Back in the States, My Vacation in Peru

8:05 PM

I am tired. I've been through so much traveling and experiences the past week. Many multiple hours long flights, car rides, hikes, train rides, bus rides, and so on. I am exhausted.

I just want to quickly sum up the experiences I've been through. I flew to Peru from Virginia with my parents. This is after "Thankstaking" and like one day after I flew back to the states from Puerto Rico. I really hate flights.

To get to Peru, we had a layover in Panama. The Panama airport was big, bigger than the IAD airport in Virginia, with over 200 gates. A lot of flights apparently stopped over here. I was tired here too. We sat in a 5 hour or so flight and rested for a bit in Panama. I don't recall us doing anything there except just sitting and chilling for a while. I eavesdropped a little on some nearby conversations to practice my Spanish understanding a bit. In Spain, I can basically understand everyone perfectly. Here in South America, I can barely understand anyone.

Then we flew to Lima, which was like another 5 hour or so flight. Maybe 6 hours? 8 hours? I don't know. It just took a long long time. After that we got an Uber to our hotel, and that's when I noticed how much cheaper everything was. The Uber ride was around 50 minutes, and the cost for it was only like $20. This is cheap in the United States, an hour Uber ride I'd expect to be like $60-$80 or around that in the States, and actually I'd find out later that Lima was an expensive city relative to other cities in Peru.

Anyway we arrived at the hotel. Our check-in time was at 3 PM and it was only around 2 PM, so we decided to come back. I checked for some vegan restaurants in the area, and there were 7 within like 2 miles. There were a few very close ones, I just picked the closest one and took my parents there. What I didn't expect is that this was a restaurant that Wahl had been to, I recall seeing it from one of her photos from last year. That was so fascinating.

After we ordered, I asked my dad to take photos of me in front of the stairs. From this photo, the last photo, it looks like a place "in the middle of a city jungle" or something like that, right? That's what I thought when I saw Wahl's photos of it. From her photos, I thought this was a Peruvian vegan restaurant in the middle of a forest and it was hard to find and visit. Nope, it's literally close to the middle of the city, close to many crowded areas with modern technologies and buildings. You can sort of see the reflections of some buildings in the glass.

After this we went back to the hotel and checked our stuff in. I had a habit the whole trip of never using the elevator. I always used the stairs. We were on the 4th floor I think, and yeah I'd use the stairs the whole time, the many times we went up and down. This was also the case in the next hotel we stayed at, and we were at the top floor there. This small habit would help me a lot, because I would lose a lot of weight during this whole trip. It's all the little things.

Anyway we rested in the hotel for a bit, and then explored Lima for a bit. We visited this populated place called Larco Mar, in Spanish that means Larco Sea. Larco sounds like Largo which means long, so it might mean Long Sea, I don't know. It is a long sea though, like there's a road that stretches from one side of the coast to the other, and it's really long. That's how we got here from the airport. That's pretty much all we did today.

The next day, we went over to this place called Paracas, and rode a bus to get there. It was like a 3 hour bus ride to get there, and at the spot, we got to ride a boat that took us to some cool sights. We saw penguins, sea lions, a Nazca line, and a bunch of small rocky islands and rocky caves and places. It was beautiful. The boat ride was an experience all itself. It was like a 30 minute boat ride from Paracas to those islands, and yeah that was fun, the boat bounced up and down over the waters, and people would scream and cheer whenever we were in the air for what felt like seconds. It was a lot of fun.

The next place we went to was the Huacachina sand dunes. There we rode some dune buggies. I got to ride with some girls from Mexico who invited me to sit in-between them. They called me "El Chino" which means "The Chinaman", even though I'm not from China.

This past month I have been mistaken as being from China, Japan, Vietnam, and Korea. The Japan one, was at the Crunch gym in Puerto Rico, a woman at the counter thought I was Japanese. Also at the Crunch gym, while I was arm wrestling Eric, a guy saw us and was like "I'm rooting for the Chinaman", in Spanish. For the Vietnam one, it was at the Loving Hut in Virginia, the waiter just started talking to me in Vietnamese for a good many sentences. The last was from my parents, they just make jokes that I'm from Korea. I just really don't look like I'm from the Philippines. Even in the Philippines, several times at the Manila airport, people have thought I was from Korea or another Asian country.

Anyway, yeah I rode with some girls from Mexico. They were cute. We took several photos and videos together. For a group photo, I put my arm around the shoulder of one, and I guess she didn't like that. After that photo was taken, she basically shooed me away and was like "only us girls now" and they just started taking photos of themselves. Cool. On the dune buggy ride back, I was going to sit with them again, but then they were like "why don't you go sit up there" and told me to sit in the front. Okay fine.

