Peru, 11 Years Later: Museo Marina Núñez del Prado

So, it's time to leave Peru and move on. I am back in Lima, and one of the last things I have checked out was the neighbourhood of San Isidro. In my previous post, I gave details about an archaeological site, and this time, I checked out a modern art museum, the Museo Marina Núñez del Prado.

Peru, 11 Years Later: Huaca Huallamarca

After Trujillo, I took a flight and headed back to Lima. It's almost time to go home. I planned two more nights in Lima, before I headed back to Europe. And while I was there, I took the chance to visit other parts of the city I haven't been to yet, like San Isidro. This is an area of the city that happens to be the location of the Huaca Huallamarca, another archaeological site.

Peru, 11 Years Later: Huaca de la Luna

Aside from Chan Chan, there is another archaeological site near Trujillo. This is the Huaca de la Luna, or Temple of the Moon. This temple is actually forming a larger archaeological complex, together with the Huaca del Sol. However, the Huaca del Sol isn't open for visitors, as it is still an actual archaeological dig.

Peru, 11 Years Later: Historic Centre of Trujillo

As mentioned earlier, Trujillo was my final stop before heading back to Lima. This was a pleasant city to be in, with a very quiet and manageable historic city centre to explore.

Peru, 11 Years Later: Chan Chan

After spending a few days in Chiclayo, I decided to move on. I took the bus heading to Trujillo, which would be my final stop before I head to Lima again, where I would be catching my flight back home. Trujillo was an interesting place, a small city with a very elegant city centre, and a few archaeological sites nearby. One of them was Chan Chan.

Peru, 11 Years Later: Brüning Museum

While I was in Chiclayo, I took a day trip to Lambayeque, a town nearby. This town happens to be the location of two very interesting museums. The first one is the Royal Tombs of Sipan Museum, which unfortunately does not allow pictures inside. Nevertheless, I visited it as well and learned more about the Sipan tomb, which I just visited the day before. Additionally, there is the Brüning Museum, located a few hundred metres away, which houses the collection of Hans Heinrich Brüning, a German-born Peruvian ethnologist.

Peru, 11 Years Later: Sipan (Huaca Rajada)

After spending a short time in Piura, I moved on, taking a bus to Chiclayo. I headed south, and after three hours in a bus, I arrived to a city that was pleasant, walkable, and quite enjoyable. Again, I felt like I was the only tourist in town. I used Chiclayo as a base to check out a few archaeological sites. The first one I visited was the Huaca Rajada, or Sipan.

Peru, 11 Years Later: Piura and Catacaos

After spending one and a half week in southern Peru, it was time to move on. So one morning, I took a taxicab from my guesthouse and headed for the airport. My destination this time was Piura, in northern Peru. I flew via Lima, and I arrived in Piura around lunchtime.

Peru, 11 Years Later: Casa del Moral

Aside from churches, I also visited the Casa del Moral in Arequipa. The Casa del Moral is a large ancestral house built around 1730. Now it is a museum.

Peru, 11 Years Later: The Churches on Arequipa's Plaza de Armas

As with every other major urban area in Peru, there is a main plaza, called the Plaza de Armas, in Arequipa. It's a massive place, similar to the one in Lima's. And on weekends, people meander and linger here, just hanging out, enjoying being outside the house. And this place happens to have a few churches within walking distance. In a religious country, this is rather convenient.

Peru, 11 Years Later: Monastery of Santa Catalina de Siena

After spending time in Puno and Lake Titicaca, it was time to move on. I boarded a bus that took me across the mountains, and 6 hours later, I landed in Arequipa. This was a sexy city, with a great historical core, and plenty of things to check out. The first thing I visited was the Monastery of Santa Catalina de Siena, a very large monastic complex right in the middle of the city, occupying a full city block. And once you're inside, it feels like a very different place, where you're shielded from the chaos of the city outside.

Peru, 11 Years Later: Lake Titicaca

I spent two full days in Lake Titicaca. I did a two-night one-day rural homestay, where I rode a boat, visited the floating islands, and then spent the night with a local family in one of the inhabited islands in the lake. It was a memorable experience.

Peru, 11 Years Later: Sillustani

Sillustani is a pre-Incan cemetery on the shores of Lake Umayo near Puno in Peru. This is one archaeological site that I have visited while I was in the Puno area. It's a short drive away from Puno, and I visited it one afternoon.

Peru, 11 Years Later: Puno

After spending two nights in Lima, I headed to the airport one early morning to catch a domestic flight. I had a flight to Juliaca, a working-class city near Lake Titicaca. Juliaca happens to be the town that has the closest airport to where I wanted to go, but it wasn't necessarily my destination. Rather, I was heading to Puno, the city at the banks of the highest navigable lake in the world.

Peru, 11 Years Later: Huaca Pucllana

There's plenty of archaeological sites in Peru. And during my visit to Lima, I already explored one of them, Huaca Pucllana, located in Miraflores, and walking distance from where I was staying.

Peru, 11 Years Later: The Historic Centre of Lima

After landing early in the morning in Lima and taking a couple of hours to nap, I headed out to explore the historic centre. 11 years ago, I actually had this plan to do this, since I remember having a long layover between my flight from Cusco and my flight back to the USA. However, for some reason I suppose I was just already tired back then and so I aborted that plan. Hence, this is actually the first time I would be seeing the city.

Peru, 11 Years Later: The Food

Let me begin with the food. After all, my three weeks in the country was very colourful when it comes to the culinary elements. While everyone else was deriding Lima, planning to get out of it as soon as they get in, I spent a total of 4 nights in the city, 2 nights in the beginning, and another 2 nights in the end. I definitely took the time to discover the restaurant scene of the capital.

