Category: The Non-Writing Life

We trained to Huancayo on a Friday. I remember because the train only goes on a Friday. The purpose of the Huancayo leg of our journey was the train ride rather than the destination. My parents rode the train 30+ years ago when it went up every week and basically only locals rode it, and my mother’s horror stories of the chicken claw soup they were served (claw intact) made this an experience not to be missed! Were they still serving the chicken claw soup? (We didn’t seriously believe they were). At the time my parents rode the train to Huancayo, it was the highest elevation train in the world. It took 38 years to build the rail line, which opened in 1908, and it’s considered a mighty feat of engineering. It travels from sea level up to about 15,000 feet above sea level before arriving at Huancayo, which is at about 11,000 feet above sea level. It has 56 bridges, some over spectacular ravines, 69 tunnels, a dozen switchbacks (zig-zags). It doesn’t curve around the mountains, it goes back and forth up the mountains. So there are many times when you look out your window and see two sets of tracks. One set that you were just on, and the next set to take you up further. It was very cool!

When I first started researching the train trip, I couldn’t find any information. It wasn’t in my Frommer’s Peru, and an Internet search turned up zilch. But my mother insisted that this train existed, and so I continued searching. It was one of the highlights of their trip. Why would we want to miss it?

Six months passed, and I began researching again. Turned out the reason I couldn’t find information the first time was because the train closed for at least 15 years at some point after my parents’ visit. It only takes 6 hours to travel to Huancayo by bus now, so why have the train? For the historical value! Thanks to a lot of hard work on the part of some devoted individuals, the historical train to Huancayo began running again less than a handful of years ago, but the schedule wasn’t set in stone. By a long shot.

Eventually, as our trip neared, we discovered that the train was now running once a month. We quickly booked the best time for us and designed the rest of our trip around our weekend train ride. As it so happened, the train went up on a Friday on the weekend we booked and traveled back down on the Sunday night at 7 p.m. Other weekends, it runs back down on the Monday during the day.

The train is now called the highest “historical” elevation train in the world, because the pan-Himalayan line which runs across Tibet, built in 2005, now climbs to over 16,000 feet. But! The Huancayo train still has the highest elevation stop in the world at which passengers can get out and pass out from the thin oxygen in the air, if they so choose. The Peruvians are very proud of this (as they should be; it’s fun to watch gringos pass out). The Peruvian train is the “original” highest-elevation train in the world. Because it was built over a century ago, it has historical significance. Honestly, it’s an experience not to be missed. If we had to sacrifice visiting Arequipa to ride this train, so be it. The only tourists we met during our entire 3 weeks who’d even heard of the train to Huancayo were the people ON the train.

Now, the train is running twice a month. So hopefully more and more people will discover it. It was a blast.

These days, the DH and I were able to choose to pay a bit more and travel in the tourist cars—more comfortable seating and a bar car! Other tourists from around the world were with us, but Peruvians were with us, as well. No chicken claw soup! I can no longer remember what we were served or how much of it I ate, but I made sure to take advantage of the coca tea in the bar car (a hot drink that helps you deal with altitude sickness). We’d also bought sorochi (spelling?) tablets at a Lima pharmacy, which also help with altitude sickness.

I hadn’t traveled on a train since we backpacked through Europe in 1981. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy train travel. We got to know other passengers, and the most delightful passenger was a little Peruvian boy named Fabian who sat across the aisle from us with his mother (his father was a few seats back). Fabian didn’t know a lick of English, and neither did his mom. We didn’t know a lick of Spanish. But the DH had his handy-dandy English-Spanish phrase book, and a great deal of this 12-13 hour ride to Huancayo consisted of attempting to converse with Fabian because he totally loved my DH (as most children do) and wanted to know where we were from, how old we were, etc., etc. He was, quite simply, adorable.

