Roundup Post of My Daily Musings
It’s been two-and-a-half weeks since I landed in Peru and I’ve been on the move ever since leaving Lima and getting to Paracas. While being on the road has always sort of embodied traveling for me, it’s also been a little difficult getting used to the pace. Wake up, eat breakfast, and then strike out onto whatever journey my tour has planned for the day. Rinse and repeat. It’s one of those things that I dearly miss when I’m home. But when I have three to four days like that in a row I start to get tired. I start to miss the creature comforts.
Luckily, it only takes about half a day of being holed up in my room writing, drawing, and watching YouTube to get over. I think part of it is just figuring out a balance between on and off days and sticking to that. But, having only been traveling for a couple of weeks, I’m still figuring out that balance. Right now I think three days traveling and one working/relaxing is just what the doctor ordered. We’ll see how that changes as my trip progresses.
Where I’m at Now
Currently, I arrived in Cusco at 6AM on 3/10. The day before I woke up at 3AM to leave my hostel, traveled to Puno for seven hours so I could learn a bit about Lake Titicaca, and then travel for another six hours to get to Cusco. Bus sleep is not exactly good sleep as one might imagine. So I checked into my hostel and spent the morning and good portion of the afternoon sleeping. It was absolutely glorious. The altitude has me feeling winded on longer, uphill walks, but was far worse when I first got 3000 meters above sea level. Coming from McHenry, Illinois(243m above sea level) I feel like I should get a bit of a pass, but the days have been getting easier, so I guess I’ve been handling it decently well. Cusco is about 3400m above seal level for reference.
But enough about altitudes and dreadful, awful night buses. I like to jot down notes throughout my travels to use as reference later. If you followed my previous blog Vagrant Flynn, you’ll be familiar with this. But if you haven’t, I give a location, a brief description, and then observations I’ve made while out and about. It’s a simple premise, but one that hopefully lends you some intimate insights about my experiences. First up is the coastal town of Paracas known for its national reserve, dry desert, and wildlife.
Paracas
The city is small and the streets are full with myriad dogs chasing cars, begging for food, and lounging in the middle of the road. Although the heat isn’t unbearable, the sun is strong in Peru and my stinging neck is a testament to that.
We arrive in the morning and are guided to a busy port. Peruvians and tourists wait to get on a boat with about 40 seats on it: two seats on the left, two on the right with an aisle up the middle. Everyone is excited at the promise of wildlife at Ballestas Islands.
I strap on a life preserver with a broken buckle and worry more about my computer in the event that we sink. The waves are small and the ride is generally smooth. Even though the guides warned us to bring windbreakers the temperature is prefect sitting at about 72 degrees Fahrenheit(right around 22 degrees Celsius). Everything is Celsius out here. And by out here I mean the rest of the world.
While my American blubber holds in the heat during a breezy boat ride, the same cant be said for the Peruvian girl shivering next to me. After I tap her on the shoulder and gesture towards my coat she quickly accepts and guards herself from the relentless wind and random water sprays. The wrong person brought their coat, but it all worked out in the end.
As we rode up to the tiny rock islands, the louder the sea lions bellows grew and the more pungent the smell of bird shit became. Tops of rocks were painted white from the excrement, but wildlife gathered in droves regardless. Cormorants, Peruvian boobies(grow up), and pelicans all flocked to the ocean islands.
Sealions also gathered by the hundreds on the rocky beach shores and in coves backlit by the shimmering ocean behind them. Rocks frame the frantic mess of lazing, love-making, fighting, and frolicking. It felt like one gigantic organism constantly piling on and falling off of the rocky shoreline. A male and female swam circles each other, almost playing underwater tag.
Back to Paracas
On our ride back, I chatted with the girl next to me. My Spanish and her English are at about the same level, which was a nice change of pace for me as everyone I meet seems to be at least trilingual. It’s exhausting being an American that fumbles his way through every word. I’m sure it’s ten times worse having to be the one listening to that incoherent nonsense.
Dinner with Less Than Stellar Seating & Delicious Sauce
That night, a group of us travelers look for a quick bite to eat. We find some people eating on a closed-off street. They enjoy their food on cheap, thin plastic lawn chairs. The open grill just 10 feet away from us emanates the most heavenly scent in every direction. We sit down and hope our chairs hold up. One by one we step up to the grill and ask the cook for a meal always finishing our order with “cuanto cuesta?” Always, she replies “veinte.”
20 soles is the equivalent of about 5USD, a price I’ll gladly pay here in Paracas or back home. For roughly $5 we eat meals that we all agree are incredible. Chicken, steak, and more chicken fill the plates. I point to a plate she placed down for an older gentleman and ask for the same.
She obliges and eventually places in front of me a plate of meat skewers as well as what I can only describe as part of an eaten corn cob. The meat looks to be in a honeycomb pattern and one of my friends informs me it’s tripe (cow stomach). It’s delicious. Not my favorite texture, but tasty nonetheless. We heap on a light orange sauce that has a subtle taste of spice, a hint of vinegar, and a healthy amount of garlic. It is beyond delicious. We ask her for a bottle to buy and she laughs. She’d make a killing in the states with that stuff. Moral of the story: the worse the seating, the better the food.
Dogs dart here and there throughout the streets of Paracas but mainly just sleep and beg for food. I don’t know why, but having the dogs makes it feel homier in a way. It helps that they’re all sweet as can be. I walk past a few on my way back to the hostel and think about how many strays there must be in all of Peru before turning in for the night.
If you like what you read here, check out the previous article here. Despite offering no sketches to a blog called the sketch adventure, I do have a few pieces I’ll be throwing up very soon. Stay tuned for some travel art from yours truly!
Until next time,
-Vagrant
This entry was posted in Update