Our first day in Lima

Day 2
2011-01-10
Miraflores/Lima 

The coastline

The second day was filled by checking out the area of Miraflores. We had breakfast in the hotel before heading out to explore the surroundings. Our first walk took us to the coastline of Lima. The wonderful steep coast was pretty amazing. It’s not the classical beauty of a beach with white sand, palm trees and so on but it’s definitely a beautiful spot. The waves are pretty impressive and so the surfers were rushing into the water to take their best shot on riding them. It was awesome to be able to walk along the beach with the pacific in front of us. It was so calm and we could just hear the sound of the ocean. 

Later on we went to the shopping area in Miraflores and we were pretty amazed by the fact that the city is very clean. We walked to different spots with a great view on the ocean – one of which is Larcomar with lots of restaurants and shops. 

After that we went to a big artisan market called “The Indian Market” nearby the hotel. It was pretty amazing to see all those handcrafted goods. Instruments, textiles, clothes, statues, masks, jewellery and many more were the things the local people were selling in small shops. 

In the evening we had a wonderful Peruvian dinner nearby Kennedy Park in Miraflores. We were pretty amazed about the flavors and the taste of the amazing dinner.

The trip to Lima

Day 1

2011-01-09
Frankfurt - Bogotá - Lima 

My trip starts in Munich where I took my flight to Frankfurt. Everything went fine and I got to Frankfurt with enough time to catch my flight to Bogotá/Colombia. I met Chris – who was going to come with me on that trip – at the baggage claim – as planned. After having checked in we had still enough time to talk about our plans for the next 3 weeks.

LH 542 FRA-BOG

Once we were on board our flight to Bogotá, the excitement started to set in and the real deal began. It was a pretty smooth flight and after round about 11 hours we hit Colombian ground. After 2 hours we took our last flight from Bogotá to Lima/Peru which was a blast, too. I’ve never flown in such a comfortable economy class with in seat video systems and wonderful seats.

At around half past midnight local Peruvian time we touched down at Lima El Dorado Airport. We went to the baggage claim and got our luggage before heading to the arrival area. It was planned that a driver should pick us up and bring us to our hotel in Miraflores/Lima. And there he was – with my name on his sign.

El Patio - Lima Miraflores

Only 30 minutes later we checked in at our hotel – the El Patio in Miraflores. We got such a warm welcome and the journey started amazingly.

It has a been a long and fatiguing trip to get to Peru but we were sure that it was worth it. We were pretty excited about the following weeks that were lying in front of us.

I am back!

I am back from Peru and the experience still resonates in my mind and my heart.

Paracas beach

 I will tell you about each and every day of this trip - but please be patient if this takes some time. I want to remember each and every moment and write it down as accurate as possible adding some photos I took along the way.

These are the hard facts about the trip: We (my best friend and I) spent 21 days in Peru visiting 11 cities. We travelled almost 2500 miles - mostly by bus. We shot around 5000 (!) photos and I recorded 79 videos. We covered everything from sea level up to 5022 meters above sea level. The longest bus ride lastet 38 hours and we encountered avalanches, rock falls and flooded streets. We ate wonderful dishes and tried Alpacha. We went down the deepest canyon of the world - twice as deep as the grand canyon and we visited Machu Picchu - which for me was the most amazing experience ever.

Arequipa

We met wonderful people, slept in nice hotels, had just 2 days of rain and for the rest the most amazing weather ever. We never argued and laughed SO much all the time.

It was breathtaking, inspiring, exciting, emotional and definitely a journey we will always remember!

It's Happening

While the departure day gets closer, things are happening here. I'm meeting people with a message for me, coming across magazines that have articles I have to read and quotations others have made about their trip of a lifetime!

In this article I wanted to talk about some of those things and what I hope this journey will bring to me.

"I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of." - Michel de Montaigne

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust

"The hidden meaning of travelling is to be homesick." - Erich Kästner

"I'm looking at the earth. It is big and radiant and beautiful." Neil Armstrong

"...The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and finde the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints." - Robert Louis Stevenson

"Travel frees you to re-imagine yourself." - Alain de Botton

Those quotations describe perfectly, what I hope to find along the way. I  know - I should not expect too much as I could be disappointed. But I will definitely stay open to the discoveries and surprises our trip to Peru brings.

As I said in my first article on this blog, I've had the vision of me being there 7 years ago. That vision has accompanied me every since and I've always felt the urge to follow my intuition and visit that country.

Now that it's almost happening, I am excited. I don't know who I will meet, I don't know what I will see and I definitely don't know what I will feel.

I want to free my mind of those things that held me back in the past and I hope to find a piece of myself again...realizing what person I am, what needs I have, if and how my future plans fit with what I'm supposed to do - not what I THINK I need to do.

In a few weeks I will have to pack my backpack which itself will be very exciting. But what I think is even more exciting: I have to my spiritual bag and get ready mentally. It will hopefully be a time when I can leave everything at home...no thinking about problems, work, difficulties or so.

There's a song I wrote some time ago which describes it perfectly! It's called "Fly" and you should definitely watch this video!

I will fly...and this is what excites me the most!

Three weeks left

Miraflores/Lima

I can't believe it - but when I started to create this blog and to post the first articles, I never thought the time would fly this quick. Now it's only three more weeks before we leave for Peru.

We will be spending the first two nights in Lima in the Miraflores area to check out the city and it's nightlife.

Macchu Picchu

After that we will follow the coastline direction south until - after a few stops I guess - we reach the Lake Titicaca and its floating isles - the "Uros" and the town Copacabana. Maybe there is time for a short trip to La Paz/Bolivia too. 

Lake Titcaca/Uros

On the way we will take a flight to observe the Nazca Lines by plane...which is going to be very exciting I guess.

Our route will then take us back to the north via the Andes to visit cities like Iquitos and Cuzco where we will visit Macchu Picchu. We also plan to do a trip into the jungle but we will see how it goes when we're there. We didn't want to plan every step on beforehand but take things as they come along.

The whole trip will take 3 weeks and I'm getting more and more excited about it. The whole gear is in place and I got everything I will need during these three weeks. I will take my cam along to capture every moment of this journey but still - I decided to take a three-weeks-break from things like telephone, internet and e-mail.

I want it to be a whole new experience taking the time to get to know myself, to become clear about my future plans and to learn how to make my dreams come true. Yes - it is in deed going to be a very spiritual experience.

The Nazca Lines

Another thing I have planned to do is to learn spanish and I think that's the best occasion to do so. I already started to do some training with friends who teach me a lot. And being forced to speak spanish will hopefully inprove my language skills even more.

I don't know if my next article will be online before or after the trip because I won't be able to update the blog along the way. Anyhow - stay tuned for a detailed article on that. :-)