This is the last post for our Peruvian Odyssey. If you’ve just stumbled upon it, you might want to start at the beginning and work your way through the other seventeen 5 minute reads! You can begin here:
https://allaboutthestories.com/2023/08/31/were-going-to-peru/
Yesterday was quite a day and it’s so hard to imagine leaving the antiquity and culture on Taquile Island, where there are no vehicles and solar power just arrived a year ago. We dropped into Lima, with a population of 12,000,000 and every possible convenience of modern civilization. We were then transported to Miraflores arriving at the Casa Andina Premium Hotel late.
Today is our last full day and we are to take a guided bike ride to and along the coast and through the art district of Miraflores. Our guide, Alberto, showed up right on time and we walked a few blocks to a bike rental shop and picked up a couple of bikes.
As it turns out, Sunday is a pretty wonderful day to bike in Lima. The culture in Peru does a pretty good job of taking the same day off from work and it made for a stress-free ride through the city to the coast. Once on the coast, however, we found that all those people taking the day off were also really enjoying the coast!
It was a fun ride. Our guide, Alberto, filled us in on some of the history as we rode along. The “kissing park” is pretty popular and many have placed locks of love on the fencing!
It was quite the casual ride after our Salkantay Trek!
The Miraflores district is known for its art and we enjoyed the displays all around. At some point we were “discovered” by a local high school group. Tourists! We briefly became famous as they all gathered to take pictures with us.
There is a large sculpture in the Parque del Amor, the love park. Named El Beso (The Kiss), it is a very popular place. The mayor used to hold a competition for the couple with the longest kiss!
This is called the Bridge of Sighs but I think the one in Venice, Italy is the one that Robin Trower titled his second album after!
But here, the goal is to make a wish and then walk completely across the bridge while holding your breath. Let out a sigh at the end and your wish will come true!
It was fascinating to watch the paragliders on the coast. I was really surprised they were allowed so close to the city with all the power lines and tall buildings!
The picture takes you to a two minute clip of a pretty cool ride. Where will he end up?
A fun 10-mile ride followed by a fabulous meal at Alfresco’s and the day was done! And then it was up sometime after 4am in order to catch our morning flight toward home.
I love getting the window seat (and Patricia graciously offers me hers most of the time)! It was fun crossing the Andes on our way to Atlanta and I was able to spot places we had visited in the Florida Keys. I even saw the Okefenokee Swamp from above, a place I have visited a few times.
After Atlanta, The Sequatchie Valley and the crow’s foot gorges of Savage Gulf in Tennessee were very familiar. While we live “on the mountain” in Monteagle, it certainly feels like a hill after the Andes!
Bilbo Baggins, from The Lord of the Rings, compiled his memoirs into There and Back Again. Kind of a Hero’s Journey, where one leaves on a quest and brings something back with him.
While not a hero, I certainly have brought plenty back with me! And I’ve savored the memories over the last few weeks as I’ve ever so slowly compiled this blog. And I’ve learned it’s pretty much impossible to convey an odyssey to anyone back home. You start showing picture, their eyes glaze over after the first 300 or so, and you feel pretty silly. In the end, I wrote this blog for myself (and Patricia!) as a way to relive the experiences from time to time. And even at that, there were so, so many things not captured here! But that’s okay, the joy and the memories are still there. And of course we’re glad you’ve followed along.
Another shout out to Hobnail Trekking and Alpaca Expeditions for nearly perfect execution and truly meaningful and immersive experiences!
And of course to Trail Ninja! The adventure of a lifetime and with my soul mate at my side.
I wish to leave you with two thoughts that seem to recur to me time and time again as I’ve struggled how to explain the odyssey:
It’s like taking one of your best adventure vacation weeks and cramming it all into one day…and then doing that for 14 days in a row1
If I knew that tomorrow was going to be my last day, I think I’d be ok with it. This trip filled a yearning that maybe I didn’t even know needed to be filled.