Bob and Karen's Circle Pacific Tour: Quiet days

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.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Quiet days

We've spent several quiet days in Lima, a few museums, a few naps, a few walks with little purpose. This is the goal of the year-long tour . . . gentle, leisurely visits with as little stress as possible. And it´s working. We've had a bit of gurgly tummy, but nothing harsh. We´ve walked ourselves into mild exhaustion, but again, nothing too horrid. Most travellers would not need this many days to see Lima; it may be huge but there are only a few key touristy bits. But we're enjoying the quiet get-to-know-you feeling and not having to meet any deadlines, self-imposed or otherwise. Some bits about Lima: The traffic and air pollution are disgusting. We walk along a major road and cross over a major highway to get to a restaurant district. The clouds of exhaust at that intersection are sickening. That one intersection has caused Karen to relearn the horking technique she last used 10 years ago in China. We always cross at traffic lights and even then try to accompany the local pedestrians in a group rather than attempt a crossing on our own. The walk/don´t walk lights include countdowns that start as high as 72 and as low as 12. There´s even one where the green man is animated -- he starts at a walking pace and then runs faster and faster as the time runs out; made us laugh even as we skedaddled across the street. No near-misses though. Local authorities have been preparing for several days now for independence day celebrations tonight (postponed from June due to the H1N1 flu). There´s a big park near here loaded up with equipment for the sound-and-light show. Each night while we've been sitting in nearby cafes, they´ve been blasting out snippets of the Star Wars theme, a bit of opera and a bit of trance house -- last night it was four times each. The deep bass booming out of the speakers kept setting off all the car alarms. And the loungy jazz trio we tried to listen to kept having to quit because they were drowned out by the monster speaker system in the park. Ah well, time to wake up Karen and head to the ocean.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...: Great posting. Love the little green man. Keep up the great work. We are headed off to Mexico Monday. Love Dad; September 6, 2009 at 3:21 PM
Rob and Carolyne said...: if this works I may have figured out how to post a comment.; September 6, 2009 at 3:57 PM
mickus said...: Never mind all this stuff about chilling out in Chile, I want some serious wine reviews. For that matter, what's the food like? I was talking to somebody at the weekend who spent a year out there and she really liked the place. Between you I've been convinced I've really missed out on something. By the way, what's the best way to communicate with you while you're away, via this blog or your hotmail addresses? So many questions - keep enjoying, keep posting.

Mickus; September 7, 2009 at 6:35 PM
mickus said...: Whoops, slight spelling error, I meant chilling out in Peru.

M; September 8, 2009 at 3:20 AM
Rob and Carolyne said...: Sharing you blog ok. We are now in Mexico and only about 2 hours work to get everything working. Tony's ribs were great. Dad/Rob; September 8, 2009 at 11:11 AM
Unknown said...: Finally remembered I can find your blog through Facebook so I am catching up. Sounds like Lima is interesting if dirty. But the easy walking around sounds heavenly and like you two to a tee! Have fun!

Deni; September 10, 2009 at 5:09 PM