Family travels to Northern Peru

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Wow so this is super late, but while I am killing time back in La Paz, Bolivia for my fourth time (!) I think I should probably catch up, and with Tarapoto and Easter Island to add after this, I think I may be busy a while...

So after a very stressful couple of days before Christmas with snow storms and the like in England leaving everyone (or mostly just me) frantically pressing refresh to hear of any news that my family will make it to Peru for Christmas and not the 26th as the airlines had last promised, in a stroke of luck, fate, divine intervention, pure happy consequence, everyone made it home, one way or another.

A beautiful Christmas was spent with my British family the night before in true English style with my pitiful miniature, plastic tree to centre around, a super fun Christmas eve with my Loki family in Lima, and another lovely gathering of my Peruvian family in the beautiful setting of my aunt and uncle's house with about 60 of us decendents of the Cooper-Llosa clan. It was absolutely fantastic and am really getting to enjoy seeing my family regularly rather than every couple of years, it´s a shame that the other family is now victim to the divide.

After Christmas, we headed north to Trujillo, staying in the absolutely luxurious Libertador right on the main square. A room to myself, after living at Loki hostels for the last however long, it was a massive difference and a delight. Travelling solo and travelling with family is a very different experience, especially when travelling with family also equates to travelling with money haha. I´ve spent the last 9 months travelling slowly, quietly, back-tracking a lot, and immersing myself in places. This was very different but not unpleasant. We took tours to the pyramids and ruins of the Moche and Chimu tribes (well one or the other, I can't remember which was where) and I really enjoyed doing this with my brother especially. Growing up watching Indiana Jones and The Goonies, playing Tomb Raider and doing all out reckless, adventure things in the countryside of our Kentish home, it was quite funny to be on a real life archaelogical site that brought all these back into vivid memory and feel like our very own Indiana Jones' or Lara Crofts (Lara Croft was a character in the computer game Tomb Raider for all those less-geeky than myself).

Really fantastic, and to see the ruins and wall carvings and paintings in their original colour, in their original setting, it's so much more impressive than seeing the chunks laid out in a museum that I am so used to. Really impressive, no other word for it. Trujillo itself is also a very beautiful city, well maintained and a small city but beautiful nonetheless. Nearby Hauncayo where surfers gather and play, amongst the traditional totora reed boats, another beautifully kept bay.

We then headed to Chiclayo for New Years. Now obviously 'roughing it' for 9 months, and living in the poorer ends of the spectrum and visiting the poorer cities, Chiclayo didn't phase me much, although the difference is evident between the two cities. Chiclayo really is a bit of a nothing. In its defence I didn't see much of the city, in my defence, it seemed like a lot of other South American cities that aren't tourist havens or historical monuments or rich. They live their lives, they get on with it, there's nothing for you to see here and they're not going to apologise for it, or pretend to get you here, this is their life, for them, not for us.

There is of course the pyramids and Museum of Sipan here. Impressive again, especially the biggest excavation that I remember being like a little town in a fortress, very beautifully excavated and reconstructed with a lush green lake in the middle of it! The other site was obviously a work in progress and all we could see from the viewpoint was a big patch of earth with some little mounds in them, that presumably will be pyramids in years to come.

We spent New Years at a beach apartment that my aunt's friend had and had a lovely quiet night with some champagne and cards living the quieter, more wholesome life that I remember from christmas's in my grandmother's house where we had each other for company and entertainment, not TVs or computer games or any of this wonderful stuff that disconnects us more and more every day.

I had a fantastic time regardless of dirty cities, poor areas, rubbish hotels, less-than impressive beaches. I quite like that my standards are still below-par that I can enjoy the luxury of a bed and maybe a TV (a tv in your room is utter backpacker luxury), but I´m still a bit partial to the high-life of Libertador 5 star hotel living. I'm not sure which I prefer to be honest, obviously the luxury's benefits are obvious, and I certainly enjoyed it and am exceedingly grateful, but it does keep you in your Western bubble and I've become a bit addicted to living like the locals, eating street or market food, talking with them, laughing with them, living the outdoor life and disconnected from society. I really love both ways of living, I'm not sure how I'll ever decide one day which is the way for me.

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