Getting close now. Even having had some time to reflect on the trip, I can't believe it all went so quickly. I had enough experiences to last a lifetime, but it all happened in the span of one summer, and that is a truth that my brain has had trouble grasping. Anyway, on to Peru. I have decided just to merge the Lima and Cusco entries into one long update, so I apologize if it's a tad lengthy.
My first day in Lima was a bit of a slow day, just because I needed some time to recuperate from the time zone changes and the long day of travel yesterday. Jet lag is a real thing, to those who doubt its existence, and it has been getting to me more and more as the trip wears on and I go longer and longer without proper beds (I love the prices that hostels offer, but their beds do leave something to be desired). No matter, because of the time difference I woke up the next day around five. I obviously couldn't go to the local cafe and take advantage of the complimentary breakfast yet, so I used the vacant computer on the second floor to surf the web for an hour and a half, sending emails and checking on the news. Once the hour had arrived I went down the block to Cafe Z where I had a delicious breakfast and coffee, while wondering just why I had come to a winter country yet again. The breakfast alone, though, made Kokopelli Hostel worth staying at. After breakfast that day I went back to the hostel, then out to a cafe for some work. For lunch I had some of Peru's famous ceviche, which was devine. After lunch I wandered around Miraflores, which has a nice park in the middle of it with a church on one of its sides. I also walked down to the cliffs to get a view of the Pacific. Down by the cliffs was a large shopping mall, the Larco Mar, in which I found a TGI Fridays, Chilis, and Tony Romas, only reinforcing my belief that the plane had actually landed in Miami and not Lima. For dinner I went out to a restaurant, El Restaurante Tres Marias, in a another area of the city called Surco. There I had some of Peru's most famous, and one of her more traditional, dishes, Cuy. Cuy, by the way, is delicious, despite being the cooked remains of a guinea pig.
On Saturday I spent a large portion of the day going to the remains of a sacred site of the Lima people right in Miraflores. The Lima people, a coastal predecessor of the Incan Empire, were very impressive builders and this is evident at the site of Huaca Pucllana. This is a religious and administrative site that they used for hundreds of years. When I arrived, after having walked about 20 blocks to get there, my first thought was that this was a large trash dump. This was only because I saw the side that had yet to be properly excavated first though, because once I saw the proper site I was very impressed. The main religious half of the site is in the shape of a stepped pyramid, about 50 to 60 feet tall at its peak. Much of the site was covered up with debris or been demolished when surrounding houses were built. The Spanish never even took notice of the site, because in their day it was just a dirt hill. Nowadays though, it is an excellent example of coastal architecture in South America. The Lima people were excellent architects, even stacking the bricks in a special "bookcase" style in order to guard against the frequent earthquakes in the region. When I entered the area I was forced to go on a tour, which was the only way visitors were allowed on site. The tour took us around the religious structure, past some current excavations, over to the much duller administrative section, and the past a garden featuring plants and animals that would have been kept by the Limans, including maize, cotton, and coca, as well as llamas, ducks, guinea pigs, etc. The site was very interesting, especially once we were told about the sacrificed bodies and sharks found during excavations.
The next day, a second glorious weekend day, I took the tour bus going around the city. It started in Miraflores right outside the Larco Mar, and then took a turn towards Huaca Pucllana. Once we had driven around the site (and once all the other travelers had stopped gawking at the site which they had never heard of) we set off towards central Lima. We passed through several neighborhoods and areas of the city, including San Isidro, the financial sector of Lima. Eventually we got to the historical center, where we drove around several plazas and older buildings. When we got to the Plaza de Armas we got off the bus and out tour guide took us on a walking tour. We saw the Archbishop's Palace, the central Cathedral, several Social Clubs which played an important role in the turbulent history of Peruvian politics, and the Presidential Palace. We then walked past the church where the bones of Santa Rosa de Lima, the first saint to be beatified in the Americas. We then went to the Franciscan convent of Lima, where we took a detailed tour of the structure. The ornateness of the church was very impressive, but I was much more enthralled by two other sites in the complex, the library and the catacombs. The catacombs were not nearly as impressive as those in Paris, but still had their own spooky air about them. The library, on the other hand, was very neat. It was a very old room with an even older collection, mostly from the early to late 1600's. In the front, on display, were the meter wide choir books which were used during services. The convent was a great window into the sycretism of Spanish catholicism and Peruvian native religions, because there was integration in almost all of the artwork, though the Spanish probably didn't like to admit it. After the tour I went back to Miraflores for the night.
