5th October

We have had such a good time these last few days that it you really do feel somehow that the experience has elevated your spirit, lifted you beyond yourself. It has provided, as a lot of this trip has provided, a huge sense of freedom, liberty and discovery. It is something I really wish I could share at a personal level with everyone back home, more than just with the words and pictures of this blog. I wish I could give to them, just some of what this trip has given to me.

How good would it be to share in person just some of the moments that we have had with those that I love back home? How good to share the trekking in the mountains of Huaraz with Phil? How good to share the horse riding in Vilcabamba with Clare and Blythe? How good to share the whale watching off the coast of Ecuador with my mum? I wish they could be here, even just for moments. I think of them anyway during those moments, so maybe in some cosmic way they are there, alongside us. Being so far away from home, has you thinking a lot about the people back home.

Our last day in Huaraz has me thinking about a lot of things. Jess and I spent the day mostly separately gathering together our own thoughts, exploring the city, that feels like a town, one last time before we disappear. The contrasts here are quite stark; the traditional and the modern, the native and foreign locals, the locals and the travellers. It is a place where many people come together, and seem to live in harmony with one another.

You have the traditional highland women selling their wares on the floor outside of a big, modern bank. You have a German running a modern cafe complete with book exchange and internet, stuffed full with travellers sipping on their lattes. You have the traditional Spanish town centre square with its collection of benches; an excellent place to sit and observe people as they pass by, or even sit with you playing the same game. You have the big modern supermarket, and just down the road, the “as grubby as you like” traditional market selling just about everything you can imagine. The stench in the meat market though was too much for me. There is a multitude still, more contrary elements to this town.

This place is a real mish-mash of people and cultures, it makes you wonder what life is really like here under the surface. Do the locals resent the travellers invading their town each year? On the face of it you’d think not. The travellers are respectful, look after the environment here, and bring much needed money into the town. So I think the locals are happy with the travellers, and they certainly seem to show that on the surface too.

Perhaps the older more traditional generation might resent the younger generation with their modern ways and “not much to the imagination” dress? It’s quite striking to see a very traditionally dressed Quechua woman, holding her baby wearing all the modern gear you’d see in any western city though. So here too, the mother holding onto tradition for herself, seems quite happy for her child to be part of a different generation.

Perhaps the modernists in the town wish that the more traditionalists would just catch up and move Huaraz forward into the 21st century? But I think that this too is probably not the case. Certainly the modern banks don’t mind the selling of fruit and hats on the floors outside of their doors, and indeed the bank guards seem to be quite happy chatting to these street vendors and just getting along. If Huaraz were all new, it would be a real shame, as it is the tradition that makes it what it is. If it were all traditional with no ATMs or Internet however, it would be hard to function here. The old and the new then, seem to be in some kind of symbiosis.

This town is a sociologist’s dream, and indeed it does appear to be some kind of focus for social study if the local Peripheria magazine is any guide. I’m sure there must be tensions in Huaraz, but I can’t find any for now. Perhaps the problems of the past, with massive loss to life and property when earthquakes and avalanches have occurred, have galvanised the local populace to just work together to rebuild what was once lost. There’s nothing like camaraderie to help battle through hardship.

As recently as 1970 a huge earthquake wiped out most of Huaraz, and killed over 70,000 people, leaving a further 250,000 injured. Just up the road at Yungay, that same earthquake entirely buried the town under snow and rock, killing everyone there. Some of the local children having a day out at the circus must have been scarred for life at what they found upon their return. It was the most devastating earthquake in the recorded history of the western hemisphere. Times such as these gather people together, to work as one.

While thinking about life here, you think about life at home too, what you’re going back to, and indeed how your outlook on life has changed since you got here. Travelling South America has been a hugely rewarding experience so far, and the best is yet to come for we’ve not stayed in the jungle or the deserts up to this point, and I am so looking forward to that. It has been, much more than I imagined, and more than I could have hoped for. It has definitely made its mark. Sometimes though, it leaves you feeling very emotionally confused, not something I expected in someone of my years. Some days, very rare days, you wake up feeling like you just don’t know what to think about anything anymore.

You live at home, you toil at work, and you go to the same shops and the same pubs every week, meeting the same people as you go about your life. You go travelling though, and everything changes. You are lifted from your small sphere of experience and knowledge, and given a whole new world. At once bewildering and refreshing.

You meet so many new people, some happy but transient acquaintances, and some possibly permanent friends that could give new meaning to your life.

You have new opportunities open themselves up to you, perhaps taking your life in this direction, or another direction. These opportunities, so very different from that which you have known before. How different could your life be, if you just chose to walk through the doorway? These are not just fantasies, these are realities, realities to be taken or ignored.

And how very different too, the life is here from that of home. It makes you question the validity of what it is you have at home, whether it is what you believe it to be, or whether it should be replaced with something more fitting to your ideas about the world. Or is a “home” of any sort not what you need any more, but instead a more nomadic existence? For a time at least? Or are these new revelations meant to be just transient, for a moment, before returning to home?

Regardless of the outcome and what you think you might want to do, you do not live in isolation; you have friends, family, work and financial considerations, none of which can just be ignored and all of which already have their own import upon your life. It all leaves you feeling quite confused at times, about what you know, or what has become what you think you know, what you should do or not do. All of what you’ve assimilated during your travels too is just an impression and may not be what you think it is. There are so many thoughts about so many things, it can leave you feeling bewildered and emotional at a time when you should just be lapping it up and saving the analysis for later.

So today, that is what I have resolved to do, to try and save the emotions for another day. There is still so much to see and so much to learn on this voyage of discovery; I can hardly believe that we’re only a third of the way in to this so far magnificent journey. Moving south now onto pastures new, who knows what we will find there. The holiday resort of Huacachina, the colonial grandeur of Arequipa and Cusco, the monumental Machu Picchu, the jungles of the Amazon basin and the sacred Lake Titicaca. All of these here in Peru, before we head off into Bolivia. But first, Lima, let’s hope it is better than other travellers have led us to believe ...

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Part of trip: South America 2009 - Ecuador, Peru & Bolivia

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