|
Peru in Perspective
|
Seth Familian
|
Nov 15, 2001 08:58 PST
|
Hello!!
Wow it's been a while! Perhaps you're wondering why it's been so
ridiculously long since my last note (ridiculously only because when I
was last on the road I wrote in something like weekly intervals). Well,
I'll tell ya. First off, I did promise myself at the beginning of this
trip that, for the benefit of both my own travels as well as your
computer-strained eyes, I'd keep my e-mails shorter, less frequent, and
hopefully, as a result a bit more substantive. This promise of mine
led to a bit of a dilemma (also known as reason number two as to why
it's been so long since I've last written): every time I sat down at an
internet cafe and wrote the first few paragraphs of this note, I caught
myself spending WAY too much time blabbing about what I've been doing
and not nearly enough time on what I happen to think about it all. So
in a fit of frustration (which would repeat itself on about three
separate occasions at three different internet cafes) I'd scratch the
page-long intinerary-centric rant and figure that I'd just write a bit
later. Well, I guess it's been slightly more than 'a bit later' but I'm
happy to say that I've figured out how to present my perspective on
Peru, as well as fill you all in on what I've been up to while down
south, and not write a small electronic tome in the process! So here
goes:
Whirlwind itinerary summary in brief:
-Got to Lima on the 24th of October and immediately went to Cusco (did
not pass Go, did not collect $200, but did spend a reasonable amount on
the flight which helped me avoid the 24 hour bus ride)
-Spent about 10 days in Cusco, which I used as a base to explore most of
the Sacred Valley (the heart of the ancient Inca Empire}. Took
incredibly long walks through the highland (altiplano) countryside where
I stumbled upon ruin after ruin as well as villages with bustling
markets and super tasty fresh baked bread (yum!)
-Took four days out from my Cusco experience to hike a religious
pilgramage section of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. A truly
unforgettable experience, as I ascended through micro-rainforest (cloud
forest) to snow-capped peaks and then wove my way through the undulating
hills, steep steps, and the Indiana Jones-esque landscape of the classic
Inca Trail to arrive at the Sun Gate of Machu Picchu just in time for a
brilliant sunrise over the ancient city. Wow!
-Treated my hiking-sore muscles to the thermal baths in nearby Aguas
Calientes before heading back to Cusco and then down to Puno, on the
northern shore of lake Titicaca.
-Took a two day tour of the islands of lake Titicaca, including the
floating islands made entirely of reeds as well as Taquile (known for
it's interesting hat culture--colorful hats worn in particular ways
depict marital status and even mood) and Amantani (where I stayed the
night with a family in their mud brick house--which surprisingly and
impressively kept out the bitter cold of the oh so high altitude lake!)
-Made my way from Puno over the Peruvian/Bolivian border to Copacabana,
Bolivia, a small beach town on the southern shore of Lake Titicaca and
with very close proximity to the gorgeous Isla del Sol.
-Spent a day hiking, getting lost on, exploring, and enjoying Isla del
Sol before heading to La Paz, where I met up with friends and then set
off for yet another hike with them the very next day.
-Trekked the Chairo trail from La Cumbre to Coroico, a fantastic
three-day hike which takes you from close to 15,000 feet through five
separate ecosystems and ultimately down to the lush tropical rainforest
of Bolivia at around 4,000 feet.
-Spent two days in Coroico, Bolivia, a resort town as beautiful and lush
as the tropical rainforset it's set in. We stayed at at an absolutely
incredible hotel perched atop a mountain boasting views of the entire
Coroico valley as well as the giant snow-capped Andean peaks in the
background--quite a place to rest after a long hike, especially while
lounging in a hammock! :)
Now I write to you all from Coroico, where in about half an hour I'm
about to take a bus back to La Paz, and then continue on with my
adventures (first in northern Bolivia and then in the southwest before
heading to Chile). But before I throw my pack atop the bus and plunk
down in a probably only marginally comfortable seat for a four-hour ride
on a dirt road, I'd love to share what I've thought about these past few
weeks, especially Peru.
Peru was like everything I expected and nothing I expected. I knew that
the mountains would be big, the culture colorful and lively, the poverty
prevalent and in your face, the gringo trail well-established and
populated, even in the 'shoulder season' of October onwards. But it's
what I wasn't expecting that made Peru so fascinating as well as
thought-provoking. Not only were my expectations more than
exceeded--the mountains were HUGE and totally dramatic; the culutre was
remarkably dynamic and colorful, both in attitude and aesthetic; the
poverty quite profound and sometimes heart-wrenching; the gringos ever
so populous--but I stumbled upon things in Peru that shocked me,
surprised me, made me really think and ultimately wonder how to handle a
place that has so firmly made its economy contingent upon the tourists
who visit it.
Like what kind of shocking, surprising things? you're probably
wondering... Well, everything from finding half of a human jaw lying on
the side of the road just on the outskirts of a small village to
constantly fending off begging children in the main plazas of tourist
towns to riding with sheep and baby llamas for hours at a time on local
busses between small pueblos. And the more I traveled through peru,
the more I found this utter, stark, and almost profound contrast between
'tourist' areas and 'local' areas. It seemed to me that in places like
Cusco and Puno and the big spots on the Gringo Trail (the route that
nearly all travelers, young and old, take through South America), the
locals were oddly affected by the tourist industry that they were so
deeply a part of; they catered to tourists and their desires (selling
trips to the jungle and elsewhere, advertising places to say, providing
good deals on food) but they also seemed to somehow lower themselves in
the process (old women and young children stand in the streets alongside
primped llamas and alpacas, posing for photos and dressed in all too
traditional garb; ten-year-olds wander around the main plazas with
crates of cigarettes, postcards and candy or shoe-shine boxes, begging,
pleading for a sale). Some children even went so far as to literally
make up stories about tragedy in their families to solicit donations
(one child, for example, sat down next to me on a plaza bench and told
me, in stammering broken english, that his parents had both been killed
in a bus crash. When I then responded to him in spanish, asking the
details of the crash (if only because I was planning on taking buses in
Peru and so wanted to find out what route was potentially unsafe), he
couldn't keep his story straight, constantly changing the place of the
crash, clearly fabricating the story as he went along.)
What do you do with all of this? How do you approach it, deal with it
as both traveler as well as a resident of a country that is SOOO much
better off than the one you're in? When I first proposed these
questions to a few friends of mine down here, they responded that this
economic situation was simply a means--perhaps the only means--for Peru
to actually move past its poverty. But how can you really move past an
fiscally impoverished situation when, it seems, that the end result is
to make the residents of the country socially and psychologically
impoverished, as they constantly lower themselves to the level of
touristic expectations. And what's more, I seemed to find so much more
contentment, a far more pervasive joy and embrace for life and life's
situation in the small farming towns and villages that were DISTANCED
from such toursitic-based development.
So what to do, what to do... I'm sure that some if not most of this may
seem like babble (for I am trying to share potentially profound thoughts
under time pressure at an internet cafe, my bus being called as I type
this very sentence), and so I apologize in advance. But if it does make
sense or provoke some sort of response, let me know! Respond! Post it
to the whole list! I'd love to know what you all think about this, what
perspective you might have that would give us all a bit more insight and
understanding in all of this.
As I mentioned before, I'm heading out to La Paz in just minutes and
will be there for a few days. I hope to find a fast enough connection
there to upload the photos I've taken so far and share those with all of
you as well. I hope you're all doing well and I'll be in touch again
soon!!
take care,
Seth
|
|
 |
|
