After half a year after my trip to Peru, I find myself losing connection with my experiences. While I would love to share, there were too many aspects to do it justice in a single post. In this first post, I will be sharing the reasons for my travel to Peru and what it was like to travel to another continent for the first time. And yes, there will be kitties.
Why Peru
As some of you may know, I am in an International Psychology doctoral program, to earn my PhD. Over the course of this program, there will be two international trips, with my trip to Peru being the first. There are several sites across the globe that could be selected, but not by me. We are told about 6 months before our scheduled time and then the scramble begins. Trying to make sure we have our time off scheduled, getting tickets, trying to figure out how to pack, etc.
At each site, the school has a liaison who prepares our schedule for us. This involved visiting NGOs (I’ll save that for another post), and a historical tour of sorts. What this agenda looks like (and how far in advance we get it) depends on the host nation. Adapting to the different culture can require great flexibility (as in, writing only in pencil for your planner).
Jet Lag?
After I got home, I slept for nearly 12 hours a day for a week to fully recover and everyone asked me if the jet lag was difficult. But a quick glance at the atlas will show you that Peru is directly south of Texas. As in, it is actually the same time zone, even though the flight was 8 hours. But the flight was draining. As someone with restless leg syndrome, the flight was incredibly difficult.
What was Machu Picchu like?
I’ll let you know as soon as I go! Unfortunately, we stayed in Lima for our entire trip. I do plan on returning some day and climbing Machu Picchu for myself. But Lima itself held so much to see. Although it’s a city, it really functions more as a county, with the districts acting as cities. The expanse of this one city also meant that a 2 hour drive would still keep us within Lima. Each district had its own way of living, with the economic disparities, architecture, and lifestyle changing drastically.
The Hotel
We stayed at a hotel that reminded me of a 1950s hotel, in a way. You would drive up to it on a regular city block, and then you are greeted at the desk by a friendly receptionist. Going further, there was a tiled court with lawn chairs and tables, in an enclosed area. Looking up, you could see the sky, and each of the 5 floors, which circled the area. Going into my room, there was a kitchenette, small living area, and a bedroom. In the bedroom was an AC unit, which may have rivaled the sound of a jet taking off. Turn the AC off and the humidity would make you question how valuable silence really is. There was this small cabinet sized door on the wall , and when I opened it, I could see the street outside, and smell the aroma of the cigarette break area for the travel agency next door. There was a great continental breakfast with hands down the best coffee. If you imagined cowboy coffee made of diesel fuel, you might be accurate.
10 Days Without Giles
I’m not going to lie: for someone who was excellent at being single, I have grown accustomed to having Giles there with me to end every day. While we’d been apart before, this was the longest we had ever slept apart since being married. We chatted on Facebook and texted, but I didn’t sign up for any international cell plans, so I could only contact him while I was on hotel WiFi.
Peruvian Experience
Peru was moderate weather, with around 70 degree temperatures year-round. There was humidity, but mostly at the hotel, since we were near the ocean. We walked everywhere we wanted to go near the hotel, with most meals coming from the grocery store a few blocks down (the food there was amazing!). We also walked to some of the nearby restaurants (I’ll tell you all about it in another post).
There are three major regions of Peru: the coast (Lima), the Highlands (the mountains, which has a high poverty-rate), and the jungle (these are people who live in villages and speak Quechua). Many spend their lives idealizing life close to the coast, with the opportunities as all that keep them from prospering. Others see those on the coast as yet another source trying to dictate their life and force a new of living on their lives.
Safety
They gave us warnings of many dangerous situations to use caution, but I never experienced any of them. There are dirt bikes turned into mini taxis that are sometimes dangerous– there is no formal regulation, so many of them are minors without drivers licenses, many don’t have insurance, and sometimes people beat the windshields in at intersections (to steal your stuff). I never saw this, but I also never rode in one (we would always call for an actual cab, or set up a van to drive us. We were also warned to never leave the hotel alone, although one of my friends went on morning runs, and walked away unharmed (although, she could take the average man in a fight).
The Greatest Difficulty
The hardest part of this trip was actually the other students. Peru is a developing nation, and despite the number of tourists, you can’t expect it to feel like a bed and breakfast in Martha’s Vineyard. Some of my fellow students grew frustrated with what they perceived as a lack of ‘customer service’, although not every nation has citizens with the Better Business Bureau on speed dial. There was also an impatience in the difference in cultural norms. Peruvians are not always time-focused, and are much more flexible in their plans. We would go to the van, and find out where we would head, the plans sometimes changed on the way and one meeting would last hours longer than we thought (and the next stop was still not expecting us to arrive so soon). These students’ frustration was my greatest frustration.
