Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters
Various Salsa Music
My Christmas List
More time in South America Or, anything from my wish list.
Excerpts from Day One and Day Two of My Travel Journal Post Date: 11/07/04
Original Journal Date: 10/29/04 and 10/30/04 You know, originally there were pictures with this journal. I mean, there still are, except that I hosed the digital camera part way through the trip. This means if you want to see photos of the trip, you will have to sit with me and look at photos with me. Yep. So here starts something like 10 days of travel journal transcriptions. Try not to get too bored by the first two days (this entry), because I really consider it to be that the trip didn't truly start until we left Lima, and these first two days are journal entries from Lima. Also, this is edited. Seriously edited. So again, if you want some of the best stories, I have a phone and I like to be bought drinks. Sigh. I miss the trip already. 10-29-Friday, Lima
At this very moment, I am sitting in the courtyard at our hostel in Miraflores. The courtyard is full of purple orchids and green vines and sunshine. South American sunshine, which I'm told is different from North American sunshine not because it is closer to the sun but because the angle of the rays is more direct. I'm here. I'm in Peru with two of my favorite friends and my little brother. Life is good. Very good. I'm feeling thankful. The flight down was long, and by long I mean looooong. On the final leg between Houston and Lima, I got to switch seats and sit next to Joel. The thought was that we would either nap or go through things in our Peru guidebooks together and practice our Spanish. This didn't happen because we were sucked in by the movies. I say to Continental airlines, "You Go! What a freakin' excellent movie selection." First, we got to watch The Day After Tomorrow. This film is not only amazingly boring despite the cgi effects, it's also a disaster movie. Perhaps not your best bet for a plane flight over a mountain range? But who am I to question the artistic selection of the folks at Continental Airlines? The second film was White Chicks. You know, the movie where the Wayans brothers go under cover as white socialite heiresses? Sadly, this film had the entire plane rolling in the aisles. Sadly, this included myself and Joel. At least Joel and I didn't have to suffer the film selection of Lan Chile, which Ho flew. He got to watch Garfield. I'm not kidding you. That movie won't die. So Joel and I get to the airport, through immigration and baggage claim. Okay, actually only I get through baggage claim because only I have checked baggage. In the meantime, since we are late, I send Joel through customs to find the driver who the hostel has sent for us and make sure he doesn't leave. I forget that Joel doesn't speak Spanish at all. Apparently, he manages to infuriate the customs agent when he can't figure out the procedure. But he does find the driver. Ah, yes, the driver. Firstly, the Lima airport is crazy. I think half the population of the city has found employment as a taxi driver, the other half being employed as a security guard. All of the taxi drivers have come to the airport in an effort to convince you that you should choose them as your taxi driver. All of them. They are pressed against the dividers as you exit the airport. They are yelling at you in Spanish that you need a taxi. It smells a little bit like a gym locker room. Yep. Our driver pulls us on a mad rush out of the airport, and then we walk. We walk past where all of the other taxis are lined up. We walk past where the busses are parked. We walk past where the normal cars are parked. We walk to a squatter's village. I kid you not. There are people sleeping in little cardboard houses. And there is our driver's car. So, to begin with, there are only two warnings Joel and I took away from our guidebooks. The first had to do with water. The second was to only ride in registered taxi cabs so you didn't get robbed or killed. This was not a registered taxi cab. Yet we got in. Joel had decided it wasn't our time to die. Lima driving is best summed up with the following Pookie quote, "Here, it seems that lane lines in the road are merely suggestions." And it is true. Our driver actually split lanes to drive between two busses. BUSSES, people. But everybody else was doing it, too. The intended two-lane road was being used as a four-lane road. I white knuckled the door. Joel looked confused. Off in the distance, the ocean. I wondered if we would make it that far. We passed a billboard for Nescafe. Apparently, despite growing some of the world's finest coffee here, they still drink that instant shit. Go figure. Glad to see that's a powerful U.S. import. We got to the hostel which is nice and clean and has a television in the room. This morning, I awoke to hear Lisa speaking loudly in Spanish from the room across the hall where she and Jutta had arrived late, late in the night. Then, Ho arrived and finally the trip could start. Oh, and then we added one more person. Heike. A German. That makes two Germans on the trip with us. Heike had just come from, um, maybe Chile? She was on a year-long world trip. I was envious. She also ended up staying in the room with Ho and Joel and I for the next two nights and traveling with us for five or six days. Heike is a good thing. So, we grab a few cabs and head downtown to see the main square in Lima. We watch the changing of the guard, which involves lots of high-stepping and marching and brass band music. We tour the Iglesias de San Francisco, which is Franciscan monastery left over from when the Spanish made themselves comfortable in Peru. The monastery itself is beautiful and perfect and full of rich architecture and artwork. The original monks' library is still in tact too. But the best part is that beneath the monastery itself were catacombs where wealthy (or at least better-off) people were buried. And the bones are still there. For the historical record, poor folk were buried in the yards outside the church, and people with more money were buried beneath the church. Supposedly, about 25,000 people were buried beneath this monastery, but they can only account for about 1000 bodies. In the catacombs, there are bones everywhere. It's really very centering and calm. It smells like myrrh. I could have sat down there quietly all day long and listened if I had been able to. Just go hide in a corner somewhere and listen to the things the bones still said. Anyway... Six people are too many to travel with until