My bags are packed, but I’m not ready to go.

It’s the day I haven’t quite been looking forward to, not because I dislike traveling, but because it would require me to leave my home, Cusco, the place I’ve grown so attached to over the past couple of months. Not just for the people, but for the comfort and friendliness, and warmth, and partially love-hate relationship it’s offered me. Well, maybe love-hate is too strong, this is more like the pleasant bantering back and forth between lovers. Or something like that. Anyway, I’ve managed to stuff everything I brought with me into the backpack I brought it in, but somehow it doesn’t seem to fit properly. It’s funny how that happens when you ‘live.’ And I’ve bought another bag for all those new things I’ve managed to acquire to remember that I ‘lived’ in Cusco. I embark on an overnight bus to Arequipa, the first of many buses making my way up to Lima. I’m traveling with someone I met in Cusco, and it’s nice knowing I don’t have to lug my bags into the bathroom stall for each pee (for those of you following my blog, I apologize for my rather ridiculous obsession with the intricacies of peeing on this trip, but bathrooms have been of all shapes and sizes and, thus, I’ve been preoccupied).  Goodbyes were hard, but there was the rest of Peru ahead. The overnight bus to Arequipa was actually quite pleasant, and I fell asleep instantly, for the duration of the trip.

I rather liked Arequipa, with it’s white stone buildings and fancy wide streets (not cobblestone, and I could actually walk on them without stumbling). Everyone had praised the mall in Arequipa as a must-see. Well, everyone from Cusco, because malls and movie theatres are non-existent in Cusco. I didn’t make it to the mall, but did get to know a restaurant called Fez rather well. I saw the sights of course – including the famed monastery, the Colca Canyon, and petroglyphs nearby – but always managed to return to Fez. Which, undoubtedly, had the best falafels in town. In all of Peru, as the lonely planet claims. Exploring the petroglyphs was a pretty neat experience, as it was slightly off the beaten path, and I felt like quite the anthropologist, wandering through each stone, observing the carvings, trying to make sense of them, with not another tourist in sight (except for the person I was with). When I stopped to think that these drawings, as any other structure or line in the ground I have or will see, were done 100s of years ago, it really amazed and intrigued me.  What message were the trying to convey that I’m sure we’re getting all wrong? What motivated them to mark their stories onto the ground, the stones? Or were they just communicating with each other, and we were never part of their motivation?

Our next stop was Nasca, to see the famed Nasca lines. The only way these lines can be observed is through a flight overhead. The flight itself was small, stuffy and quite nauseating, even for a person like me who hardly ever gets motion sickness. The lines were amazing, and stirred similar thoughts in my head as the petroglyphs. The designs, the perfection, the size...what for? I guess that’s what everyone is trying to figure out. The story of the Nasca lines are actually quite intriguing and were studied for years by a German anthropologist. I remember seeing an article in National Geographic about them as well recently. We ventured into the outskirts of Nasca as well, in order to see the cemetery where hundreds of mummies were found, and the aquaducts, which the Nasca people had dug to obtain water from underground in the heights of the desert. Nasca itself, has a weird memory for me though, as I was robbed here. My purse and all its contents were stolen from right under my nose, in the fraction of a second that I let my guard down. It shook me to my core, partly because I blamed myself for carrying as much as I was in it. Looking back on the incident now, I remember feeling violated, and an immediate distrust of everyone around me.  Anyone who dared make eye contact with me, I did not want to look at. I hated how the whole thing made me feel about Peruvians, because I had grown to love them, but I couldn’t help the automatic judgements I was making. It wasn’t conscious, it was extremely unconscious, but they were being made nonetheless. It wasn’t until much later, when the whole thing had become a bit of a distant memory, did I reflect upon the goodness of a few people who stayed with me, comforted me, and took me to the police station so they could help me translate what had happened to the cops, and communicate with me. The woman at the hostel I was staying at, and her deep sincere concern. Other than among friends, it’s been a long time since I’ve felt sincere care coming from a stranger back in North America. We are all so focused on ourselves and immediately think “glad it’d didn’t happen to me” that we don’t remember even for a second that it could have just as easily happened to me. In Peru, I’ve felt a sincere concern for another, even when the outcome of that care results in absolutely no benefit for the individual emitting care. It’s a real raw feeling that humbled me, and warmed me all the same. And I made it a point to try to carry that with me, so I can bring some of that warmth back home.

After Nasca and the fiasco that had been, our next stop was Ica/Huacachina. Sandboarding, and a lagoon, to be exact. The view from our hostel WAS the lagoon – we backed right onto it. A boat ride, and adrenaline pumping sandboarding later, I had nearly forgotten about all bad things, from the day before, from the month before, and heck, after the last few large sand dunes I traversed lying face down with the board against my belly, I forgot about all bad things from even a year ago! Wheeeeeeee! By my last few goes, I was even lifting my legs up at every turn to try to pick up more speed. Man, that was fun. Sleep was sound after all that adrenaline that night. We met up with 2 friends of ours from Cusco as well for the adventure onwards from here to Lima, and the party of 4 made the evenings with beer and wine and pizza and pasta and laughs, twice as much fun.

After Ica we drove to Paracas for a bit of penguin, sea lion and bird watching, learned all about guano (bird poop) and how important of a fertilizer it is, and how countries fought over the right to trade guano, and then heading out to Lima for the final few days. The hostel we stayed at in Miraflores, Inkawasi, deserves a mention on its own. With it’s courtyard with rot iron furniture, oak dining table, marble bathrooms with real bathroom fixtures, and the best shower in the world, we were in heaven after days of traveling through middle Peru. In Lima we enjoyed a picnic in the park, drinks in Barranco, some sight-seeing in El Centro and some chifa in China town. And then it was time to say good bye. Leaving Peru to head to Buenos Aires on my own, saying goodbye again to the friends I had grown so close to from Cusco, who I had grown even closer to after traveling together, saying goodbye to the customs that had become so familiar, slang that I had started to adopt, and money that I could finally convert back to my own currency to make sense of what I was actually spending, having to say good bye to all this felt like moving from a small town to a big city. Rightly so, because when I got to Buenos Aires, the busyness and crowdedness of the city were such a shock it felt like someone had just turned on the flood lights after a week of living in the dark.