Peru, 11 Years Later

I first visited Peru back in 2008. This visit was actually triggered by numerous visits to a now-defunct Colombian restaurant in Prague. Back in 2006, I spent the summer months in Prague, where I stayed in the city for 2 and a half months. There was a Colombian restaurant which somehow we visited numerous times. I once remarked that I would like to visit South America one day, but I was told not to, because I "would be kidnapped". I wanted to prove that wrong. So I prepared myself, and in 2008 I found myself spending ten days in Peru, visiting Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley.

However, the country is big, and there's more to see than Machu Picchu, so I decided to come back. 11 years later, I was back again, and this time, I spent three weeks, visiting other areas of the country, a few months ago, in September-October.

Traversing Danger

Sometimes, when my academic work gets a little tedious and frustrating, I sometimes let my mind wander. Now when it comes to where it wanders, it usually wanders to ideas about travel, about trips I want to take in the future, and so forth. It doesn't help that I religiously watch The Amazing Race, and I gawk at the various sights and scenes that are featured there, and it also doesn't help that I have Lonely Planet bookmarked in my browser.

Anyway, a thought occurred to me the other day, that it seems that whenever I travel, I don't typically pick a destination that most run-of-the-mill people pick. I don't go to London, or Paris, not that I would mind going. But it's just not the first choice that comes in my head.

See, the thing is, I see travel as a challenge. Traveling puts oneself outside of one's elements. It's like a fish out of water. And the challenge is to minimize the impact this change makes. I started traveling as much as I can in 2007, and I never picked a destination that was known for being easy. I went to spend a week in Quito, partly because the year before, my dad told me never to go to South America when I voiced my desire to visit the continent while eating in a Colombian restaurant in Prague. His default reason was that I would be kidnapped. I wanted to go to Peru that time and visit Machu Picchu, but I found that to be a little complicated (international flight, domestic flight, train, bus, and so forth). So I chose Ecuador to be a practice trip. In the end, I was armed with a guidebook and a Spanish phrasebook, and my week in Quito was wonderful.

And yes, a year later, I went to Peru, and that was magical.

Anyway, it seems to be the case that every time I talk about traveling to my friends, their first reaction would be that I will be somehow unsafe, and it's a ridiculous idea to go in the first place. I almost went to Guatemala with my sister this winter, however, due to a change in plans (I ended up planning to go to Pittsburgh instead, since I am a co-author for a talk in a large conference, and this was in conflict with Guatemala, add the fact that my sister had her schedule up in the air as well), it didn't happen. I would have loved to visit the Mayan country, and when I was planning it, my friends immediately thought I am crazy.

Perhaps it helps that I am not Caucasian, that I seem to have no trouble just picking up a phrasebook and speaking in the local language. I am not light-skinned, not white, so it's not as obvious when I am in a crowd.

The other day, I was daydreaming. I daydreamed that I was backpacking in the island of Hispaniola. Yep, the island that contains both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. As it turns out, I can go to both countries without needing a visa, and as much as Haiti gets a bad rep, there are things that are of interest. Perhaps sometime in the future.

Oh well, that's that. I am getting a vacation sometime, and it will not be an easy one. I promise, it won't be London: that's too easy.

(Windows, from my Pukapukara Series)

The Itch to Run Away

I am reading a fellow blogger's entry on his trips to Patagonia in Chile, and somehow it makes me itch to travel again. The thing is, travel can be an act by itself. Traveling isn't just a way to get to somewhere, traveling can be a goal in itself.

The thing is, sometimes I wonder that the simple version of travel isn't exciting anymore. You know, those types that all you need to do is to hop into a plane, and when you land, all you need to do is to hop into a taxicab, and then you'll be delivered to your hostel. That's too easy.

I dunno, I first felt this, back in March. I was attending a conference in New York City, but before that, I went to my friend's place in Rhode Island to visit. I flew to Providence by way of Washington DC. How exciting was that? It was excitement level zero. Although I was glad that I got to see my friend again after a long period of time, and I was also glad to visit Rhode Island, but that was pretty much it. After that weekend, I took the train to New York City to attend the conference.

Recently, I have noticed that it seems that I don't get as excited as I was before whenever I would be traveling. I've flown the Buffalo-New York City segment so many times that I now find it boring. I have taken 100 flights already, that the take-off and landing episodes are already so routine. I miss the time when I was a little kid and flying was so wonderful. You enter this little door that leads to a corridor, and then after a few hours, you exit the door in a different land.

Come to think of it, this past summer, when I went back to the Philippines, I actually liked that experience, of traveling within my home country for the very first time. I liked the 10-hour bus ride, I liked the fact that I got lost hiking by myself in the middle of the rice terraces, I liked the hair-raising jeep ride between Banaue and Bontoc. That was different, and the fact that it is hard to get to those places just makes the scenery even more beautiful. It's fun standing on top of the world, seeing the whole mountain range spread in front of you.

The same thing happened two years ago, when I went to Machu Picchu. In order to go there, I had to fly first to New York City, then change to an international flight to Lima connecting via Bogota, and then I had to take a domestic flight to Cuzco. Then I rode a bus to Urubamba, and then a chicken bus to Ollantaytambo, and then a train to Aguascalientes. And finally a bus to Machu Picchu. Of course, I spaced those evenly, and didn't do the whole thing in one big swoop. It was fun, it was like being purposely lost in the middle of a continent that one doesn't belong to. When I was flying to Bogota, the flight attendant saw my passport and remarked that she doesn't see my passport too often because Filipinos rarely take that route.

But heck, there's a more pressing thing at the moment. I need to finish this dissertation. My experiment will be put into the lab next week and I am excited. Hopefully, this would lead to something big, and then I'll have the resources to do that awesome trip somewhere. And believe me, I have plenty of ideas.

(Finding the Core, from my Q'enqo Series)