you have developed your tolerance for the inevitable clusters that accompany such large travel groups, and it took me a few days to build up that tolerance. What I'm saying is that after the church, I almost lost my mind. All we needed to do was walk from the church to the place where we wanted to have lunch. What that turned into though was a stop for money exchange, a stop to buy cd's and dvd's, another double back to the money exchange, a realization that two people had to walk down the street to go to the atm, a return to the cd's and dvd's while we waited for the atm people, then another need to regroup after they returned and people were still shopping. You all know my patience level. It was slipping. We finally made it to lunch. We went to a beautiful building that housed a restaurant run by an order of nuns. Yes, nuns. And they looked at me like they knew I was no angel. For $3US, we had three courses: cream of mushroom soup, fried pork with rice and beans and ice cream, plus fresh pear juice. This alleviated my aggravation over our first official travel cluster. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Lima enjoying the parks and the architecture and stopping for coffee at the museum. Then, a perfect wrap. We watched the sun set over the ocean from the Parque d'Amor. The wind blew in off the ocean onto the weird South American statue of a couple making out. The cross from the church on the pier was lit up across the way and all was perfect in the moment. After the sunset, Joel, Jutta, Ho and I hiked down to the ocean to touch the water and watch the last surfers come in. And now it was night time. After dinner (uneventful), Heike, Ho, Joel, Lisa and I went to a Criolla music and dance celebration at a club. Criolla is another name for the Afro-Peruvian style of music and dance. We watched young people celebrate with ethnic dances (mostly about courting rituals) and old, grandma-like women in much makeup sing. Peruvian people are stunningly beautiful, so after the dance number, Lisa and I tried to break into the back room to get a better look at the lovely Peruvian boys who had danced. We failed. But the night was most excellent. And then, sleep. And tomorrow, we start again. In my head as I lay down, dancing Peruvians and a big ocean sunset. 10-30 -Saturday, Lima
I'm ready to hit the road and get out of Lima. Don't get me wrong, it's lovely here. I'm just ready for something other than the city, you know? This morning I got up before anybody else and took a five mile run along the cliffs over the ocean. I watched early morning soccer and other runners and dogs and surfers heading down to the breaks. The air was heavy and salty (and had some lovely diesel fumes), but I waded through it. When I got back, I felt like I had run through the ocean instead of just beside it. Anyway, this AM we went to the Museo del Oro, which houses both an amazing weaponry collection and a collection of gold Inca artifacts. It was really interesting, though I think perhaps Ho and I found it more interesting than the others because we seemed to care the most about the weaponry. Then ... the cluster hits again! So, we were next going to go to the Museo de la Nacion. I think I spelled that wrong, but whatever. We decide it will be a good idea to walk. For six of us to walk. Not so much. After getting lost, we end up on a main road drag. Between the exhaust fumes and the heat, Heike, Jutta and I decide to get in a Lima Death Cab. This breaks up the group, creating a cluster when we arrive at the museum, though apparently soon after, Lisa, Joel and Ho also get in a cab, so we all end up at the museum together. We grab some lunch. Even this cannot be simple. Orders are seemingly lost in the kitchen. Orders are changed. Orders take forever to arrive. Drinks are delivered incorrectly. Mango and Papaya are repeatedly confused. Aggravation mounts. The cluster begins to wrap itself around us. We finish at the museum and head off. Joel, Ho, Lisa and I are going paragliding. We get in the cab and head to the cliffs. All of a sudden, Joel yells out, "GOTTA HAVE MY BUCKS!" Yes, there in the middle of downtown Lima, another fine American export. Starbucks. How lucky are the Peruvians that they don't need to get through their days without a double shot and a scone? Gotta.love.it. Oh, wait, wrong export. And also, don't you fret your little head, there was also no shortage of the trifecta: Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell. Hell yeah! So, at this point, cluster frustration. But here's the good part: It turned around quickly during the paragliding. Lima is on the coast, but there are actually huge cliff drop offs before you hit the actual shore line. Lisa, Ho and I each went up for a ride with a paraglider above these cliffs. Now, I've been paragliding before, but it was the kind where you're tacked to the back of the motorboat and paragliding over the ocean (the Bahamas were nice, so nice). This was free paragliding above cliffs and a freeway. You could die. And the air was choppy. And I couldn't communicate with my tandem guy because it was loud. And also I wasn't fully in the harness seat when we took off so any movement on my part was, I was sure, going to send me plummeting to my death on the coastal freeway below. But children, it was not my time, and the paragliding was amazing. Over the ocean and the cliffs and the lighthouse. You could taste the ocean and watch the surfers like little black floating dots below. Felt just like being the actual wind gusts. The four of us headed down to the ocean to meet up with Heike and Jutta for dinner. Since we were early, we did a little shopping and then had drinks at a bar that had huge glass windows that the water would literally break against. We talked of lovers and of being loved, which is good, because now at least that conversation is over with. Then we met up with the girls for a fine dinner of fresh seafood (tuna with portabella mushrooms and truffles) and strong drinks. We decided to all turn in early since we had to leave by 9am the next day for Nazca. I left a little earlier than the rest of them from dinner so that I could enjoy some alone-time on the walk home. After I got showered and cleaned up, I called the Cute Boy. Ten minutes later, they all walk in the door yelling, "We knew you left so you could call him!" Yes, we are the traveling caravan of fourteen-year-olds. And I like that. Tune in tomorrow for wineries, thoughts on poverty, more clusters, an oasis, dune buggy riding and snowboarding down sand dunes ... and more drinking.