Bob and Karen's Circle Pacific Tour: Now this feels like a travel adventure again

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.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Now this feels like a travel adventure again

Strange delay getting to Bangkok. Our flight from Sydney was 18 hours late taking off because of the bad weather in London, where the plane originated. Not a big deal, though, because the airline put us up in an airport hotel and chitted us for dinner and breakfast. It's not like we were in a hurry. Probably saved a few bucks on the dining. Prices are brilliant here in Bangkok, and this is the expensive part of the country. We bought airline tickets to Ko Samui and fly on Wednesday. Cost about 5,200 baht which, let me think, works out to $150 one-way for both of us. See. Cheap. Can't wait to hit a beach cause we are badly in need of an ocean breeze. God it's humid here. It's 10 p.m. and we're still sweating. Can't complain though, it's not as crappy as Europe or North America. We're sending heat vibes to all our friends and family in our thoughts. We are definitely leaning towards the "lucky us, pinch me, I'm really in Bangkok" end of the "how's it going" scale. No question. We felt a little homesick in Australia because things kept reminding us of home. That's gone now. Nothing here reminds us of home, especially not the tall cockroaches. Not only are the cockroaches long, but they are TALL too. Yikes. We spent this afternoon (about 35 C) wandering around the Grand Palace, which is really a walled area of the city, sort of like Beijing's Forbidden City, but with many huge domes plated in gold. Many photos later and we were suffering from dehydration so for a late lunch we ordered two huge bottles of water and two huge bottles of beer, just to get started. Total bill for the meal and drinks was 461 baht or, let me think, $14. And that was the most touristy part of town. Our local street food, half a block from our hotel, is better food and cheaper. Yesterday we had hour-long foot massages for 250 baht a person or about $7. Equal parts relaxing and painful, and Bob had to go straight to bed afterwards. We might try it again tomorrow after we visit a few more Buddhas - standing, reclining and marble.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Hi Guys,Bec and Rich here.Great blog.
Arrived in Bangkok yesterday.
How was the boat trip the other day.Hope it wasnt too rainy!
Both of us are on facebook, Richard Collier and Rebecca Summerfield but here's my email collier72@ntlworld.com
Keep in touch.
B and R.; January 26, 2010 at 9:26 PM