Bob and Karen's Circle Pacific Tour: Tuna, Moai and squishy boots

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.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Tuna, Moai and squishy boots

We leave Easter Island late tomorrow but most shops (including Internet) are closed on Sunday so this is our last shot before Tahiti where it is too expensive to do anything but breathe. Easter Island just barely tops Machu Picchu in the cool factor. It is quite a memorable place to drive, hike or just sit and watch the waves behind a Moai (you know, the big statues with the red hats). Our favourite part was the full day we spent driving around the coast, stopping every 5 kilometres or so to crawl out and wander around a bit of parkland surrounding another amazing archeological site. Even the increasingly heavy rain could not stop us from getting out and ogling the statues, platforms and stone rings. This morning was our first real bit of sunshine, so we took two cameras and two water bottles and hiked for two hours up a west coast trail where there is no road, mostly because of the millions of lava rocks scattered across the countryside. Several times the trail crossed lava tubes or more sizable pyrochlastic flows (guessing on the spelling). We had set a two-hour limit on our hike because we had to come back and figured it would be during the hottest part of the day. Wrong. The rain came back and we slogged our way home along a dirt trail of a road that included several places where we had to ford across the orange stream of rushing rainwater crisscrossing the track. We squished home completely soaked and our hiking boots are drying on the verandah of our guesthouse, unless the rain picks up again while we are out for dinner. We did not bring the camera with us for our afternoon beer so it will be awhile before we can post a Moai picture. Loved the tuna sandwiches here - a slab of fish bigger than a paperback book, about an inch thick and cooked fresh on the grill. Ummmm, dinner beckons. Probably more tuna.

4 comments:

Rob and Carolyne said...: Again, I can't wait to see the pictures. Too bad about the rain, but it could have been worse. Good luck in Tahiti. Luv you guys. Mum/C.; October 17, 2009 at 9:45 PM
Rob and Carolyne said...: You never did learn to come in out of the rain. Dad; October 18, 2009 at 10:44 AM
Deni said...: So I was wondering - just how tall are those statues? Bigger than Bob? Are they everywhere or just on one part of the island.
Sounds like the food is still a fun part of this trip. More pics!!
(Oh- by the way I am starting up a new business - big surprise. Can't wait to share when you get back); October 18, 2009 at 3:16 PM
Lynn said...: Hey Bob,

how's the trip - gorgeous photos!

btw - tell your sister-in-law we're coming back to play stittsville Sat. Nov. 28

Happy travels!!

Lynn :); October 25, 2009 at 4:50 PM