By the time we arrived in Huancayo, it was just after 7 p.m. and we were exhausted. We quickly found our hotel and bunked in for the night. We also decided that 9 p.m. on a Friday night was the perfect time to arrange our first attempt at getting our laundry done in Peru. The laundry guy came and took our bag of stuff, promising we’d have it back by 9 p.m. Saturday night. Hah! We did not see our laundry again until a couple hours before leaving for the train again late Sunday afternoon. And it took several conversations—with an interpreter—to get it back intact. Adventures in Laundering. We learned a valuable lesson. When hotel personnel takes away your laundry in Peru, that doesn’t mean the laundry is washed IN the hotel. Take note! (You can just sense a Trip Tip coming, can’t you?). Next time!

Nasca continued…

After the plane ride over the Lines, Oscar the Guide (not Grouch!) was supposed to take us to lunch then deposit us at our hotel and pick us up again in the morning for a tour of the Cantalloc aqueducts before popping us onto the bus again for a looooooooooong ride back to Lima. We decided we’d rather skip the lunch and see the aqueducts immediately following the lines. For one thing, I was feeling ill following the plane ride (a lot of people chuck their cookies). It was hot, and the idea of having to get up the following morning when we could fit everything all into one day didn’t make sense to us. Plus, it meant that Oscar could get himself a new crop of tourists in the morning.

The aqueducts were pretty cool, but I can’t show you everything or we’d be here until September. You can click this link for some great photos and information. Trust me, it’s something to do with water. And it’s yet another indication of how ingenious the ancient Peruvians were. These aqueducts are still in use today. Oscar walked my dh down into one of them and scooped water over his (Oscar’s) head.

What? You won’t accept no pictures? Okay, then, just one. I can’t resist showing off the blue sky!

Usually, I’m showing barren landscapes of this area of Peru, but there’s plenty of greenery around the aqueducts, because, ‘natch, of the underground water channels they access.

So…back to the hotel we went, and then out to dinner. We hopped down to a little Chifa place. Chifa is Peruvian Chinese food. In Lima, we’d heard that we had to try it. I thought I’d get a second chance, because my dish of Chifa was ultra-bland and I could barely eat it. My Liege ordered something more adventurous, and his was great. That’ll teach me.

Another thing we were introduced to in Nasca was Inca Cola. A girl where M.L. works told him, “You have to try it!” It’s Peruvian pop/soda/soft drink/what-have-you. So I ordered an ice-cold bottle on a boiling hot day. It was yellow. I tentatively sipped. It was cream soda! Just yellow instead of pink.

Ice-cold and on a super hot day when you’re feeling healthy, Inca Cola is great. Warmish on a day when you’re not feeling healthy, Inca Cola is…well, suffice it to say that once my stomach turned in Peru I couldn’t drink another bottle of Inca Cola.

At our hotel, while lounging by the pool (which no one swam in; it seemed more for looks), I had a chance to meet several people from a group tour. That was when I learned that most people who travel from Lima to Nasca either stop at Paracas or Ica on their way, or they continue down to Arequipa and the Colca Canyon afterward. I’d researched Arequipa. It was somewhere I really wanted to visit. But we only had three weeks, and we were still on the first leg of our four-leg journey. So we’re saving Arequipa for another time.

Poolside, I also briefly talked to a woman named Nancy Vogel. She, her husband and their two sons have been biking (as in pedaling) from Alaska to the tip of South America for two years now. Nancy has a website and is chronicling their journey on her blog. Her sons also write entries. Isn’t that cool?

Now how, you may ask, does one keep up with a blog in Peru? And why didn’t Cindy? I can answer the second question easily: laziness. The first is easy to answer, too. There are Internet cafes everywhere in Peru, and access in the hotels. I can’t recall staying in a hotel that didn’t have at least one computer that you could grab a free minimum five minutes on. But I do have a tip! (I know, you missed the tips).

Trip Tip: If you’re using a public computer to access your email, LOG OFF YOUR PROGRAM WHEN YOU’RE FINISHED! You wouldn’t believe the number of times we sat down at a computer and found ourselves in someone else’s Hotmail account. Able to read their email if we so wanted! Able to send nasty notes to their friends pretending to be them! (Not that we did that). I sat at computers that had Word documents saved to the desktop that I’m guessing the writer emailed off as an attachment and then DIDN’T DELETE FROM THE DESKTOP. It truly boggles my mind. For Pete’s sake, don’t leave your documents on a hotel’s computer. Especially if you don’t know how to use spell check. Don’t make me feel embarrassed on your behalf!

