4 more images of Peru and a look-back post

Not quite ready with the selections from October's edit but this should wrap up Peru (and September).

Peru 2.4

Peru 2.4
Near our fishing village, a pre-Incan ruin that is layers and layers deep after generations of kings buried the monuments of the previous generation, then decorated the new larger monument in their own motifs. Fascinating, with superb, well-preserved art.

Peru 2.3

Peru 2.3
Yes. Wall-sized. See Peru 2.2 below.

Peru 2.2

Peru 2.2
Really looking forward to seeing this image of Huanchaco life projected to wall-sized.

Peru 2.1

Peru 2.1
The markets of Peru are alive with colour. It was our first month of our year-long tour so tried desperately not to shop. Mailed a box home as soon as we left Peru.

Peru was the right place to begin a year's travel

Peru was an eye-opener of a place to launch our trip. It’s a little difficult to remember all the things that went through our minds as we settled into our year off during that first month of leisure. But I recall being sharply aware of the need to travel differently than any previous travel we’d done. This was a year off, and there was no way any person could spend that many days in full-on explorer mode. You have to stop and let the time pass you by. And you have to do that surprisingly frequently. You can bully your way through the strenuous two days of climbing Mount Putukusi and neighbouring Machu Picchu after a big bad bout of altitude sickness, but there are serious physical limits in the longer term. I speak now from a position of clearer understanding. Our first major steps on returning home were health care – Karen to a naturopath to fix her digestive tract, me to the family doctor to treat a knee injury. Now the knee MRI data is in and it turns out that a year of stress to one’s knees doesn’t necessarily cause ligament damage. At least not in my case. Instead, a year of daily strain (and about a dozen mountain climbs) results in bone injuries – extensive bruising and a small fracture to my left femur. My knee may take as long to heal as it took to cause the damage. And Peru was a powerful dose of knee wear with which to begin our year’s adventure. About two-thirds of the way through our year off we began to look back at Peru and comment that it was a good thing we’d done Peru first, because at that point we didn’t feel capable of the mountain exploits we’d done back in September. Now, a full year later, I have similar thoughts regarding the year off. I don’t think I could do it again. I certainly can’t do it again in the condition I’m in now. The effects of aging isn’t the point of this piece but I had to get past that to get to the wind-down in Huanchaco. While Machu Picchu was one of the icons that we built our year off around – the others were Easter Island (up next) and Angkor Wat (towards the end) – the lazing away of days and weeks in Huanchaco is the travel style that we wanted to perfect. Later, we executed a nearly perfect down-time dropout on the island of Koh Phangan, where we spent 33 days doing as close to nothing as two people can manage. In Peru, we spent almost half our month in Huanchaco. It is a small fishing village, with little going for it but charm, and we made it our home. By the time we had wandered every street I knew we were successfully living in the moment. That’s a sensation that we are striving for in our travels and, as much as Machu Picchu was a miracle in the mountains, Huanchaco was its own miracle on the seashore. I am more likely to go back there, but that may just be the bad knee talking. We could always bus it up Machu Picchu.

Re-living our tour in photos

A totally unexpected result of travelling for a year (unlike any other number of months) is that we are re-living the experience month by month as we sort photos. It's September now so we have spent weeks sorting and editing our Peru pictures. As we build a slideshow of our month in Peru, we are choosing from photos that weren't available for posting during our trip. We carried two cameras but only blogged from a backup point-and-shoot. So, here's the result, a handful of our Peru favourites. We might find a few more before the end of September when we switch to reminiscing about Chile. But first we'll have an essay on Peru, which will be our next text post.



Best of Peru 5

Best of Peru 5
Machu Picchu, Peru: Our second climb in two days began at 3:30 a.m. Fortunately, we stayed near a hot spring where we soothed our legs while waiters brought fruity drinks.

Best of Peru 4

Best of Peru 4
Lima, Peru: Saint Day celebration parade.

Best of Peru 3

Best of Peru 3
Moray, Peru: Terracing at Inca agricultural research site. The varied altitudes of the terraces created micro-climate zones in which the Incas did crop-suitability experiments.

Best of Peru 2

Best of Peru 2
Salinas, Peru: Salt flats in the land of the Incas, still active after 4 centuries.

Best of Peru 1

Best of Peru 1
We took two cameras with us but only downloaded from the backup. So we have 1,000s of unseen photos. Here's one from Sacsayhuaman. This 15th century Inca fort is a 2 km walk above Cusco so Karen is trying to absorb some of the energy from a 7-sided building block. At least it's a distraction from her love affair with her aerosol oxygen can.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Any ideas?

Camping in New Zealand is awesome. But we are having an awful time getting something organized for when we arrive in Sydney on Dec. 30. Everything is $600 a night for New Year's Eve and usually sold out through Jan. 1, 2 and 3. So . . . any ideas out there? We're stumped.
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Sunday, November 15, 2009

New Zealand is Wicked

We had to go indoors today because of a downpour, so we are hitting the Internet for the first time in weeks before heading off to a few pubs in Dunedin, South Island, New Zealand. A quick catchup on our adventures before arriving here: Just before we left the Cook Islands we did a four-hour cross-island trek that climbed to a height of 300 metres for a spectacular panoramic view across the jungle to the ocean. On the same day, we walked across the lagoon in waist-deep water to a wee island where we spotted a shockingly blue starfish with arms almost a foot long. Then we flew the next day (Guy Fawkes Day) into Auckland (actually, we left on Guy Fawkes Day and arrived four hours later on the next day -- man that Date Line is confusing) where we watched neighbourhood fireworks displays all over the city from the airplane. Quite surreal. We shortchanged the North Island by only visiting Rotorua and the Coromandel Peninsula but what highlights those turned out to be. Our campground in Rotorua had free hotspring pools to soak in after spending each day hiking. The Coromandel has some of the most crooked coastal roads we have ever driven. On the South Island we rented a Wicked van, the mention of which brought guffaws from all the Aussies and Kiwis we talked to back in the Cook Islands. (Big hello to those people. Hanging out with you was a real highlight. Sorry, our North Island stay was shorter than we thought.) Turns out our Wicked van is painted with the Sex Pistols on the side and a nasty slogan about university education on the back. Still, it's a bit of a fraternity as every other Wicked driver gives us a wave as we pass them. Our first three nights of van camping cost us $0, $15 and $24, the third night cost more because we needed a shower. The first night we just parked in a roadside picnic stop, which is allowed here unless otherwise posted. We did our own variation on the ski-and-surf-in-one-day trick -- we hiked to a glacier in the mountains and watched penguins on the coast in the same day. Oh yeah. Several people commented on the Moai statues on Easter Island asking about their size. The smallest was about 1.5 metres. Many were about 5 metres tall. The tallest erected statue was 10 metres tall and one unfinished carving would have been 21 metres tall if completed. I see sunshine now. Must be time for a pint of Speights. Bye.
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