When people ask me how I chose Peru as the destination for our last trip, they’re often surprised I don’t have a calculated rhyme or reason. In a swarm of mundane Google searches that went something like ‘cool-places-to-visit-that-wont-cost-me-an-arm-or-leg-well-maybe-an-arm-but-i-need-my-legs”, Peru made constant appearances in my findings and thus became embedded in my subconscious. In April, Tommy and I were having dinner with his cousin when he remarked, “I’ve been thinking about visiting Peru to see Machu Picchu. We should make it happen”. And suddenly months of disheveled research and scattered information stored in my subconscious flooded my conscious brain and I went home, booked 3 tickets to Lima, and the rest was an afterthought.
I could write an entire post on the planning of our trip alone as it was heavily logistics-oriented, but I’d much rather share with you the experience I had during my stay. We split our time in Peru between Lima, Cusco, and Aguascalientes – all ‘must-sees’ and ‘must-visits’ if you were to ask me.
Peru itself is a developing country. As I traveled from town to town in buses and taxis, time and time again I was forced to think about how much better the average living conditions of Americans are in comparison. Poverty in Peru is deepest among indigenous people living in remote rural areas. In fact, the national rural poverty rate is over 50 percent, with 20 percent of people in the Andean region considered extremely poor. This was evident in the villages in the mountains I passed through; they looked almost abandoned, with people living in huts, little modern technology and often no electricity.
Lima
Upon landing, we wasted no time probing the country’s culinary capital to satisfy our ravenous appetites. We were greeted by a local friend who took us straight to a Peruvian market to try fresh Ceviche and Lomo Saltado. We crammed inside a 5×5 space where everyone basically sat on each other’s lap and devoured 7 plates of various seafood dishes. It was the best meal I had the entire trip. My mouth still waters at the memory! After lunch, we visited a cat park which was literally a park where hundreds of stray cats lived. It was something similar to a horror film in which I was the victim, as everyone who knows me knows I am deathly afraid of cats. I would have opted out of this event had it not also been a large Poke-stop area (where I caught 6 Scythers, an Arbok and 2 Ryhorns).
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