Day 6. Yes, we’re on Day 6. Aren’t you relieved? Basically, we traveled back to Lima by bus. Below is typical geography of the highway until it got dark. The lunar-landscape look was cool at times, and other times eerie. It made me glad I live where there’s lots of trees:

We returned to Lima waaaaaaaaaaaaay later than we expected. We met a lot of, ahem, “younger people” in Peru who thought nothing of taking 18-hour-long bus rides. I learned I can handle about 6 hours on a “luxury bus” and 10 hours on a train. But I’d rather travel six hours on a luxury bus than 8 hours by plane.

In Lima, we stayed for one pitiful night at a B&B called Second Home Peru. I say pitiful because I wanted to stay there longer, but we couldn’t. I tried to book the B&B for our first two nights in Lima, before we went to Nasca. But it only has 6 bedrooms, and it was fully booked. So we had one wonderfully blissful night there. This place was amazing. It was once owned by Peruvian artist Victor Delfin. Remember the sculpture of The Kiss I mentioned when I first began chronicling our journey? (I might have spelled his name wrong in that post—sorry). That was his. The B&B is filled, and I mean to the rafters, with his artwork. A little art gallery exists inside the B&B, but we got there too late at night and had to get up too early the next morning to tour it. My Liege did travel all over the grounds taking pictures, but it was very dark and most of them didn’t turn out well. Sculptures were all over the grounds, and there was a walkway down to an overlook of the ocean. We weren’t supposed to be down there at night, and M.L. caught heck from the night clerk.

Our room was incredible. We stayed in some “five-star” hotels that weren’t as nice as this B&B. The staircase to the second floor was wide and gorgeous wood. Our room shared a huge deck with another room, and it had a view of the ocean. We walked to amazing Italian food (artichoke ravioli is to die for!). The bed was comfy…and it had a claw foot tub! I was in heaven. Cue Cindy taking a bath:

All this for under $100 Canadian a night. If I ever have occasion to stay in Lima again, I would definitely, without a doubt, stay here again.

Trip Tip: If you’re on a tour, you really have no choice but to stay in the hotels the tour places you with. Either that or feel like you’re losing money by NOT staying the tour hotel and paying for a room elsewhere. Participating in tours can get you access at very reasonable prices to some amazing hotels! On the other hand, some hotels become…very comfortable with the knowledge that tour groups book through them, and they, shall I say, might not try as hard as hotels that aren’t booked by tour groups. If you are traveling on tours, the nights you don’t HAVE to stay in a tour hotel, get adventurous. Go on-line and search out reviews of where you think you might want to stay. Have fun with it!

We thoroughly enjoyed all three B&Bs/hotels that we booked on our own on this trip. The Nasca hotel booked as part of our Nasca Lines tour was okay. The room was okay. The restaurant was pretty darn good. But another hotel we stayed in later in the trip, booked along with a tour, was…quite disappointing. And that’s being polite!

The next morning, Day 7, we got up at the ungodly hour of 4 a.m. because we had to be at the train station by 6, and if we missed our train we’d miss the second leg of our trip. Couldn’t let that happen.

Trip Tip: If you’re traveling for 6-7 hours on a bus one day followed by a 12-13 hour train trip the following morning, and you’re getting up super early, DON’T believe the tour representative who assures you that you’ll arrive at your hotel between 3-6 p.m. Don’t think one short night of rest (at your age) is enough. Book a second night in Lima, relax, go visit a museum, and thank God your stomach hasn’t yet turned.