The next day, Monday, was a slower day because I spent it trying to call contacts in Lima. Fortunately my main research appointment for the trip was already well set up in Cusco, but I was trying to add some extra little tidbits. This was not to be though, as I found the officials at the Department of Health to be very reluctant to help me. It was very frustrating. It was not so much cultural or language difficulties, as in France, but suspicion of my purposes, because it is well known that a certain amount of prejudice and ill service permeates the Peruvian healthcare system. I did take some time that day to go down the cliffs to the actual coast. I walked along the beach for about an hour, taking in the cool Pacific breeze and dipping my feet in the water. Unfortunately the waves on the Lima coast are pretty lively so my shorts were unexpected victims of the watery attacker. I was lucky to have my phone and camera escape their demise, although the same could not be said for my dryness. I took a cab back up to Miraflores and spent the rest of the day there.
The next day, after checking my email for any possible responses, although not expecting them, I went off to the center of Lima for some walking around. I had lunch at a Peruvian burger chain called Bembos, which was surprisingly good, and then went back to the Plaza de Armas. There I camped myself out in front of the Presidential Palace, ready for a spectacle. I was not disappointed, because very soon after I arrived the official changing of the guard ceremony began. This ceremony took about 30 minutes in total, and was filled with all the pomp of a South American military ceremony. First the two guards at the main door of the palace blew on their trumpets and put their swords out in an aggressive manner. Next, a large military band came out of a side gate and assembled in the square to play several Peruvian patriotic songs. Once these songs were done an armed detachment came out of two side gates and met in the middle, only to have two members detach themselves from the detachment and replace the main guards. Once this was done the whole process reversed itself. During the whole thing a Baptist mission group had been handing out Spanish bibles, which were met with suspicion by the Peruvians on account of their being from Baptists. It was an interesting cultural divide to watch devout Christians turn away other Christians. From there I went over to the Parque de las Leyendas, where the national zoo is housed. I thought it would be neat to see some rare South American animals, but the visit was short lived because I just couldn't deal with how sad the animals' situations all were. I quickly went and saw the jaguar exhibit and then left, disgusted.
The next day was my last full day in Lima, and so I decided to make the most of it. I woke up early and went over to the Museo Larco first. There I discovered an immense collection of pottery found all over Peru and Bolivia, by none other than the archeologist whose name now sits upon the museum. Most of the pottery was in exquisite condition, had very strange artwork painted onto it or was in strange animal shapes, and was pre-Incan. I really enjoyed this museum, and spent some significant time there. The storeroom was equally impressive as it just went on forever with countless shelfs of pottery. This man was certainly a most prodigious archaeologist. There was even a special room for the numerous sexually explicit pieces of pottery that Larco had found. This was an interesting, if somewhat disturbing, room, to be sure. I next followed a blue line on the pavement about two miles away to the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology, and History, which was mostly just fairly normal historical displays, with the exception of some shrunken heads from the Amazon and a lot of artifacts from the early years of the Peruvian Republic. I even got to wander around the house in which Simon Bolivar lived while he was in Lima. To round out my day I visited the Museum of the Nation, which was a repository of nonsense and bad exhibits. It was the worst museum I have ever been to, and I left quickly. I then went back to Miraflores for the day.
