Visit to Paracas and my arrival to Cusco

To view the related Missouri Abroad article, click here.

28 de Mayo, 2011

During the car ride to the Paracas Nature Reserve I was at first not sure what to think. On one side of the highway were sand dunes and barren land, on the other side, ocean. And any time that we did pass civilization I was struck by the extent of the poverty and the trash littered everywhere.

It was a three-hour drive and I slept most of the way.

Finally arriving in the small port town of Paracas everything that we spent the last three hours passing was suddenly gone. As it is in any country there was another side to the spectrum. Our tour guide put us on a boat and the tour began.

We rode for about twenty minutes out to Las Islas Ballestas and saw ocean birds of all types, sea lions and penguins.

Afterward, our tour guide took us out to the heart of the desert for the vistas and to give us a little history on San Martin.

Who knew that a desert could be so beautiful! The dunes juxtaposed next to the ocean with an iron-rich red beach made my eyes widen, what a color contrast. The sand dunes themselves were a sight. The red, yellow, and grayish-blue of the rocks and sand created a velvety illusion of every color.

29 de Mayo, 2011

We arrived in Cusco yesterday morning. Although sleep deprived and exhausted, I couldn’t rest at all through the hour-long flight from Lima. The Andes Mountains peaking just beneath the clouds made it impossible for me to take my eyes off the window.

As soon as we landed and I walked out to the staircase leading to the tarmac, the sun hit me right in the eyes. I blinked twice and looked around me. My heart rate sped up, my eyes widened, and I felt my face aching for the huge smile that found itself stretching across my cheeks. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. The mountains, the city nestled in their side, and the clear blue sky sent a feeling of pure happiness. Inside my head I was screaming, “I’m finally here! I’m finally here!” While outside my body, I was speechless.

I met my houseparents that evening. Gloria Sender de Flores is the perfect depiction of the Peruvian mother. “Vamanos, nenas,” she told both my roommate and I after we introduced ourselves. Her husband, who I am to call papa, stood waiting outside to load our luggage into the car. During the brief car ride to their apartment, it became apparent that they were both as excited to meet us, as we were to meet them. Sra. Sender de Flores, who I am to call mama, did not waste any time to point out streets and places of interest in the city as we passed by. Once at their apartment, my home for the month, my mama bustled around the space showing us where everything was: our bedrooms, the bathroom, the trashcan, the kitchen, the dishes, etc. Then we sat down for tea and pandulce, sweet bread. After a while of conversation, she disappeared into the kitchen and came back out with dinner: a delicious grilled chicken leg, fries, and a beet and cauliflower salad. This gesture was especially nice to me. In Peru, people do not usually eat dinner, but she probably knew that we weren’t used to that. Even though I was hardly thinking about food after the large lunch I had earlier that day, as soon as I took my first bite of chicken, it was all downhill from there. I cleaned that plate.

We talked about many things that evening. She explained that both her children were out of the house, one living in Lima and the other living in Australia. So we were to be her children for the time being.

One thing that I have learned thus far about la cultura de peruano is that generosity and hospitality are of second nature. When you walk into someone else’s household, see a friend, or even when you meet someone for the first time, a kiss on the cheek is standard. For instance, while in Lima, we had dinner at our tour guide’s home and his mother made dinner for us. It was her birthday and her friends were there. As people walked in, she greeted them with a kiss on the cheek, then they proceeded to walk around the entire room and greet everyone there with the same gesture. Also, as hostess, she walked around the room with a plate of finger foods, offering it to everyone singularly. It is not polite to give the plate to someone and let them pass it on to the person next to them.

That is another thing, food. Food is a way of life in the culture. Of course Macchu Picchu is the seventh wonder of the world, but as my roommate said after our second unexpected dinner, “After all of this food, I´m going to be the eighth wonder of the world.”

Last night, my roommate and I explained that we were very tired and wanted to sleep in the next morning to catch up on lost time. Our mama was very understanding and said that she would let us skip the 7:30 a.m. wake up call this time and let us sleep until the afternoon. So this morning, we were awoken at 9 a.m. with a knock on the door. She came in with a foamy papaya juice that she freshly made. And 10 minutes later she came in again with a milky, grainy hot drink that I could not tell you the name, but resembled a milkier, drinkable version of oatmeal. She said that when we were ready, we could come out and have breakfast. I gulped down the sweet hot drink quick. The papaya juice was a little warm, so I allowed it to get room temperature before I gulped that one down quick too. Breakfast consisted of coffee or tea, with bread and jam. I have realized now, that it is when eating or drinking that the best conversations happen. In a way, food is also a social thing for people in the U.S., but it is much more embedded in the Peruvian culture than in the American culture.