We were the second or third people there. Talk about neurotic. Those are our suitcases, made by a company called CalPak. They were great. They had wheels, but also a backpack hideaway we never actually had to use. They came with matching daypacks that zipped onto the larger packs. Everything for 3 weeks went into those two packs, including souvenirs (the green pack was mine). Two pairs of jeans (one on my body) and one pair of shoes. A fleece (that I’m wearing) and a pair of fleece track pants to double as PJs at high elevations. I also brought a sleep shirt for lower elevations. One lightweight, zippered hoodie, two long-sleeved tops, two elbow-length tops, two T-shirts, and one raincoat that wrapped up into a ball. My long-sleeved tops were actually PJ tops! I wore them during the day, and I wore them at night. No one suspected. They just thought I was fashionably challenged. Nothing wrong with that.

That’s the view across from the train station. Here’s another one. I had no idea what I was doing, so I’m pleased with how they turned out. #experimentsuccess!

Thus ends Leg 1 of our journey. We’re off on Leg 2!

You can also spell Nasca with a zed (zee). Nazca. Your choice!

After the cemetery, Oscar took us to the airfield where at least half a dozen different airlines offer flights above the Nasca Lines. You can arrange flights from your Nasca hotel, however this being our first trip to South America and taking into account the previously mentioned not knowing any Spanish, we did everything through pre-arranged tours. Now I think we would feel comfortable enough to tackle certain areas on our own. However, Peru is such a vast country and there are plenty of areas where it’s difficult or not advised to travel unless you are with a tour. Or it’s just impossible…unless you’re super rich. The way I looked at it, the Peruvian people work hard to make foreigners feel welcome in their amazing country. If they can make some money off me by luring me in with glossy websites instead of encouraging me to rent a car and drive myself around, why shouldn’t they?

One thing we learned taking tours is that tour guides know their stuff! They fill you up with so much information sometimes it feels like your brain’s gonna blow up. But at least you never have to look at something and wonder, “What’s that for?” With a guide, all you have to do is ask. And I doubt you have to worry about being chased through the streets in Tangiers, Morocco, if you have a guide. But that’s a story for another time…

I don’t have many pictures of the Nasca Lines because I’d heard the best way to experience the lines is NOT to spend your time taking pictures that won’t turn out, anyway. Instead, enjoy (yeah, right!) the flight and buy postcards. So that’s what we did. My Liege doesn’t get motion sickness, so he didn’t spend a portion of the flight with his head between his legs. I wasn’t being wimpy! I WANTED to see the lines. At one time, however, with our pilots eager to make sure EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE FREAKING PLANE (all four of us, as we were paired with another couple…or maybe it was two singles) got to see every example of the Nasca Lines, swooped us about so crazy-like that the G-force crammed my head down (“Check out the Monkey on the right.” Swooop. “Now, for those on the left!” Swwoooooooooooop!). I popped it up again as soon as I could.

I did manage to snap a photo of The Astronaut:

He’s on a hillside, and is actually the crudest (as in not as artistic) of the drawings we saw. Can’t see him well enough? Here’s a close-up:

The lines are created by removing the dark rocks filled with iron oxide. The light color underneath is the sand. Why doesn’t the wind sweep the sand and lines away? Because the hot air creates a kind of protective barrier for a few inches above the earth, preserving the Nasca lines for all posterity.

Other designs include a spider and monkey, a whale and lots of good stuff.  The crazy thing is they’re designed to be viewed from the air—at a time when there were no aircraft. Cue Twilight Zone music. There’s a little photo gallery on this website, if you’re interested in seeing more of the designs (note: that wasn’t the tour company we used).

Why create these lines in the desert? There are a lot of theories, but no one really knows. Were they ceremonial, something to do with agriculture, or were they drawn to entice aliens to visit? Were some of them landing strips for alien spacecraft? I dunno, but tons of these (see below) shapes and lines are all over the place:

My Liege likes the aliens theory. I like to bop him upside the head.

What do you think?

I’m so glad we made the trip to Nasca. My parents didn’t make it there when they visited Peru in the mid-Seventies, and I always wondered why. Well, it turns out Nasca is a bit out of the way. It is now, so I’m sure it was more of-the-way 30+ years ago.

