less-than-solvent, emotionally stable me! Clearly the Captain's return has been on my mind, because last night I was troubled by X-rated dreams featuring...not the Captain, but randomly, a teacher from my secondary school who'd never taught me. Oh dear.

I shall be in Lima in June. Time for round two.