Bob and Karen's Circle Pacific Tour: Hanging out in Hanoi

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.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Hanging out in Hanoi

We have even more down time than we anticipated, as we bide our time here in Hanoi, waiting for the latest typhoon to leave the area so we can go to Halong Bay. Not to worry, folks, the authorities here won't let the boats go out if there's any cause for concern. Not that we really want to be sailing in 18-foot swells. It's raining here as well, and there are not too many tourist sites in Hanoi, so we've been focusing on finding air-conditioned restaurants with comfortable seating and enough light to read by. But Sapa lived up to our expectations and more. We started with a two-day trek down the valley, assisted by our local guide, My, and a group of Black Hmong women in negotiating the steep slopes. We kind of knew they were tagging along in hopes we'd buy some of their handicrafts at the end of the hike, and we didn't have the heart to disappoint them. The other thousand sellers were out of luck after that, though. We lucked out with perfect trekking weather, with clouds drifting on the mountainsides and occasionally blocking the heat of the sun. Our first day ended at a homestay, where we played pool on a much used and abused table, and enjoyed an excellent meal and conversation with a group of other travellers from Spain, France and South Africa. The next day, we continued our trek along rice terraces and through a bamboo forest to a small waterfall which must be more impressive after a heavy rain. Returning to Sapa by jeep, we booked into a fabulous hotel room, with a curved window and balcony overlooking the valley. Another day's outing took us to the market at Bac Ha, across the Red River Valley from Lao Cai on the other side from Sapa and a gathering point for the even more colourful Flower Hmong people. If we could remember where we packed the connection cord for the camera, you'd be getting photos of this. But everything's packed up so we can take the trip to Halong Bay, with Bob's pack jammed with everything we don't need for that excursion and the plane ride home. Only eight more sleeps until we head back to North America.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Enjoy your last few days .... can hardly wait to see you the first weekend in August at Frog Hollow. Love, Angie.; July 23, 2010 at 2:14 PM
Deni said...: Well I have a nice american style barbeque with california wine and lots of cheese just waiting for you! Can't wait to see you on Saturday.; July 26, 2010 at 9:38 PM