Saturday, 8 June, 2013; Plane to Panama; 1:59 PM
We haven't actually left the airport yet - we haven't even moved from the gate yet. We're all in our seats and the security video just played, so now I guess it's all just waiting for the signal to go.
Apparently, the signal to leave the gate happened as I was writing that sentence.
Anyway, not much happened this morning. We woke up at around 8:00 (at least, I did - Mom was up earlier) and we moseyed around, finishing the packing and stuff and eating breakfast and all the regular morning activities. I finished the bracelet I was working on, which turned out to be more of the length of an anklet, so that's where I'm putting it. It's interesting - I started it on the plane down to Perú, and I finished it on the day we leave. Interesting how these things work out.
I think I'm going to miss the scenery in Perú the most. I know that the US has some pretty wicked views, but not where I live. Unless you want a wicked view of suburbia. Otherwise, don't bother. (DC? Go for it. A-town? Nope.) In Perú, however, there's so much of everything - history, culture, nature, the whole shebang. I see it that way probably because it's all so different from the US, or at least suburbia/ college town environments. I'm fairly certain that if you put a Peruvian tourist in DC, they'd say something similar about he way stuff is done there.
The hardest part of the trip was probably either the language barrier or not being able to drink the water. Or the stairs. Yeah, it was definitely the stairs. For real, though, I think the language thing was the biggest problem - I know a passably functional amount of Spanish, which is more than many of the people I was traveling with. I can ask where we need to go if I have a map, but that's the most complicated I can reasonably do. The hardest day in that regard was when we toured Pisaq, because the guide's English wasn't great, so we had to communicate in Spanglish, and there was probably a lot that was lost in translation.
My favorite day was either any given day in the Amazon or the day we hit the Sun Temple on the trail. The Amazon was just super cool in general, but reaching the Sun Temple gave this huge sense of accomplishment. It's higher up than Machu Picchu, so you have this spectacular view of the city and Wayna Picchu and the mountains that surround them. It wasn't necessarily the highest altitude on the trek, but it was definitely one of the best views in the whole trip.
The hardest day was the third day of the trek - the one where we hiked for basically the whole day, and with the hardest overall terrain and with the grossest weather. On the other hand, the cloud forest is really cool, and towards the end of that day, the fog sort of added to the etherial nature of the place. It was easy-ish to joke about the fog and the views, though - when we passed the second summit, I paused to put on a tour-guide sort of voice to say something like, "here, we have a lovely view of the fog," as if I was pointing out a feature of a mountain, and Maggie and Ellen jokingly tagged on with some "awestruck" type comments about the mist and the "view."
The best thing we ate is hard to choose, because all the food was really good. I can't recall anything that was atrocious, either, but the first breakfast on the trail was a bit lacking (it was basically granola, yogurt, and your hot beverage of choice). The most interesting drink is perhaps the only one that I can't recall the name of. It's a Quechua drink that involves fermented black corn, and a bit of sugar. There is an alcoholic version that I didn't try, but the regular kind is really good. My least favorite drink was probably the few sips I had of Cusqueña, a really popular beer in Peru. I don't know whether it's made differently from American beers, but I wasn't really a big fan of it. I'm not a huge fan of Pisco sours, either (Pisco is a region in Peru, I think, but it's also a sort of alcohol here). If you go to Peru, you definitely need to try a Pisco Sour, because it's one of those things you should try when in Peru (like in New York City, you have to go to Times Square and a pizza place and have a bagel somewhere), but I wasn't a huge fan of them (maybe because, in my highly limited alcohol experience here, I have discovered that I have a taste aversion to it, and that taste matters a lot for me).
In a way, it was fairly liberating to be mostly away from the Internet and cell phone reception fro two weeks. We had connection sometimes in the Amazon, but only for a limited time, and it was slow enough to make me not want to go on. In Cuzco and Lima, we had Internet and cell service, but by that point, Facebook was mundane, almost, and we had to conserve texts for the occasional message when Mom and I were apart for prolonged periods of time and needed to locate each other. On the trail, we only got reception on the third night of camping, when we were busy taking photos of the llamas (which were really photogenic), taking photos of the view, and feeling tired, so it didn't much matter. I also didn't take my phone on the trail, so it didn't affect me either way (when possible, I don't bring my phone on treks or vacations unless it's kind of important that I do).
One of the interesting things about the different environment's effects on us is that all of us had really trippy altitude/ exhaustion dreams (like the one with the baby and the elephant in the Amazon; I also had a really weird one on the trail where my boyfriend proposed by putting words in Oreos and hiding the ring in a dinner roll. The next day, we got Oreos as a snack. I'm never looking at them the same way again.)
Right, we're getting food now. Will write later. Maybe.
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