By out of the way, I mean that you can’t fly from Lima to Nasca. Not currently at any rate. When I first begin researching our Peru trip, you could pay through the nose to fly from Lima to Nasca and back in one day. By the time we booked, that was no longer an option. We found two tours to choose from. One that would have us taking a bus or other ground transport and staying overnight partway to Nasca. The other had us taking the bus from Lima all on one day. After exploring both tours, we decided on the Drive in One Day option—because that tour included a trip to a pre-Inca cemetery, which intrigued me, being the warped sort that I am.

If I had to do it again, I’d take a bit more time and get off the bus in a town called Ica. Huge sand dunes proliferated like mountains around Ica, and apparently you can go dune buggy riding or even sandboarding down them. I spoke to an English girl who did it, and she said it was a blast.

Can you imagine sandboarding down a huge dune like that? I’ll fall on my keister, but other folks are more talented than moi.

You can also visit sand dunes near Nasca, but the drive to the dunes takes longer and you miss the benefit of staying overnight on the way (how can you tell that not getting enough sleep was a recurring theme of our trip?)

The bus trip took 7 hours. When we booked this tour, the copy said it was a luxury bus. I thought, oh, sure. But it was nicer than any bus I’ve taken in North America. Granted, I haven’t traveled by bus in years… The seats reclined like La-Z-Boys, they fed us and played us videos. By the time we arrived in Nasca, it was pitch black. We were happy to hit the sack and pass out.

The next morning, in our hotel across the street from the bus station, a crowing rooster woke us. Our first week in Peru, no one wanted us to sleep! First, in Lima, the construction workers woke us with their hammering, then in Nasca the rooster. A few days later, in Huancayo in the mountains, a cat meowed outside our hotel window from as early as 3 a.m. on. It’s no wonder I could barely keep my eyes open. Go to sleep, Peruvians! Animals and humans!

When we met our guide, Oscar, on the morning of Day 5, the sky was overcast. This caused me no end of pain. We were supposed to fly over the Nasca Lines! It was May! I wanted bright blue sky and sunshine, damn it!

Oscar assured us that the clouds were unusual for this time of year and would most likely burn off by noon. So he took us to Chauchilla Cemetery first, and I introduced myself to dozens of Peruvian mummies. Note: these pictures may not be for the squeamish (on the other hand, grow a stronger stomach!)

Yes, it is a baby hand. What’s your issue? You think only adults deserve to be mummified? Babies aren’t worthy? What’s wrong with you? If I were pre-Inca and my baby died, I’d want it to be mummified, too.

That baby hand was attached to an entire baby in a display case inside the tiniest museum I’ve ever encountered (it had two display cases in it). But if you can’t handle a hand, you think I’m going to show you the entire baby? (I would, but even I’m not that warped).

Chauchilla Cemetery looks like it’s in the middle of nowhere. It felt like Oscar drove forever to get us there. In fact, at one point, I felt sure “I’m taking you to the cemetery first” was Peruvian guide speak for “You’re never flying over the Nasca lines because I’m going to chop you into 700 pieces and bury you in the desert.” And I had reason to be worried. You see, I’d booked My Liege and I on something called an “Independent tour.” I had no idea what that meant until Oscar picked us up at our hotel the next day. It meant that My Liege and I were the only people he was touring around that day, so, yeah, if he’d wanted to chop us up, I don’t see why he couldn’t have. Aside from the fact that he might have lost his job. And, oh, yeah, he was such a nice guy! As we arrived at the cemetery and I noticed two other cars parked there, I came to the conclusion that I’ve watched too many Sopranos episodes. And then Oscar joked about leaving us at the cemetery in a condition resembling the mummies. Thanks a lot, Oscar!

Anyway, the cemetery is a series of tombs buried below ground, but over the years some have been opened to tourists. Grave-robbing was occurring, you see, and turning the cemetery into a museum was a way to keep it from deteriorating any further.

Bits of bone and rocks are scattered around the sand, and the bones are not to be picked up. You wouldn’t want a curse to befell you, would you? Besides, it’s rude, and I’m Canadian. I’m only rude when people aren’t looking (or listening).