On Thursday the 12th I got a cab early in the morning to the Lima airport where I caught a flight on TACA Airlines to Cusco, the heart of Inca territory in Peru. The flight was short and the mountain scenery we passed over was spectacular. It took a while to land, because the thinner air provided less friction to slow the plane down with once it touched the runway, but we did eventually come to a stop. Once in Cusco, and taking it easy so as not to get altitude sickness, I got a cab into the city and to my hostel, Pariwana (the name is a reference to the local name for a Flamingo, which is one of the few birds in Peru to live in all three ecosystems: the coast/desert, the mountains, and the jungle). Once I was checked in I left to go explore the city. I went first to the Plaza de Armas, where I saw the main Cathedral, its side churches, and the church of the Company of Jesus. These were exquisite examples of the Cusqueno school of art and again displayed beautifully the syncretism of Peruvian catholicism with Incan sun worship. An example of this is the use of mirrors in several shrines in the main Cathedral. Mirrors were a sinful sign of vanity back in Europe, but in Peru they took on religious connotations because they reminded the Inca of their sun god with all of their reflective power. I then walked up a steep hill to the Museo Inka, where I saw several very interesting exhibits on Inca society, warfare, culture, food, etc. I even got a delicious avocado sandwich right outside of the museum. Next I walked up a steeper hill to the area of San Blas, where I visited a small church with the most intricate altar piece I have ever laid eyes upon. It is carved out of one piece of wood and is meticulously detailed. I also noticed the many women who flocked around tourist sites, dressed in traditional indigenous clothing, and carrying baby llamas, in order to draw tourists over to take pictures and donate money to them. I then wandered down a small alleyway full of crafts shops, intrigued by the Incan stonework holding up some of the buildings. It was here, also, that I bought myself a charango, or Peruvian miniature guitar. After the shops I wandered back to the main Plaza, where I went to the small Museum of Natural History, or room of dead animals as it should be known. Regardless, some of the animals were quite rare and neat to see up close. I then went back to the hostel, where I rested for a little while, and then walked to the nearby open air market. For dinner I went to a restaurant close by and had an alpaca steak. I then went back to the hostel and went to sleep.
On Friday I woke up early and made my way over to the Pututi Road bus station, where I caught a minibus going out of town. I took it as far as the small town of Coya, past some mountain roads and into a valley. Coya is where I visited the KausayWasi Clinic, run by Sandra and Guido Del Prado. This place had been recommended to me by a professor at the University of Miami, and once I did some background research on their work I reached out to them. They, in turn, were very willing to help me in with my project. After some initial wandering around the town I found the place and walked in. There I met with Sandra Del Prado, an Oregonian woman who met her husband while working with the Peace Corps in Peru. Once she and her husband retired they went back to Peru to open this clinic. The work of the clinic focuses on providing affordable, respectful care for indigenous patients who are often treated with disdain at government hospitals and clinics. The place is relatively small, but packed with patients and the recipient of lots of donated equipment from US hospitals and corporations. We spoke for a while, and she was extremely kind and helpful. After we had spoken she took me on a tour of the facilities, introducing me along the way to nurses, doctors, pharmacists, and locals who had come in for care. I really respect the work that they have been doing, and I hope that it continues, because it is important to a lot of people in Peru, and not just from the valley. When I was visiting they were treating a patient who had traveled all the way from Arequipa. For those of you who want to know more about the work that they do, their website is http://www.kausaywasi.org/ and there is an informational video about their clinic at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An8hjdNIl00 Please do take the time to visit.
Once I was done at Kausay Wasi I took another minibus, but this time I got out at Pisaq for lunch. I also bought an awesome hammock that will come in handy down in Miami. I then took a taxi back to Cusco, where I briefly visited the Korikancha site, where the remains of an Incan sun temple had been used as a base for a large catholic convent. Later on in the day I went to the market, where I had some local cheese, an olive sandwich, some roasted corn, and a large glass full of a mango and banana smoothie. I also bought a bag of brazil nuts for tomorrow. All of this cost less than three dollars. Later I had some street food, which was beef and potato skewered and grilled, and was delicious, like most street food.
