![]() Let me start with this – the past few weeks have been hard, really hard. Any travel is challenging. Traveling long term can be even harder still. As we hit our official longest time on the road, we also hit a wall of travel fatigue. 67 consecutive days of travel quickly caught up with us. Eating out often, switching cities multiple times a week, hours spent sitting on buses, constantly researching new destinations. A city that we planned on stopping in for three days became two weeks as our bodies and minds demanded a break. This became even more necessary after an unexpected double-gut punch. On the morning we were set to leave for the Galapagos my grandfather passed away. Two days after we returned, my grandmother passed as well. Losing both in the span of two weeks, especially after not having seen them in three years, is tough. Dealing with loss is always a challenge. I am no stranger to this fact as I lost my paternal grandfather at the age of 14 and my father at the age of 21. Grief is horrible. It leaves you spinning, questioning if you did enough, how you spent or wasted your time with those lost. To get through the losses of these important men in my life, I spent a lot of time crying alone, or with my mom, listening to sad songs, eating comfort foods, and even getting a tattoo or two. Far away from home, my grieving process is different. Losing two of the most supportive and steady people in my life while 3,000 miles away has been a major challenge. Things are missing, my mom, my best friends, family I could share memories with, my favorite foods, my bed, photo albums, my little brother. Yes, I have Eric, and thank god for that. I think I would have flown home immediately after the loss of my grandfather had it not been for him. Fortunately, just before hearing the news of my grandmother, we had decided to stay put. I do not think I could have coped with packing my bags and moving to a new city on top of the emotions I was dealing with. Cuenca, Ecuador was the site of our three day turned two-week break from our travels. This city is ironically home to upwards of 4,000 American ex-pats, so we found good coffee and delicious, familiar food, like BREAKFAST. If you know me, you know I have a love affair with breakfast foods. For a few days, we did nothing more productive than watch Netflix, drink coffee, and do laundry. It was so nice to be able to just be. I feel like a jerk for complaining about this, but sometimes we just do not want to sightsee or take pictures or meet new people. We just want to feel like normal people who do things like talk to friends, cook a meal, fold clothes. And damn it felt good to fold clothes while watching TV. During our first full week, in addition to doing a lot of nothing, we visited a few sights. The highlights of which were the spectacular gardens and aviary at the Pumapungo Museum and the gallery of the famous Ecuadorian potter, Eduardo Vega, where I bought my second souvenir in two months. This week was capped off by a hike in Cajas National Park where we had to hitchhike a few times in different directions because we kept going to the wrong place, and scrambling up a mountain at 4,200m. Apparently in Ecuador, the fastest way to the top is straight up, with nary a switch-back in sight. Since I was still adjusting to the altitude and being back on solid ground after the Galapagos, this was challenging, but I felt so incredibly accomplished by the end. Week two was spent enrolled in another Spanish class where we jumped headfirst into multiple types of verb conjugations and added many more words to our ever-growing vocabulary. Most of our time became quickly occupied by this class as we had instruction four hours each day on top of homework and various other assignments. But we did find time to go to the Amaru Zoo, where we saw many exotic animals including ocelots, spectacled bears, various types of monkeys, and brightly colored parrots. Weirdly enough, a main sponsor of this zoo is Lewis and Clark College where I completed my master’s degree three years ago. Small world!
During our one weekend in Cuenca, Eric went climbing at in the nearby town of Cojitambo while I took some time to become acquainted with the various breakfast restaurants (Hashbrowns! Bagels! Eggs benedict!) and plan our Peru trip. Up to this point in our adventure we had not truly planned anything. It was more like, “that sounds cool, let’s do that.” But in light of the loss of my grandparents, we had to add some structure to our next few weeks of travel as I will be flying to Connecticut for their memorial services. Currently, we are about five days into our itinerary that we spent several days building and you know what, it’s kind of nice. It was built with flexibility of course, but it is comforting to look at our schedule and know where we are sleeping and what we are doing. It made it a bit more enjoyable to be able to wake up with a plan, and not have to spend hours figuring out what activities we should be partaking in. To get to Peru, we took what our guidebook called “the adventurous route.” This took three days and various modes of transportations to complete, but did end up being a memorable experience. From Cuenca, we had to take a bus 7 hours due south to Loja, where we picked up a 1-hour transfer to the village of Vilcabamba. We spent one night here (our last in Ecuador) and were sent off with a crazy festival that involved projectile fireworks being shot into crowds of people and a burning effigy. The next morning at 6am, while the band from the previous night still played, we caught another 7-hour bus straight to the border. Here we checked out of Ecuador, walked across the bridge into Peru, and had to wait an hour for the one border guard to finish lunch before we could get our passports stamped. Then it was another hour ride in a station wagon, passing missing sections of the highway due to landslide, avoiding oxen, horses, cows, children, sidewalks full of beans, and donkeys along the way. Then another two hours in a minivan, followed by a moto-taxi ride clutching our backpacks, to a hostel for the night. Somehow in the span of 9 hours in the humid town of Jaen, I earned dozens of mosquito bites that I am still itching. The next morning, we caught another minivan to another minivan, which after five hours total and dozens of windy roads, we made it to our first real Peru destination of Chachapoyas. Though the ride was long, and involved a lot of steps, the scenery was stunning. Going from small mountain villages, to fields full of rice paddies, into the Amazon, and back up to the Andes afforded us spectacular scenery for the entire action packed three-day journey. In Chachapoyas, we visited the ruins of Kuelap and hiked to Gocta waterfall. Kuelap is a former indigenous village, set 3,000-meters on top of a mountain, that was conquered by Incans around 1450 and then Spaniards about one hundred years later. These ruins are surrounded by a large retaining wall made of limestone quarried from the nearby peaks, and filled with the remains of hundreds of circular dwellings. It was quite the sight to be seen, especially since we had to take a 4km cable car ride over a deep valley to access it. On the second day, we hiked to Gocta waterfall, which is either the 3rd or 12th highest in the world (much controversy in the waterfall measuring world) at 771 meters. This was spectacular, despite the rain that surprised us halfway along the hike. The entire time I was gawking at the mountains and forests around me, trying not to trip over my feet. I truly cannot come up with the words to describe it. The day was capped off with a stunningly huge double rainbow spanning the valley as we drove back to town. Currently we are sitting in the coastal town of Huanchaco, enjoying the ocean and little bit of sunshine after a 14-hour night bus. Though it is overcast, and the water is too cold (for me) to swim in, I am at peace. As an Oregonian, I know the coast it not for swimming, it’s for wrapping up in a sweater and staring out at the waves, with a cup of coffee in hand. Peru has so far been good to us, and I am excited for what is to come.
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AuthorJust two kids out exploring this big world of ours. Archives
September 2017
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