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A terrific farmer's market every Saturday just two blocks from our apartment
My continuing, slow transformation from mac & cheese maker to grown-up feeder of a family
One container full of peaches, tomatoes, red onions and cilantro
Another filled with potatoes, capers, shallots and mustard
A late afternoon/early evening picnic in the amazing park two blocks from home
Really simple things can make for such lasting satisfaction.
After the wonderful three weeks of our vacation, we wound up in hell (not pictured). Did I forget to mention that? I've already told a lot of people about this via email, facebook, conversation, etc., so I won't go into incredible detail here. Very briefly:
Oliver forgot his green card at home...
And was unable to board the plane for our flight home.
He guilted me into staying in Lima with him.
We waited two days for the embassy to open...
And were slapped around by bureaucrats once we arrived. Seriously, those people do NOT mess around. With things like compassion, empathy, or friendliness. (Serenity now!)
We ended up calling our landlords and begging them to "break into" our apartment and mail the green card.
They sent it the fastest way possible - 48 hr. delivery via Fed Ex.
I went home to get things ready for our next trip (we were supposed to leave Thursday night)...
Oliver stayed in Lima and made friends with the people at the Fed Ex office. (Can you track it for me? Where is it now? Will it arrive today?)
The card arrived on Wednesday, and Oliver took the night flight home.
He got back to our apartment at 2pm Thursday...
And we caught our bus to Toronto 5 hours later.
Which is something else I haven't gotten around to mentioning yet: our second annual Labor Day Algonquin Provincial Park extravaganza. It was more or less the same group as last year, and it was a little more poignant this time. One couple was two weeks away from leaving Toronto for Frankfurt. Another couple, one that had moved from Toronto to Frankfurt last fall, was back for a brief visit. (Really, what is it with Frankfurt?) The whole weekend had this undercurrent of "enjoy this very second - time is slipping through your fingers" to it. Why does time always do that?
Lucky for us, we were able to enjoy each of those seconds.
Even if Oliver was a little tired and still a bit freaked out from his recent brush with the Department of Homeland Security.
I'm stressed. And the killer part of it is that intellectually, I know that I don't need to be. I wish I could get my brain to take over for whatever it is (soul? heart? nervous system?) that is currently running things.
A job. I graduate in December, and I need to get one. In an ideal world, I would have one lined up and all set to go for January. Our current economic world is hardly the ideal one though, and I have heard stories of long job searches. Months. A year. This is where my throat usually starts to constrict. Air... air...
My brain tells me that laying awake at night, worrying, is silly. I am intelligent and personable - I will get a job. My husband has a job; we will not starve if my job search takes a little while. Life is more than my resume - my resume in fact, has always taken a back seat to my life. I like it that way. Rather than tossing and turning, I should be sleeping. Blissfully. My life is a good one, and if I choose not to wring my hands over this job search, well, all the better for that.
Only my brain, as I mentioned earlier, is not in charge. And so I stress. There's so much I don't know about subject A and subject B... how will I ever find a job I am qualified for? And why aren't there more job postings?
I was sitting at my computer this morning, thinking these sorts of thoughts, when I came across two emails. One was from a cousin who had big news (engaged!), and the other was from a library school friend who had just found a job. I decided to take these two emails and let the happiness contained in each seep into me. If something good happens to someone I care about, well then it happens to me as well.
Do you have anything good going on in your life? I would love to leech off your happiness.
Faith played a big role in our trip.
Faith for one thing, that the bus we were riding in would not sail off the mountain cliff that dropped inches from our left/right (which bus? Every bus. Every single bus we took for three weeks). Faith that whatever we were eating wouldn't make us sick. Faith that the shower water would run hot, or at least warm. Beyond these trivialities though, faith was everywhere in Peru and Bolivia. There were the cathedrals with their statues of saints dressed in silks and accented with gold. There were hilltop temples covered in candle wax from yesterday's prayers. There was a cave-like room in Copacabana's cathedral where people melted candles and shaped the wax into the objects they most desired, then stuck the wax to the walls of the church to ensure the reception of their prayers.
(Candlewax prayers over Lake Titicaca)
This was a different faith than the one I'm used to. It was more a blending of Christianity and ancient, native beliefs. Statues of the Virgin Mary were decorated with ancient Andean symbols of fertility. New cars were blessed by a priest but also showered with offerings of alcohol. In the spirit of this faith then, and as a summing up of my time in Peru and Bolivia, a few things I believe:
(Blessing a new car)
* I believe that I never seen so many people in traditional, indigenous dress. No one in Germany actually wears lederhosen, for example. Japanese girls wear jeans, not kimonos. Where we were though, the traditional dress among women is something of a source of pride.