The next day started pretty early for me, due both to my alarm and to some annoying behavior between a fellow hostel roommate and his female accomplice for the night. I had to get up anyway, so by five in the morning I was out the door and in a taxi on my way to the Poroy train station. I was pretty cold, because I was only in shorts and a light jacket, but I was prepared for later in the day, when it would be hot. I took a 3.5 hour scenic train ride aboard Perurail to Aguascalientes, which is the boarding point for buses up to Machu Picchu. This would be my last non-travel day in Peru, and so I thought I would go out with a bang by visiting the lost city of the Incas. The train ride was comfortable, and we were even given a small breakfast. I then took a bus up a winding road to Machu Picchu. The site was absolutely breathtaking. I cannot describe in words the beauty of the location and the amazing engineering it must have taken to build such a city on the high mountainside. Due to the location I felt miles above everything, but I was actually about 1000 meters below Cusco, so I was full of energy. I hiked around the whole site, taking in about 7 miles of terrain and four and a half hours of time. I was completely gassed by the end of it, but it had all been worth it. When I left, I left with a supreme respect for the culture and science of the Incas. The place was a perfect end to the journey, with plenty of places to sit and reflect on what I had seen this summer. I spent the whole day traveling to, visiting, and traveling from Machu Picchu, but it was one of the most fun days of my summer, easily. When I got back to the hostel I packed up and crashed.
The next day, Sunday the 15th, would be my last in Peru. I woke up, had breakfast, and went to the Cusco Airport. I had my bag wrapped in plastic, only to have the security official cut that open with a razor and rummage through my bag for artifacts and/or cocaine. I then had the bag wrapped again, for free, while the security official said some not very nice things to the plastic wrap guy, all of which I understood. The flight to Lima was fine, no complaints there. Once I got to Lima I was a bit disappointed to learn that I was not going to be able to check in for several hours, so I bided my time in the departure mall/food court. Once I did check in, paid my airport tax, and got through security, I was not allowed to go to my gate for another hour and a half. Once I did finally board my plane and we took off, I was pleased to hear no Spanish in the announcements at all. Culturally insensitive of Spirit though it was, it was a nice indication that I was going back to the US. The flight took from about 11:00pm until 5:40am, when we landed in Fort Lauderdale. Although the flight was remarkably smooth I couldn't sleep, although this did give me the benefit of seeing several Caribbean islands all lit up at night by a large, but harmless, lightening storm. Once we passed over Cuba I took a small 30 minute nap, at the end of which we had landed. Due to some stupid scheduling of their flights, I was forced to wait in line worried that I would miss my next flight, even though it was still a Spirit flight. I went through a long immigration line, then a long customs line, then a long bag recheck line, then a long security line, and then had to run to make my flight. They closed the door right as I boarded the flight to Orlando. The flight was short, but I was disappointed once I got to Orlando. Once I got there it became evident fairly quickly that my bag had not made the trip with me. I arranged for it to get to Jacksonville and was then picked up by my mother and little brother. Reuniting was a wonderful feeling, and it's not right for a son to be away from his mother for that long. I then drove home, and saw my father for lunch. Good old Florida BBQ does not get better than it does with your father. Once I saw my sister and puppy back home, all was well. Goodness it is great to be back home. I wouldn't give up my trip for the world, and I want to take the time to thank the Circumnavigators Club for this wonderful opportunity, but being back home was a glorious feeling. For those of you wondering I did manage to recollect my bag the next day at the Jacksonville airport.
Well, that's been my travels. I thank you very much for following along all this way. Soon, I will post one of my final two updates. The penultimate update will be a conclusion, featuring some reflection from me on my travels and on my research, as well as some interesting statistics about all of my time abroad. The final update, of course, will come when I have finished my research paper and submitted it to the Club. Once again, thanks for the time, it's been quite a ride.
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