Monday 19 March 2012

Paracas to Puno


Not sure where to start but it’s been an incredibly busy week. We’ve been working our way through the south of Peru stopping off at Paracas, Nazca, Arequpia, Chivay and finally Puno.
Perspective is a powerful thing and every day mine is shaped and adjusted. People here are incredibly content, whereas improvement and progression are western values that go almost unquestioned. Despite the general hippy/anarchist consensus, I don’t think either is better than the other. Everybody is wired differently, nobody reacts and thinks the same way. 
One anecdote from the last 10 days is from the couple of days I spent with a traditional family based on the edge of Lake Titicaca. We helped out with everything from making the breakfast to pick axing our way through a particularly stony field in preparation for planting potatoes. They live a fairly hard life compared to most standards but I don’t think they could have been any more satisfied in what they had. They were a family of 6 and it was about a 30 minute walk from the local village. They had their priorities straight and they lived a rich life because of it. I don’t think this should condemn the whole of our western culture but placing our aspirations and hope in our postmodern values is premature.
Tomorrow we leave for Cusco for the Inca trail!

Wednesday 7 March 2012

Atlanta to Lima


Currently sitting in a lively hostel in a quirky suburb of Lima, home to over 8 million in  a compact city on the coast, I imagine it will be an interesting few days. We arrived here from Atlanta at about 1.30am. Thanks to a pre warning I was ready for a bit of haggling with the taxi price. As I was the designated spanish speaker, I was pleasantly surprised that after a couple of minutes work I had managed to knock a third off the price. I felt even more validated when we met an Icelandic couple on the same flight at our hostel who ended up paying triple our fare.

In hindsight I think Atlanta was a great couple couple of days where we experienced numerous sides of American culture. Without going into too much detail, our hostel wasn´t in the nicest part of town. The Martin Luther King Jr memorial site was particularly inspiring, I managed to convince Joe to come and I´m glad we witnessed such an iconic part of America. Other trips include the garish but enjoyable ´world of coke´, ´Project X, passion city church and the incredible Lennox shopping mall.

Obviously a big highlight of America was the food. Favourites include Hooters, the Waffle House and Mary Macs (a ´legit´ southern restaurant). It´s near impossible to eat with any regard to your health and we were full on 2 meals a day.

America doesn´t have a big hostel culture and because of this we didn´t meet too many other people where we stayed. The one exception was a couple of gregarious Irish guys who recommended this current hostel in Lima. It´s already too hot here but I´m looking forward to using some more of my mediocre spanish as well as starting the tour on Friday. Hasta Semana!