And, look at that sky! Oscar wasn’t lying, the clouds were clearing! I’d get my plane ride above the Nasca Lines (though God knows why I was looking forward to it, as I get motion sickness and only had 8 tablets of Gravol to last me through the day).

First, we had to finish looking at mummies:

That stuff on his head is really his hair. Those skulls behind him are real skulls. These tombs were big, with space for a few people. We saw plenty of babies in with the people. We also saw a parrot mummy. The more hair a mummy has, the more important he was when he was alive. If you could grow your hair long, it meant you had idle time on your hands and weren’t always whipping it out of your face while you toiled the fields.

Some skulls were elongated. See those skulls sitting beside him? A couple of those were conehead skulls, purposefully shaped from birth because it was already known that you were going to be somebody important as an adult and for some reason they wanted them to have coneheads. I’m sure the presence of the coneheads has nothing to do with the rumors of aliens that swirl around the existence of the Nasca Lines to this day. CHARIOTS OF THE GODS, anyone?

We’ll check it out…tomorrow.

You want pictures? Today, you get pictures.

We woke far too early at Casa Bella B&B. We tried sleeping in, but construction was occurring nearby, and 8:30 a.m. isn’t early for construction workers. By the time we showered and organized ourselves, breakfast had already been served. No problem. We were directed to a Starbucks a couple of blocks away. We mistakenly assumed we would find the chain all over Peru. The Starbucks near the Casa Bella B&B was the only one we encountered. Which was great until we started craving North American coffee…

At the Starbucks, My Liege whipped out his stolen English-Spanish phrasebook. From that point on, he did a most excellent job of diving into conversations with anyone and everyone.  Not one ounce of trepidation, which I thought pretty cool for a middle-aged guy who didn’t take ANY languages beyond grade ten French. And he was a jock, so likely he wasn’t paying attention.

M.L. and I learned that he was better at initiating conversations while I, for some strange reason that eludes us, could decipher entire Spanish sentences spoken our direction. We believe I relied on body language and snippets of words-similar-to-what-they-are-in French and ESP and genius IQ and “Making Things Up.” Whatever, it worked. We made a great Spanish-learning team.

In the afternoon, we took a city tour organized by the B&B at our request. A guide named Gladys picked us up with a driver and a handy-dandy mini-bus that could hold, I guess, up to 20 passengers. We were 5, not counting Gladys and the driver (whose name now eludes me). The other couple were from Belgium, and then we were joined by a young woman named Nikki from Scotland who had quit her job to volunteer at a Cusco school for 10 weeks (by that I mean she paid a handsome sum of money to work at the school for 10 weeks). By a funny twist of fate, we wound up meeting her again in Cusco. We recognized her by her accent and her fear of attacking pigeons.

As you look at some of the pictures, you’ll notice Lima is cloudy. They’re not really clouds. It’s more like a haze that never burns off. Gladys the Guide told us Lima is like this 90% of the time, which begs the question why the Spaniards who conquered the Inca moved the capital of Peru from Cusco to Lima. Cusco is sunny. I guess they had other things on their minds.

We enjoyed Lima much more than we expected. I’d heard it was a place to use as a base for one’s travels, but we could have used another day enjoying the architecture (and resting). We found excellent Italian food in Lima each of the three times we stayed there. During the city tour, we stopped at some ruins inside the city that housed a big museum, but couldn’t find the time for a more extensive visit (maybe if our flight hadn’t been delayed five hours!).

The highlight of the city tour was the Convent of Saint Francis. The library of ancient books was breathtaking, and we were able to visit the catacombs. Photographs were outlawed in both places, so I bought postcards. At one point, as we surveyed the interior of the church from a balcony of sorts, I noticed birds flying around inside. Loved it!

We headed back to our B&B for a good night’s sleep. And we needed it, because we were heading to Nasca (of the famous Nasca Lines) the following day, and the only way to get there was by bus. A big bus and a long bus ride. Or car or other transport, if you’re crazy enough to want to try driving yourself out of Lima. The traffic was insane. It was like there were invisible four way stops everywhere, and the drivers somehow communicated to each other (through visual cues or aggressive vehicle maneuvers) when it was their turn to go. Peruvians have traffic down to an art form, but by North American standards it was crrrrrrrrazy. My hat is off to anyone who tries driving in Lima.

