Peru

Well, here I am with two more weeks under my belt. Biggest change so far? I will no longer so insistently disagree with those of you who say that it takes balls to travel on your own. Yeah, so, you were right; I was wrong; although I´ll contend that it still has yet to be seen if I actually have those balls!It´s not that anything in Peru has been particularly difficult — on the contrary I´ve been on the well-beaten tourist track this whole time, which means encountering people who, whether or not they speak english, know I´m going to one of three places and are more than happy to help me get to any of them. But I met a few Canadians who were travelling together in Pisco and it gave me a glimpse into life with others — I´m quite certain that it has its ups and downs of its own, nonetheless it´s somehow a lot easier to put yourself on the line and agree to make a fool of yourself when there´s someone else around to be back-up or scapegoat or co-fool or sage or sounding board or whatever else might be useful to keep things in perspective.

So, what have I been keeping myself busy with the last 2 weeks? You know, this and that, same old stuff…

I arrived in Cuzco from Quito via Lima last Tuesday (after breaking down and buying a $300 round-trip ticket instead of spending 4 days on the bus). An Up With People contact graciously picked me up at the airport and escorted me to her family´s home (up about 120 steps — yeah for good butt workouts!) and into a wonderful room full of light and coziness and a bed that rivals the Westin’s. This was my homebase for the next week — always friendly and welcoming (in spite of my regretful lack of Spanish, let alone Quechua), full of all different people and yummy smells.

From here I explored Cuzco, with an initial orientation from Alex (of UWP), and its churches and museums and squares and cafes and tourists and postcard-sellers and tourists and picture-models and tourists. It seems just big enough to feel like there´s lots of life going on, but also small enough to feel approachable by the likes of me (and, yes, having all those tourists around helps a bit too).

Then, being the obedient tourist that I can sometimes be, I headed off to Aguas Calientes for a visit to Machu Picchu. Even just the train itself felt like something of an adventure, requiring a few re-attempts at some of the steeper inclines. In the end Machu Picchu was not the spiritually-…I don´t know…awakening experience that everyone assured me it would be. True to Dianne and Lau´s warnings, I was fairly put off by the masses of tours gathered at every corner with guides shouting at them. It made me wish I were in a tour group, just so I wouldn´t be bothered by all the other tour groups.

I spent my first day there exploring on my own (I haven´t figured out why I am so guide-averse yet, but I know that I am), sweating it out in the heat, trying to follow a deliberate path as laid out in D&L´s guidebook (valiantly…for a while), trying to decide whether to hang behind this and that group (or can I slide past them? through them? join them for god´s sake?) and finally taking refuge in an out-of-the-way nook looking over the massive terraces. But, what do I really have to complain about when my entrance was FREE care of Alex´s guide-boyfriend?!?!

I wasn´t prepared for the heat and so didn´t outlast the groups and headed back into town, just in time to realize that I was (VERY stupidly) in a cash crisis. Alex had warned me that there weren´t any banks or ATMs in Aguas Calientes (which seems slightly strange for a town with as many internet cafes and credit card terminals as it has) and I thought I was covered, but apparently I had done the math wrong and I was not covered. In Aguas Calientes you can live and eat to your heart´s content with one credit card, but if you want to leave — you´re in serious need of cash. So, instead of spending the next morning getting up to Machu Picchu for the break of day (as had been the plan), I spent it wandering around AC waiting for offices to open and to figure out what my options were. Finally everyting was resolved (by catching the bus up to Machu Picchu and paying the hotel there 10% for cash) and, in the end, crisis-resolution was actually a pretty nice way to start the day!

So, I spent day 2 in Machu Picchu doing a couple of the side trips outlined in my book. The Inca Drawbridge first (see upcoming entry for the marvelous moment this was) and then Huanna Picchu. Both very fun and strikingly beautiful. It was a relief to get views of that world in the midst of silence, and I started to understand more of what I´d heard from others about their spiritual experience at Machu Picchu. For me it was more moving to be at that height of the natural world, looking down and around at other mountains, seeing a little piece of civilization etched into the side of a mountain and yet being surrounded by scores of other mountains that were not touched in the same way. It was enough to make me lust after life in the mountains over life on the water — only for a moment or two though.

Huanna Picchu was particularly fun, and I was continually glad to be doing it alone — the presence of someone beside me not struggling as much I was would have been an embarrassment! Huffing and puffing, I made it to the glorious top (where a few Australians proved worthy of the loud, obnoxious stereotype we Americans usually get) with the satisfaction of climbing a mountain (well, the top of a mountain…with a lot of steps) and, a couple of Oreos and some water later, was able to soak it all in. It was a good way to cap my Machu Picchu experience.

From there it was back to Cuzco early the next day with a stopover at one more site of Incan ruins (Ollantaytambo). Where I had another hiking experience, though unintentionally. I swear it looked like a trail, but apparently it wasn´t (the need to pull myself up by some branches could´ve been a clue), but I ended up looking over the whole site from above (rather spectacular) and realizing that the way up didn´t really function as the way down, but it was the only way I knew, so I spent much of it on my butt with some fairly amused on-lookers.

