Peruanas

I arrived in Lima, the capital of Peru, early this morning after a nine hour ride through the desert at night. In the past seven days I have visited 8 towns and cities (Cuenca, Zaruma, and Machala in Ecuador; Mancora, Chiclayo, Trujillo, Huanchoco, and Lima in Peru), taking more than seven different buses for a total of 34 hours (equaling 99 total for my trip) across more than 1,500 kilometers of the Panamerican American highway.

I have sloshed through old, wet gold mines in Zaruma, visited centuries-old palaces in the ancient capital city of Chan Chan, and tried to surf the formidable waves of Huanchoco, amidst a backrop of a rocky coastal desert. More and more, I feel like a pendulum, swinging between the fatigues of travel and the enchantments of a dream vacation. Crossing the border was the best thing I have done yet in South America, further proving my theory that personal ambivalence most often preempts my best experiences. Here, Peruvians are not Peruvians, but Peruanas (pronounced similar to the fish, Pirahuana), and everytime I feel tired or irritable, a local Peruana stops to talk to me while on a bus or in the park or anywhere really. Not wanting anything except an affable chance to talk to the tired kid from the States, something that more seldomly occurred in Ecuador. It invigorates me everytime.

Bus travel itself has become a sort of magical thing. It is not like a greyhound trip, rounding the mixing bowl of concrete criss cross highways and sitting at ugly, unclean stations. Instead, riding a bus through South America is what I imagine it would be like to ride the Magic School Bus. Everytime I fall asleep and then open my eyes, I am somewhere new and unlikely. Even 1,400 kilometers of Peruvian desert proved to be geographically transformative and dynamic, as flat sand turned to dunes and dunes turned to mountains, and in the distance strange things , mirages maybe, appeared and flummoxed my eyes, so much that when cities like Trujillo appeared, I wondered if they were real at first. Or the man who boarded the bus in the middle of nowhere, selling chicken sandwiches. And why did his sandwiches taste so fresh?

Tonight I meet my friend, Sarah, at the airport in Lima, ending my adventures as a lone traveler. I have enjoyed my moving solitude, especially as it is one of the few things that seperates me from other travelers on similar or more ambitious journeys. Traveling alone has afforded me many chances for reflection, meditation, and less squabbling about where to go and what to eat, which I see so often among European groups moving together, like a fickled herd. It has helped me gain independent confidence in many senses of direction, and I have enjoyed it greatly. But once, while playing in a waterfall in Mindo, I lamented that playing in cascades alone is simply less fun without a friend. If not for the company of Paccha Mama (mother nature), I would be downright lonely often here. But now I have a friend to play with in waterfalls, and I think it is just what I need to recharge my energy for the final leg of my vacation.

I do not know where we will go next. With only two weeks left time is limited. Machu Picchu is 20 hours away, but going there means at least 55 hours of returning buses to Quito. But Peru is large, much larger than Ecuador, with as many, if not more possibilities for touring geography and ancient histories. Do you think we should sacrifice the time and go to Cuzco and Machu Picchu, or should we venture elsewhere, desert oasises, glacial mountains, beaches, other less glorified ruins? What would you do?