As promised, pictures and anecdotes about my trip to Peru! It’s our 25th anniversary in August. The Peru trip was our early celebration.

Why Peru, you ask? Primarily, it was on the dh’s bucket list. He’s always wanted to see Machu Picchu, and I figured if we were flying all that way, we might as well spend a solid length of time (3 weeks) and explore more than the ancient Inca sanctuary. Sounds like a plan, no?

Second, my parents did a ton—and I mean a TON—of traveling when I, my brother and sisters were in our teens. My father’s job prevented him from working every spring. The ground is too soft for logging machinery. That time of year is called “break up.” So when we were teenagers, every year they’d fly off somewhere without us—for 4-8 weeks! My paternal grandparents lived next door and were assigned with the task of taking care of us. They were wonderful grandparents! (This was the same grandfather who lived to 106). But they grew up on farms and they raised their children on farms, and farm kids know how to take care of themselves (if you can milk a cow and shoot a gopher and crawl eighteen miles in five-foot-deep snow uphill both ways to school at 5 a.m, you’ve got it made). So it only makes sense that children raised by kids raised on farms should know how to take care of themselves, too, right? My grandparents were there “if we needed them.” And we needed them every Saturday, to drive us to the store to bulk up on groceries. Otherwise, we took care of ourselves.

Grocery Tip: If you buy too much fruit for the week, DON’T put the bananas in the deep freeze thinking you can take them out in five days and they’ll be fresh. They’ll turn black within the hour.

See what all my parents’ traveling taught me?

Viewing pictures of their travels also exposed me to what the world had to offer. My parents went to Peru in the mid-Seventies. There were a handful of tourists at Machu Picchu the day they were there. Now it and other specific areas are what I call “Peruvian Disneyland.” Especially when the huge tour bus groups arrive. More on that as my tales progress.

Note: We flew to Peru on airmiles. You know what happens when you fly somewhere on airmiles, right? Especially when you’re starting from small town, Canada and you only book the flight 6 months in advance. Altogether now: “You get crappy flights.”

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate that it only took me 6 years to save up enough travel miles to fly My Liege and myself from small town B.C. to Lima and back again. Wait, as it turned out, I didn’t have enough travel miles to fly from B.C. to Lima and back. I was short by a few hundred. I did, however, have enough travel miles to fly from Alberta to Lima and back. So my mother, bless her heart (and I don’t mean that in the Southern way), donated enough travel miles to get us from small town B.C. to Calgary, Alberta. Then our travel miles took us from Calgary to Lima. I was so proud.

We left on a Saturday afternoon and had to overnight in Calgary, so we chose the Calgary Delta Airport hotel. It’s right in the airport, and we had to get up at 4 a.m. on Sunday to catch our flight to Houston and then Lima. I would totally recommend doing this, and I would do it again. I didn’t want to worry about even catching a shuttle to the airport. I wanted to just be there.

Cue an early rising Sunday morning on Eldest Son’s 22nd birthday. Sorry, E.S., hope it was a good one! At the airline counter, we decided to do the self check-in. Rather, an official-looking man was standing nearby and encouraged us to use the self check-in. The previous night, My Liege said, “If we get an opportunity to upgrade to First Class for less than $100 each, we’re doing it.” He’s traveled a lot for work and knows what he’s talking about. Plus, he hates getting squished by rude people in coach. Well, I guess he didn’t get much sleep, because as we stood there wading through the computer self check-in, at one point the program asked, “Would you like to upgrade to First Class for $79 each?” My dh looked at me, and I said, “Kinda defeats the point of using airmiles, doesn’t it?”

Cindy, nooooooooooooooooo!

