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.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

My mouth is on fire and I have no beer

It doesn't matter how good the Thai food is, you have to switch to club sandwiches and burgers every week or so, if only to let your lips have a break. No tummy troubles either. Still, we've had remarkably good food here on Koh Samui. The three flavours shrimp dish (sweet, sour and spicy) and the chicken with cashews are favourites but we've tried a dozen or more dishes, usually two shared per meal with rice and beer. Most meals have been on the beach or overlooking it. One lunch was on a boat when we did a tour to Angthong Marine National Park. Oddly, we went to the marine park to go hiking. While other people were kayaking (too hard on Bob's back) or snorkelling (Karen can't swim) we were climbing nasty slippery rock trails to great heights for the spectacular views. As usual, the photos will have to wait until we bring the wire connectors with us. Sorry. Our stay on Koh Samui stretched a week longer than we anticipated because of a bit of a miss-step - Bob left his ATM card in our Bangkok hotel's internet room, we think. The bank was quick to cancel it and send out a replacement, but the rush emergency delivery took nine days. Actually, the replacement card didn't work today but Karen's card worked so the cash-flow is fine. It was interesting to stay long-term in a short-term place as we made a lot of friends and soon saw them off. There was Rich and Bec from Brighton going to a wedding in New Zealand; Ian and Colleen from the Okanagan in B.C. who kindly used their rental car to haul us all over the island scouting out yoga studios and to see a mummified monk; and Simon and Jacqueline moving back to Australia from England and their friend Peter who seems to be able to meet them anywhere in the world if there's beer available. Hi to all of them. Hope you see this and leave a comment (Rich and Bec did already, keeners). Other than that our news is a little weak because all we've been doing is reading, playing pool and getting massages (every second day). Tomorrow we take a ferry to the island of Koh Phangan where most tourists will be hurting themselves at the Full Moon Party. We're going deep off-piste to a beach with no roads to it and no pier. We have to jump off the boat into the shallows. Guess we'll be packing our hiking boots and wearing our flipflops. This also means there may be no internet. This part of the world is developing rapidly so that may no longer be true. If you don't hear from us before March, don't worry, we've found an even cheaper beach paradise with no internet.
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3 comments:

Unknown said...

I checked it out on Google Earth- are you on the west side of the island? I see a place called Samui Honey Cottages near the beach and was wondering if that was near you. There are two: Koh Samui(in the mountains) and Ko Samui (along the beach, west sid eof island), I wondered which you were at.
In any event- looks beautiful though more developed than I expected.

February 2, 2010 at 1:44 AM
Anonymous said...

Hey Bob...happy birthday tomorrow (Feb. 8) This is one birthday you'll never forget. Hope all is well. Love to you and Karen. Mum and Dad

February 7, 2010 at 10:56 AM
Unknown said...

Happy B-day Big Brother, Sorry this is late by the time you receive it, but it's still Feb 8th here where I'm freezing my butt off!! ha, ha.
This will have been a b-day you'll remember for a long time. Keep those postings coming ... love them !!!! Hope all is well and both you and Karen are somewhat healthy. Love, Angie.

February 8, 2010 at 3:01 PM

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