Anyway I made friends with the other people in the group. They took photos of me, and I took photos of them, and yeah. That girl group basically kicked me out. They would talk to me again a few times in the bus, air drop me some photos, but I avoided them the rest of the trip.

After the sand dunes, we went to eat at a restaurant, and did some wine tasting. That first wine was amazing. The rest were not. I stopped after three drinks. Then we had a 4 hour ride back home or whatever. With some breaks every now and then. Actually, just one break I think. During one break I saw the girls talking about me and sort of looking at me, they were too far to hear, but I could see them peeking at me. What does this mean? They didn't say anything to me when we got on the bus. Then yeah, a 4 hour ride home. At my stop when I got up and as I was already close to the door, they said goodbye to me, but I was already near the exit, so I just walked out, basically snubbing them. I don't know if I regret it now, since it's been a while, but I did at the time. The bus just closed behind me, and we went back to the hotel.

Whew. I was tired. I think the next day was a free day. We just went around Lima or something, ate at another vegan restaurant, always rewarding. I really don't remember what else we did.

Oh yeah, Kelly. I wrote about her in my last entry. We matched on a dating app and exchanged phone numbers, started messaging each other. I texted her a bunch during the bus ride. I think she got annoyed with the questions I sent. I was also feeling some mix of emotions from the girl group during that bus ride. So I probably sent them stressed or something? Anyway the next morning after the bus ride, on the free day where I don't remember what else we did, Kelly cancelled the date we set up.

Lia advised me that night to message her again in a month, but I told Lia that I pretty much lost all interest in Kelly already. We were just so different. She even had an Android only, not as cool as messaging someone on iMessage. I wrote about people not being perfect in my last entry, and I was kinda alluding to some things I didn't like about Kelly. I don't want to write about what they are here. Nothing regarding her appearance or personality, I'm just not going to get into it, like I said.

Then the next day we flew over to Cusco, Peru. This place was super high elevation compared to Lima. Both my parents had altitude sickness. One altitude symptom I noticed right away, was blurrier and "stuck light" vision. If I stare into a light bulb right now for a second, then look away, there's a blotch of light that will linger in my eyes for like a second, maybe a minute, depending on how bright it is and other factors. In Peru, I noticed that it lingered forever, like 10+ minutes. My mom had it too, she said she couldn't read some papers or forms because of the "eye block" or whatever.

We got driven over to our hotel, and we dropped off our stuff. This time they just let us check in I think. We started walking to this vegan restaurant that was .8 miles away. My parents had a hard time keeping up. I had no issues walking, but my parents had to stop and take a break on some benches, they had to get some water, they were both feeling altitude sickness. Other than the eye blocks, I wasn't experiencing any. I actually didn't think they were experiencing anything at the time, and I just kept making familial comments, this is acceptable since we talk like this to each other all the time, like "why do you need water now? We can just get it at the restaurant", "what is taking you guys so long?" because I'd be like a block ahead and wait 30 seconds for them to catch up. Anyway I'd find out later, like a day or two later, this is altitude sickness for them.

The vegan restaurant was amazing. The food was superb. The most creative dishes I've ever had in my life. That was the best pizza ever. Also the price for all these items were relatively inexpensive. That pizza for multiple people was only like $10. Everything in Cusco was affordable.

I think later that night my dad and I got a haircut. The haircut cost me $2.70, a normal one in the U.S. and Puerto Rico would cost like $30. We also bought some bananas for like 60 cents, for a bunch of them, and some bread too, for like 60 cents. Everything in Cusco was super inexpensive to us with our U.S. Dollars.

The next day we went to Machu Picchu. That was a day long journey by itself. We had a 1.5 hour van ride, then a 2 hour or so train ride, and then another 30 minute bus ride. It took a while. We had a private tour guide who was super helpful, he helped us with everything. That was amazing.

Machu Picchu itself was amazing too. There were clouds that covered it up for a long time. So we waited like 2 hours at the top of the mountain, waiting for the clouds to get pushed out of the way, so we could take some photos, and it was for sure worth the wait. We took a bunch of photos. That was awesome.

Then we went back to the hotel, taking the same route back home. 30 minute bus ride, 2 hour train ride, another 1.5 hour van ride back to Cusco. It was such a long trip. Sleeping in the hotel felt nice. Also, the hotel had a jacuzzi, which I used every night. I love traveling, but I wish I had a girlfriend to travel with.

Anyway, we went back to Lima after that, took another break there, and then went back to Virginia. The past few days I have just been working and chilling at home basically. It's been too cold to go out, like it's freezing here. So I just stayed at home.

I'm so tired now. I'm going to sleep. Tomorrow, I fly back to Puerto Rico. So much flying back and forth. I'm tired.