I thought no matter what I said M.L. would check YES, UPGRADE US TO FIRST CLASS. WE WOULD HAVE PAID $100. But he clicked, NO. Only after we’d sent our bags on their way and were ensconced in the waiting area with huge Starbucks cups did we truly realize the error. By then, it was too late. The First Class seats with all that extra room were taken. And not once during any other leg of the trip were we offered another chance to travel First Class—unless we wanted to pay $1700, I kid you not. That’ll teach us.

Travel Tip: If you and your husband agree that you WILL upgrade to First Class for a very reasonable price, if given the opportunity, try to prevent his sleep-deprived self from taking your wit seriously and clicking NO.

I don’t mind traveling coach. I always travel coach. Have only gone First Class once, an upgrade on a trip to Las Vegas. But these were looooooong flights. A 6-hour flight from Calgary to Houston, a 3-hour layover, and then another 6-hour flight from Houston to Lima. Plus, needing to get to the airport 3 hours early for whatever reason. They always want you there earlier than a liquified grasshopper.

But we went coach and had a good row partner, so all was fine.

Then we got to Houston. A 3-hour layover sounded decent. We could go through U.S. Customs, complain about the fact that Canadians are now only allowed one carry-on despite that we weren’t staying in the States, just passing through; get something to eat, and stock up on English reading material. But the 3-hour layover stretched to 8! Yes, 8. Apparently, our plane was “broken.” Yes, that’s what the man at the desk told me. Some kind of mechanical failure. And another plane wasn’t available for 8 hours.

Ahem.

Spending 8 hours in the Houston airport reminded me of that movie with Tom Hanks where he was forced to live in an airport for an ungodly length of time. Tom seemed to make out okay in the movie, but I wonder if the real live person he played went insane? I learned I couldn’t stand to live in an airport for two days, let alone over a year. The bookstores were nice, and the Panda Express was great, but come on!

By the time we got into Lima, it was 4 a.m. So much for arriving at 11 p.m. and getting a good night’s sleep. Gah, now that I think about it, we rose at 4 a.m. on Sunday and arrived at 4 a.m. Monday. Even now, that sounds exhausting. But! Our driver was there to pick us up. We’d booked into Casa Bella B&B in the San Isidro section of Lima (I found it on www.tripadvisor.com and then later realized it was also recommended in my Frommer’s.) They said they’d keep an eye on flight changes for us and would be there no matter when we arrived, and they weren’t lying. We were so glad to see our driver. Especially because, being raised in Canada when French was the only option for a second language in high school, we didn’t know a lick of Spanish. I’d bought Levels 1-3 of a popular language learning software, but M.L., ahem, lost disc 1 several months before our trip. I emailed my father in the winter in Mexico, because I knew he also had the software. Turns out he, ahem, had lost his disc 1, too! Men! I finally broke down and purchased a second copy of level 1. It arrived 2 weeks before our trip and we were both too busy to attempt it.

Travel Tip: If you buy language learning software, for Pete’s sake, take the time to LEARN language learning software. If you’re buying it for your husband, keep track of every time he uses it! Lock up disc 1 somewhere he can’t find it and require him to sign it out for periodic use. Threaten whipping if it goes missing. If you’re feeling rebellious about the remaining two weeks before your trip and only have time to learn the words for dog and horse and ball and airplane, at the very least pick up a handy-dandy English-Spanish (Latin America) phrasebook. I recommend the Lonely Planet series.

Being the brilliant sort that I am, I did the latter. M.L. stole my pocket-sized phrasebook the moment we landed in Lima and held it hostage until we left Peru three weeks later. But that was okay. I took a lot more French in high school than he did, and I helped one of our sons with his French in school, as well. If you don’t know a lick of Spanish, knowing a bit of French is the next best thing. The languages are similar, as it turns out. Similar roots, anyway. It really helped.

All right, all right, I know you want pictures! I know you’re feeling mighty ripped off at this point, but you’re only getting one picture today. I couldn’t record my Peru trip for posterity without including our 24 hours of travel (not counting the flight to Calgary the previous day).

I know my hair’s a mess. Don’t judge me! It’s 4:30 a.m.! This is M.L. and me in our room at Casa Bella B&B. Ain’t we sweet?