* I believe that Lake Titicaca is just about the most beautiful body of water I have ever seen.
* I believe that llamas/alpacas/vicunas are really, really cute.
(C'mon, tell me that's not cute!)
* I believe that there is another Machu Picchu hidden in those hills. Absolutely. People are discovering new sites of ruins every year. Those woods are dense and there are so many hills... just a matter of time.
* I believe that La Paz is the messiest, most chaotic, most awful city I have ever loved.
* I believe that the more of the world I see, the more I realize that I have seen nothing.
From the earliest stages of planning this trip, we knew it was going to be an "outdoor" sort of vacation. All our vacations are. Cities and small towns, sure. Those are great. Beyond them though, the great outdoors! Soaring mountains! Endless plains! Startling blue waters of lakes and oceans!
Two specific outdoorsy things dominated our plans: hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, and trekking among the mountains of Bolivia's Cordillera Real. They took about the same amount of time (3-4 days each), and both were amazing. The similarities end there.
(Okay, technically, do the similarities really end there? There are probably hundreds of things that were similar. Both were in Spanish-speaking nations. Both skirted snow-capped mountains. Both were difficult. Both were at high altitudes. Both involved a guide. Both involved us sleeping in tents. And so on. Beside the point.)
(Up at the top of Dead Woman's Pass, the highest point on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu)
(Our guide Paul explains the meaning behind the Andean Cross)
We woke up at 4 that day to start the hike to Machu Picchu, arriving at the Temple of the Sun in time to see the sun rise. Spectacular. We had a guided tour of the site, then had time to wander around for a few hours, soak in everything. Machu Picchu itlsef was overflowing with tourists, but still majestic.
Contrast: trekking in Bolivia's Cordillera Real. We did a three day hike to Laguna Chillata and Laguna Glacier. This time, our guide was a local guy who took us grocery shopping the night before the trip for our food. He spoke no English and we spoke broken (at best) Spanish. The three of us made our way from arid fields to loose rock of a retreating glacier. We saw almost no other tourists. We got drinking water from a stream rushing down out of the glacier. We saw Incan ruins at one point, but they were just there. No ticket office. No preservation. No nothing.
(Oliver and Eduardo load up the mule)
(Inca ruins minus tourists. Except for us, of course.)
Absolutely.
Indescribably.
Stunning.
Cusco. I know a small handful of people who have been there before, and all came back raving about it. Naturally then, I had to see it all for myself.
It's a beautiful city. It's also full of bars specifically opened for tourists, and its streets are full of people trying to sell you this or that, trying to convince you to go on their tour of the Sacred Valley, trying to get you to eat at their restaurant. Cusco is the stepping-off point for Machu Picchu, so it is used to tourists. Lots and lots of them. At times it almost seems as though it is set up specifically for them. On our days there, we spent a good deal of time wandering here and there, trying to get an understanding of Cusco that went beyond its tourist facade.
We had varying levels of success at different times. At one point we managed to find a great market that was so "authentic" and "local" that it made us both ill, Oliver violently so. (Does it sound like I'm complaining? I'm not! I swear!)
In all our walks, I kept seeing a common theme, and it sort of defined Peru (and later Bolivia) for me: the great clash of civilizations and ideas. Bear with me here. Cusco was the capital of the great Inca Empire, an empire the people of Peru still very much associate with themselves today. When they were Incas, the people of Cusco sat at the very center of (and controlled) an empire that passes through several of today's countries. When the Spanish came in the 1500s, they destroyed that empire and went about converting the people from heathens to Christians. The Spanish even went so far as to tear down the greatest Inca temple of them all and use the stones to build the foundations of a great church. The church still stands today, and the Inca stones at its base can still be seen. Isn't that what the entire world is? Aren't we all a jumble of clashing cultures? Of beliefs and traditions layered over older beliefs and traditions?
(Inca stonework overlooking Franciscan courtyard)
Cusco was beautiful to me because the clash was so obvious - the people have a mix of Indian and Spanish blood in their veins, their streets are a mixture of Inca stonework and Spanish colonial architecture. And the clashing isn't over; it's just taken a new form. Hungry for a Big Mac? You can get one at the McDonald's in Plaza de Armas.
