Homeward Bound

All good things must come to an end!

I fly out of Lima tonight around midnight and start my travels back back to Cali Cali.  It's been a great trip with the perfect mix of movement and relaxing.  My mind has been a blur of thoughts the last 3 days; worrying about making it back to Lima in time, seeing Nazca and the central coast, wondering how much money I spent over the course of the last 3 weeks (Machu Picchu, you trap for cash, you), and generally just getting TOTALLY PUMPED to come home.

Since Arequipa, we took a loooooong bus ride to Nazca in order to fly over the Nazca lines.  Arequipa itself was different from what I expected.  It's actually a shame we didn't stay longer than a day; the city itself is easily walkable and everybody, true to form of Peru, was very friendly.  We took a guided tour of an old convent.  Literally, a city within the city.  The tour lasted an hour and we walked back through the entire complex to explore on our own.  Started by a rich widow from Spain, the convent was originally set up for wealthy daughters of families that had moved to the Arequipa and central Peru region.  Due to all the money coming in, the nuns actually had their own houses and residences set up along cute streets within the complex.  Each nun had 1 to 4 servants attending her...crazy, right?  However, some party-crashing Mother Superior had to come along and demand that the convent return to normal operations and forced all the nuns to move into a communal dorm and do all their own chores.  Sorry nuns.  Life's not fair sometimes.  In any case, it was a great way to spend an afternoon and get acquainted with some local history.

After that loooooong bus ride to Nazca, we were approached at the bus station by someone offering to walk us over to a "good hostel".  So, for a bit of insight into our trip, I have been rather against accepting offers for lodging from solicitors whenever we arrive somewhere.  Peter has had an opposite view, and we've followed these strangers fairly often.  And, low and behold, most often these hostels are in fact incredible (hot showers, cheap rates, AND two beds) which totally puts Peter in the right for trusting complete strangers.  Don't always listen to your guidebook, ladies and gents.  Sometimes it is awesome to just jump in a cab and see where someone you've just met takes you.  But yes, back to Nazca.  Out in the middle of a coastal desert, the only main attraction is the flight tours of the lines.  We had anticipated hanging out during the day and seeing the town, but after our flight, we realized that there really wasn't much to the town.  We hopped on the next bus to take us to Lima and enjoyed a 7 hour ride.  (Also, shout out to our random stranger in Nazca who helped us get our hostel, book our flight, get us to the airport, and found us a bus out of town on Sunday...which apparently means the computers are down and so you have to jump on the right bus with a bunch of locals.  You, sir, really helped out two gringos.)

And so we made it to Lima with 2 days to spare.  Our guidebook did come through for us and we found an awesome hostel next to the beach in the neighborhood of Barranco.  We spent yesterday walking along the cliffs overlooking the shore and sought out Peter's favorite churro stand.  After a quiet afternoon, we walked the block over to the central park and found a bar with free pool.  Definitely in the low of tourist season; we were the only ones in the place for quite some time.  More beer for us!  Ah Cusquena...I will miss you.  It's nice to see an entire country that has a decent national brew.

Things to take away from this trip?  IMPROVE SPANISH-SPEAKING SKILLS.  Appreciate what I have and celebrate what I've earned.  IMPROVE SPANISH.  Get rid of all the excess of stuff that I own.  I mean, I've easily lived out of a backpack that barely weighs 20 lbs for 3 weeks.  Work helped with this minimalist lifestyle too.  IMPROVE SPANISH.  Get back into music...I had to sing an American song when we were on the Titicaca lake tour, and I impressed myself by remembering the lyrics to the American lullaby All the Pretty Horses.  Did a decent job of singing in front of a crowd of people too!  I forget how happy music makes me, and I really don't want to lose the time for it in my life.  IMPROVE SPANISH.  Just relax.  I get so high strung at home trying to balance everything, and the last 3 weeks were really good practice at remaining cool while getting everything taken care of.  No meltdowns, minimal bad moods, and took a lot of opportunities to try new things.  I think that's probably the most important personal lesson I've taken away...aside from IMPROVE MY SPANISH.

Back into the mindset of winter and rain!  See yáll stateside!

Until next time!