Peru with Love..

I came to this continent for the first time in 2011. A group of seven is all I had on my first tour. It was too early in my work as a tour organiser that I had ventured this far away from India. The land felt far but once I landed in Buenos Aires it didn't feel that distant from some of the other countries I had already been to. I had only been able to complete the preliminary level in Spanish and that was good enough to get me started with the basics in dealing with ordering food(very important when you have vegetarians) and getting things done on the ground. In my class I had already identified more with the chapter in which they spoke about food and travel and I remember revising the chapter again as I was inflight from Johannesburg to Buenos Aires. 

Chile felt just like Argentina with a little more warmth in peoples expressions and with only Santiago on the charts, it didn't feel anything special to be in two cities back to back. 

Then came Peru! At first nothing seemed pleasing. The streets of Lima were not kept well, the traffic maddening and the buildings on the way to the hotel from the airport looked like they needed a facelift. I may even have thought of whether I really wanted to do this tour again. Then came the highlands and at 12000 ft above sea level, Cusco hit me bad. I am not very altitude friendly and even today anything above 10000 ft makes me feel want to get away to the sea level, no matter how beautiful the place is. Cuzco, back then didn't feel beautiful, but it felt like South America! Yes, for the first time the continent came into picture in its real sense. The people looked different and most of them were not white. Everything felt slow, maybe because of my head ache. 

The Plaza de Armas - Cuzco

 But the language was more easy to understand and the people were more willing to help. After 5 painful but different days in the ‘high andes’ we were back on the sea level and in a sea side town called Paracas. I remember my first ‘Pisco Sour’, a cocktail made with lime juice, egg white and sugar all mixed together with 50 ml of the local Pisco and lots of ice. The pacific was in front of me and the Scallops that are found in plenty on the South Peruvian shore were in me. The bartender narrated stories of the coast and how its people are different than the highlands. Even with my little knowledge of Spanish his stories I understood and I realised what an important thing it is to speak the language of the country and its people.

The Pacific in Paracas

Today after 5 years as I fly out of Lima and to Iguassu Falls in Brasil, I think of all the times I have been to this continent and somehow only Peru sticks in. The itinerary has changed a lot over the years. From spending only 6 nights here in Peru, I am now spending 9 nights and 10 days. The Peruvian Amazon, replaced the Brazilian one, the Nazca lines had to be taken off and the altitude sickness that made me mad was dealt with by staying in the Sacred Valley at 8,700 ft for the first 2 days to acclimatise. The people have come to love the Peruvian cuisine and even the vegetarians eat out of their hands. The locals always have a pleasant conversation with my people even if its in broken English. The Pisco Sour I still have at the same bar in front of the Pacific Ocean in Paracas and I always end up telling the bar man the same thing. “This is the best Pisco Sour I have had in Peru”.

The Pisco Sour with Scallops Parmesana

My Spanish has not really improved and I keep making mistakes which the locals are happy to correct or just make sense of what I am trying to tell. 

“Peru for me is South America in miniature”, said a tourist yesterday. Its true, Peru has everything from the Andes, to the Pacific Ocean. The Amazon forest makes up for 60 % of the land and a lot of what is left is the Andes or the desert hugging sea shore. After the ‘mostly meat’ diet of Argentina, Peru feels fresh. Fresh in its peoples attitude more than anything else. No wonder, it overtakes all the other countries in tourism in this continent. It is very easy for the people working in tourism in any country to have a commercially inclined mindset after the tourism has boomed. I always tell people to go to Myanmar before the locals there smile because they are paid to do so and not because its in their warm nature to do so. Countries like Peru give me hope. A hope that no matter how much money comes to the country through tourism and development, it is the people and the culture that lives in them that finally decides their attitude. 

To me South America is Peru. Not that I don't like Argentina, Chile and Brazil. But there is something in Peru that makes me fall in love with it. Something, which I don't even want to analyse, but just feel!

Finding Iceland

I am writing this after more than two months of me coming back from Iceland. I had started to write in Iceland but somehow it felt too detailed, something which Scandinavia is. Detailed yet to the point. Iceland though not a part of the Scandinavian peninsula is very close to what Scandinavia feels like. For me Scandinavia means Norway and thats the only reason I had put Iceland on the back bench since it began to surface in my mind. 

‘The Northern Lights in Iceland’ read a Facebook post in September, and then whoever was posting those pictures posted a few more over the next week. Meanwhile my friends in Tromso, Norway posted their pictures of the lights and somehow it seemed like a showdown between Tromso, the official capital of the Northern Lights sighting on the planet to the entire Iceland, the new emerging sensation. I think somewhere in that period I clicked the ‘book’ button on the Air Iceland website. 

For the first winter since 2011, I had done two back to back trips to North Norway and when I touched down at the Keflavik airport in Iceland at 1530 hrs, the total darkness was not a stranger. It was only when I saw the prices in the menu displayed outside the restaurants on the main street in Iceland did I completely felt like being in an extension of Norway. 

The Continental Split between the Euro and North American plates.

With no plan in my mind I woke up in my hostel bed on the first morning in Reykjavik. The coffee was free flowing in the hostel kitchen but my mind wasn't with any ideas of what to do in the 3 days I had allowed myself in Reykjavik. In those first few hours I was sure I was not going to come back here again and maybe was even telling myself, ‘relax this is a holiday and Norway is Norway’. 

It took me 24 hours to go from ‘maybe not again’ to ‘have to come again’. 

The cities are cities, maybe a Reykjavik or an Oslo, it is only when the raw power of nature overtakes the tar roads and man made buildings does a real country makes its presence felt. The North of Iceland and just 6 hours of travelling in it made me change my mind about Iceland. 6 hours full of geysers, mud sulphur pools, frozen waterfalls, and a hot pool in - 10 deg centigrade. But it is not the pure nature that helped me make my decision. It is the simplicity of its people too. 

Like the ice-cream shop in Akureyri, still there as it was made in 1950’s, serving the locals and the house on the old street which has aged more than a 100 years and still stands with all its glimmer with the post christmas lighting, which they keep till the end of Feb. Electricity is virtually free and the surrounding dark, so wouldn’t. 

When the waters are at +40 Deg C, the Air doesn't matter

One of the many frozen Waterfalls in North Iceland

 I don't know when I will get back to this country again. A country where they say, “who needs hash, when we have ash’. Where the geo thermal activity makes it the most unique in Scandinavia, and its people who proudly display their ‘100% pure Icelandic’ tag are more friendlier than anywhere in Scandinavia. 

Iceland, in winter and in summer I wish to come back to you. Right now I have just found you, there is still the discovering to be done.