After my Machu Picchu adventures, my time in Cuzco was ending and my host family treated me to a veritable feast for lunch on my last day. Guinea pig, pasta baked with egg, stuffed pepper, potatoes, salad and wine all on the outdoor terrace under the sun was a very sweet farewell. Guinea pig (graciously served to me without the head) wasn´t all that bad — skin like that of good fried chicken (which is to say, Grandma´s fried chicken) and meat like the darkest dark meat you can find. (It was a bit of awakening though to realize that the room from which I kept hearing peeps and which I thought housed a bunch of chicks was actually home to all the guinea pigs that grace the family´s table!)

So, from Cuzco the path was off to the coast, again by way of Lima. Bus down to Pisco, arrange the couple of standard tours for the next day and I am once again squarely in the land of tourists! The tours that travel out of Pisco (about 4 hours south of Lima) are fine — Islas Ballestas (a boat tour of a few islands populated by sea lions and lots of different sea birds — Peruvian boobies, a couple of penguins, cormorands) and Paracas National Reserve (look at flamingoes from 500 yds away, walk along a striking coastline where desert and sea meet, view an interesting rock formation, and have lunch sea-side). I don´t know what I was expecting, but something different I guess. I wasn´t disappointed per se; both of the tour guides were very nice and pretty friendly (the first one hilariously exaggerated and repeated her words to make sure she was understood and in exactly the same way between her english bits and her spanish bits) and everyone else on the tours was very friendly; I guess I just wasn´t riveted by their subject matter. Though I really shouldn´t sell short the fantastic beauty of the coastline and the water — there is absolutely nothing like ocean blue, and to see it in stark contrast with the yellow sand is certainly a sight to be seen. PLUS, a night of drunken mayhem in Pisco with the aforementioned Canadian travellers made Pisco a stop not to be regretted!

After that the next logical step for the tourist is: Ica and Huaccachina. Here things kind of got off track. Huaccachina (an oasis surrounded by huge sand dunes just outside of the small town Ica) had been strongly recommended to me for a sandboarding adventure, and so I headed right there. But, I just never got off the ground; the first day I wasn´t feeling very well and so decided just to lay low, hang around the oasis (good people watching; a lot of Peruvians go to Huaccachina for day trips) and go for sandboarding the next day. Then, the next day I felt even worse and slept until 1 and still felt too crappy to do anything with the rest of my day. Finally, feeling like myself again this morning, I was all set to go, but there weren´t enough other people to put a trip together in the morning. Despite failing to fulfill my sole purpose in being there, Huaccachina was a really nice place. It is almost comical to see this small lake in the middle of the desert with a ring of hotels and restaurants sprung up around it (that are mostly only open during the day when the crowds are around). It´s a very tropical environment with people splashing and playing, palm tres, hammocks set up in the shade; it was actually the first real heat I´ve experienced since starting on this trip. (From what I hear, had I been able to go sandboarding I would be feeling quite sore at the moment — falling as much as if it were a first snowboarding lesson, but instead of forgiving snow, it´s harsh, hard sand underneath you. I´ll have to wait for another opportunity to torture myself.)

As I go through this, without any planning, without any agendas, I´m realizing that I´m adding things to my to-do list much more quickly than I am checking them off. While no planning and no agenda mean complete flexibility, they also mean that everything doesn´t work out the way I hope once I do make some kind of plan (e.g., it sounds like a trip to Arequipa would´ve been worthwhile, I am in Peru and yet haven´t even come close to Lake Titicaca, etc.). Alas, the world is big…and I guess I do have an agenda: get around the world before I run out of money! I suppose there´s some inherent sacrifice in that mission…

That brings me to right now, which finds me once again in the Lima airport, familiar even comforting surroundings with its internet cafes, luggage storage, dunkin donuts, etc. I will shame-facedly admit that I actually don´t need to be here right now. I am scared of Lima! It was evening by the time I got here; my flight is in the morning; it was just so much easier to imagine to spending another calm (free) night at the airport, then making my way to some hostel (even a recommended one) and making my way to the airport at some odd hour of the morning, all the while lugging aroun my bag, paying taxis, paying hostal-owners, blah, blah, blah…actually, I´m just scared of Lima — but not the airport!! I got to talking to one woman on the Paracas tour who has done a lot of travelling on her own and felt very validated when she said how she too sometimes wouldn´t mind if the bus just kept on going…it´s funny how quickly any place can become familiar and comforting…problem is, when it´s a bus, eventually you have to get off!

I guess that´s it for now! Due to a slight change in plans I am now headed back to Ecuador for a little while before heading to Chile. The cheapest ticket to Cuzco was a round-trip ticket, so I figured I might as well use all the tickets I have at my disposal and spend a little more quality time with the Peace Corps! So, NEXT STOP: QUITO!

October 04, 2003 in South America